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Read more about China in our special issue

IT WAS supposed to be a national triumph, but instead it became a serious embarrassment. Four years ago, Chen Jin’s star rose fast after he unveiled a new computer chip. It was billed as China’s first home-grown digital signal processor – the kind of chip that forms the guts of devices from digital cameras to mobile phones. Buoyed by millions of dollars from both the central and Shanghai governments, Chen set up a company called HISYS Technology to mass-produce the chips.

His fall was spectacular. In January 2006, an anonymous tipster claimed Chen had bought chips made by electronics giant Motorola, sanded off the logos and presented them as his own. Chen’s employers at Shanghai Jiao Tong University later concluded that he had falsified results. He was fired, and “China’s chip” was no more.

Chen’s is not the only recent high-profile case of scientific fraud in China. Last year, surgeon Hui Liu, assistant dean at Beijing’s Tsinghua University Medical School, was sacked after padding his CV with publications by another H. Liu. And in 2002, Yang Jingan, a prominent researcher in artificial intelligence at the Hefei University of Technology, was caught plagiarising a string of papers – producing brazen Chinese translations of western research, with figures, equations and all.

With the Chinese authorities failing to stem a rising tide of misconduct, the grassroots are taking matters into their own hands. All three of the disgraced scientists were accused by fellow researchers on the website. The effort has won respect as the most serious attempt in China to grapple with science fraud, but is not without controversy. As the number of allegations has grown, some scientists claim that the whistleblowers are getting out of control, pursuing personal vendettas, blighting careers on scant evidence, and damaging China’s scientific reputation.

New Threads’ founder, Fang Shimin, became China’s leading science cop almost by accident. He set up the website in the 1990s as a poetry and literature forum for Chinese expats, while training as a molecular biologist in San Diego. But as he heard of corruption back home in China, Fang got angry. “No independent critical voices could be heard, so I decided to do something about it,” he says. “Fraud is harming the public, dimming the future of Chinese science and obstructing the progress of Chinese society.”

Now working in Beijing as a science writer, Fang is a mild-mannered man – a far cry from his online reputation as a firebrand, attacking alleged wrongdoers under his nom de guerre of Fang Zhouzi. One case in particular made his name. Since the mid-1990s, some Chinese biochemists had been making extravagant claims about the health benefits of nutritional supplements of “pure DNA” extracted from animal organs. Fang first heard about it in 2001, when one of the scientists was quoted in a Chinese newspaper. He criticised the claims on New Threads, gaining wide coverage in the Chinese media.

Fang claims that New Threads has exposed more than 700 cases of fraud, corruption and pseudoscience since 2000. But few of the allegations have been followed up by the authorities, so it is impossible to say how many cases have been proved. Most of the accusations come from working scientists who prefer to remain anonymous. “If you are a whistleblower, you become an outsider,” explains Zhao Nanyuan, an engineer at Tsinghua University, who applauds Fang’s efforts. Given the sluggish official response to misconduct, other scientists agree that New Threads is necessary. “The universities never take these things seriously,” claims He Shigang of the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Biophysics in Beijing, who argues that institutions have a vested interest in covering up cases of fraud in their midst.

Indeed, until New Threads came along, fraudsters had apparently been thriving. “Cheating has become popular, especially among students,” says Zhao, who blames a wider culture of fraud in modern Chinese society. Before they can get a higher degree, many scientists have to publish a certain number of papers, some in high-profile international journals, and the suspicion is that some resort to faking data or plagiarism.

As China pours money into science, the prospect of making pots of cash may even tempt established scientists into committing fraud. Each year, the Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China ranks research institutions according to how many papers appear in a database of the top 3700 scientific journals. So to raise their profile, many institutions offer scientists cash for papers, some paying more than $100,000 for a report published in Nature or Science.

Fake research in a leading journal and the chances are you will be found out. But in the lower tiers of science publishing, this system of payments provides ample opportunity for unscrupulous scientists to make money by copying others’ work or fabricating results. “It’s a get-rich-quick thing,” suggests He.

The Chinese authorities are aware of the problem. Last year, the Ministry of Science and Technology established an office to accept reports of fraud; and in February, the Chinese Academy of Sciences outlined new ethics rules for scientists. But Fang is unimpressed. “The authorities are just paying lip service,” he claims. Creating guidelines is one thing, he points out, but making sure scientists follow them is another. Fang complains that the vast majority of cases exposed on New Threads have been officially ignored. Indeed, the government has blocked access to the website inside China at various times.

Like many Chinese scientists, Fang wants the government to establish a powerful body to investigate alleged misconduct. Last year, 120 US-based Chinese scientists led by microbiologist Xin-Yuan Fu of Indiana University wrote an to science minister Xu Guanghua and other officials calling for China to adopt mechanisms to deal with allegations of fraud. But in what many saw as a swipe at New Threads, they added: “There is neither consistent punishment for the guilty nor legitimate protection of the innocent. Such confusion damages not only the reputation of those involved in the allegation, but also the research environment in China and the trust of the international community in Chinese scientists.”

Even some of Fang’s supporters have reservations about his name-and-shame approach. “Originally I trusted everything on the website because Fang did the investigations himself,” says He. But he fears that as the site has grown, some people are being falsely accused. What’s more, some of the accusations on New Threads are subjective – for example, claims that scientists have wasted money on spurious research.

Fang says that he follows strict rules before posting an allegation from a would-be whistleblower: demanding that they reveal their identities to him, asking for evidence, consulting experts and investigating the details himself if need be. “So far there is no evidence that the reputation of an innocent person has been damaged by us,” he says.

But Fang has fought, and lost, three libel actions. One of the plaintiffs was Xiao Chuanguo, a urologist at Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan. Xiao sued Fang for criticising his application to become a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which later failed. Fang claimed that Xiao had not spent enough time in China to be eligible, had tweaked his publication record, and exaggerated the importance of a surgical technique he invented.

In July 2006, a Wuhan court ruled against Fang and ordered him to pay Xiao $3750 in compensation. “Fang did a good job at the beginning of his fighting against the ‘academic corrupt’, but he has caused more damage than good,” says Xiao.

Fang remains defiant. His supporters, meanwhile, have raised more than $55,000 in two legal fighting funds. “The courts so far haven’t tried to enforce the libel rulings on me, probably due to the roar of public rage,” Fang claims. “This setback won’t affect my campaign.” Until the central government takes up the challenge, New Threads seems set to remain the fraudbusters’ best hope.