- research grants and promotions are awarded on the basis of the number of articles published, not on the quality of the original research.
This is exactly why even normal Chinese researchers feel compelled fake their data. It's a systemic institutional problem.
It's a huge problem across the board. Part of it is that publications should not publish articles that have data that is not clearly legitimate, and should redact articles or journals that are found to be illegitimate. The other part is that there are more and more scientists each year, with less funding which creates an increasingly competitive market. Where careers potentially live and die with funding from grants and other awards, faking data to continue research might not seem like the worst possibility to some people.
That may be true in the US, but China is a whole other story. They have plenty of money, but the system they have rewards cheaters. They have a long and storied history of making up data and plagiarizing reports. I have witnessed it firsthand. A colleague of mine published a paper a few years ago on a specific gene pathway in brain cancer. About a year or two later another paper came out that was the exact same as his, except that they changed the gene name. All the data, and most of the text were identical, except for the name change. Of course my colleague emailed the editor and the paper was removed. China's problem is far deeper than just limited money for an increasing number of researchers.The other part is that there are more and more scientists each year, with less funding which creates an increasingly competitive market. Where careers potentially live and die with funding from grants and other awards, faking data to continue research might not seem like the worst possibility to some people.
I'm told that the prevalence and acceptance of cheating begins quite early on. China is highlighted in this article, but I wouldn't be surprised if this were common in other countries where cheating is accepted as "the way things are" as well. In my own experience, that was one of the most irritating things to teach students. Once they learned about the consequences of plagiarism in the university system in the U.S. and about the software used to detect plagiarism, most of them made a real effort to change. Honestly though, I could see how difficult it was for them to make the change though. In an environment where everyone does something to get ahead, it can be hard to poke one's head over the hedge to see why another system operates in the way that it does and the benefits that come from it.
Yes, this seems to be a cultural problem, not just a science problem. I fear that China will never clean up its pollution problem, because if they pass new regulations, all the local goveernment officials will just take bribes, and certify that the factories in their area are complying. My friend told me a great anecdote about being in China in a city that was experiencing an uptick in illegal garbage dumping in alleyways. So the government put up "no dumping" signs every so many feet in each alley. From then on, there was no trash directly in front of the signs, but if you were to walk 20 feet one way or the other, it was the same old. Not sure if he was embellishing or not, but it's a good story nonetheless.
I've seen something similar myself. When I was in Beijing for the Olymipcs, the locals were told to form lines, not to talk very loudly, not to spit, not to pick their noses and a whole lot of other things. I was eating noodles in a place with a white friend and as soon as he left, the volume increased to an incredible degree. There were guys sitting across tables from one another speaking at a volume I would use to get someone's attention 20 feet away. Oh the joys of being ambiguously brown.
It seems like not enough weight is given to the quality of the articles - there should be several ways to determine this. In the article it mentions the "impact factor" of a journal that an article is published in, but this seems limited. Perhaps a better way would be the number of times it is cited (within a certain timespan) with bonuses the more it is cited.
I was doing research over there in 2001, and at the time it was widespread. I had a colleague tell me that he thought that nearly all publications at that time involved fraudulent data. I am sure that it has improved in the interim, but China has a very deep rooted problem with corruption. Science, particularly biological science, is so very susceptible to this kind of behavior.