Goals include commercialization of research and emphasis on energy, biomedicine and information technology.
Beijing
China is betting that an ambitious programme of applied research will
help to secure its future as an economic superpower. Innovation 2020,
unveiled last week by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), maintains
support for basic research. But the plan will place a new emphasis on
translating the research into technologies that can power economic
growth and address pressing national needs such as clean energy, said
Bai Chunli, vice-president of the CAS, at the academy's annual
conference in Beijing, where the plan was announced.
Innovation 2020 is an extension of the Knowledge Innovation
Programme (KIP) launched by the CAS in 1998. Under the KIP, the academy
streamlined its often overstaffed and outdated institutes, attracted
outstanding Chinese researchers who had trained abroad, and tightened up
the way it evaluated project proposals and performance. But the CAS now
needs to support new priorities, says Duan Yibing, a policy researcher
at the CAS Institute of Policy and Management in Beijing. China has
become a global economic power, and the world's financial crisis has
made scientific innovation more important to economic success than ever
before, he says. "Things are a lot different now compared to 13 years
ago."
Although the budget of Innovation 2020 is yet to be announced,
insiders say it will be part of a continuing surge in the nation's
science spending (see 'Spend, spend, spend').
Indeed, the CAS's expenditure on research and development (R&D) in
2009 was about 20 billion renminbi (US$3 billion), seven times the level
in 1998, according to a KIP assessment report also released last week.
This year's budget for the National Natural Science Foundation of China
will increase by 70%, from 10 billion renminbi last year.
Innovation 2020 will kick off with new projects this year in seven
key areas, including nuclear fusion and nuclear-waste management; stem
cells and regenerative medicine; and calculating the flux of carbon
between land, oceans and atmosphere. Other priority areas include
materials science, information technology, public health and the
environment.
To coordinate resources better and to foster multidisciplinary
research, the academy will set up three research centres for space
science, clean coal technologies and geoscience monitoring devices. It
also plans to build three science parks — in Beijing, Shanghai and
Guangdong province, respectively — to accelerate the conversion of basic
research into marketable products, especially in renewable energy,
information technology and biomedicine.
Pan Jiaofeng, deputy general secretary of the CAS, says the KIP's
track record bodes well for the success of the new programme. By the
CAS's reckoning, in 2009, researchers that it funded published 3.5 times
as many papers in journals listed by the Science Citation Index (SCI)
as in 1998. Crucially, the number of papers published in the top 1% of
SCI journals, as judged by their impact factor, was 12 times that in
1998. The CAS also calculates that research and development by the KIP
generated an income of 140 billion renminbi and tax revenue of 22
billion renminbi in 2009 — respectively 19.5 and 14.5 times the levels
in 2000.
But the report acknowledges that there is substantial room for
improvement. For example, CAS researchers should aim to become leaders
of the international scientific community, and shift their focus away
from generating as many papers as possible and towards genuine
originality and innovation.
With its emphasis on applied research, the new initiative also
"presents a major challenge to the management and organizational
capabilities of the academy", says Richard Suttmeier, a science-policy
researcher at the University of Oregon in Eugene. He notes that most CAS
institutes are focused on academic disciplines and lack the
infrastructure needed for commercializing research or directing it
towards national needs.
Others think that the emphasis on applied research, national needs
and revenue could stifle curiosity-driven research. Without that, says a
Shanghai-based researcher who declines to reveal his identity, "it
would be very difficult to have genuine innovation".
-Nature
The latest in a string of high-profile academic fraud cases in China
underscores the problems of an academic-evaluation system that places
disproportionate emphasis on publications, critics say. Editors at the
UK-based journal Acta Crystallographica Section E
last month retracted 70 published crystal structures that they allege
are fabrications by researchers at Jinggangshan University in Jiangxi
province. Further retractions, the editors say, are likely.
Chinese universities often award cash prizes, housing benefits or other perks on the basis of high-profile publications, and the pressure to publish seems to be growing. A new study from Wuhan University, for instance, estimates that the market for dubious science-publishing activities, such as ghostwriting papers on nonexistent research, was of the order of 1 billion renminbi (US$150 million) in 2009 — five times the amount in 2007. In other studies, one in three researchers surveyed at major universities and research institutions admitted to committing plagiarism, falsification or fabrication of data.
"The extent of the misconduct is disturbing," says Nicholas Steneck, director of the Research Ethics and Integrity Program at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. "It highlights the challenges China faces as it struggles to rapidly improve the research capacity of a very large system — with significant variations in quality — to be a world-class player in science."
Two weeks ago, reacting to the retractions of the crystallography papers, Jinggangshang University fired the correspondent authors, Zhong Hua and Liu Tao. It is unclear whether their co-authors, who include researchers from other institutions in China, will also be investigated.
The journal's editors say that the discrepancies came to light during tests of software designed to flag possible errors and unusual chemical features, such as abnormal distances between atoms. The software identified a large number of crystal structures that didn't make sense chemically; further checking, the editors say, suggests that the authors simply changed one or more atoms of an existing compound of known structure, then presented that structure as new. Zhong and Liu could not be reached for comment.
Editors at the journal are now checking the authenticity of other published crystal structures, including all submissions from Jinggangshan University.
Half of the 200,000-odd crystal structures published by the journal during the past five years have come from China. William Harrison, a chemist at the University of Aberdeen, UK, who is one of three section editors for the journal, would not discuss the ongoing investigation but says that the generation of large numbers of structures by one group would not necessarily raise questions, because diffractometers can easily collect a couple of data sets a day. "In terms of papers submitted to Acta E, the vast majority coming from China are correctly determined structures, and they make a valuable contribution to science," he says.
Nevertheless, the Wuhan University study suggests that misconduct could be widespread in many fields. The team, led by computer scientist Shen Yang, used website analyses and onsite investigations to identify a wide range of dubious publishing activities. These include ghostwriting theses and academic papers on fictional research, bypassing peer-review for payment, and forging copies of legitimate Chinese or international journals.
The researchers analysed the most popular 800 websites involved in such activities — which together rack up 210,000 hits a day — and found that the cost of each transaction is typically 600–12,000 renminbi. Three-quarters of the demand comes from universities and institutions, says Shen. "There is a massive production chain for the entire publishing process," he says.
Concerned by such trends, China's science ministry commissioned a survey of researchers, the results of which remain under wraps. However, several sources revealed to Nature that roughly one-third of more than 6,000 surveyed across six top institutions admitted to plagiarism, falsification or fabrication. Many blamed the culture of jigong jinli — seeking quick success and short-term gain — as the top reason for such practices, says Zeng Guoping, director of the Institute of Science Technology and Society at Tsinghua University in Beijing who was involved in running the survey.
The second most-cited cause is bureaucratic interference in academic activities in China. Most academic evaluation — from staff employment and job promotion to funding allocation — is carried out by bureaucrats who are not experts in the field in question, says Fang Shimin, a US-trained biochemist who runs a website called 'New Threads' that exposes research misconduct in China. "When that happens, counting the number of publications, rather than assessing the quality of research, becomes the norm of evaluation," he says.
Cao Nanyan, a colleague of Zeng's at Tsinghua, conducted a similar survey commissioned by the Beijing municipality, which surveyed 2,000 researchers from 10 universities and research institutions. It, too, found that roughly one-third of respondents admitted to illegitimate practices.
To critics such as Rao Yi, dean of the life-science school at Peking University in Beijing, the lack of severe sanctions for fraudsters, even in high-profile cases, also contributes to rampant academic fraud. Many researchers criticize the fact that Chen Jin, a former researcher at Shanghai Jiao Tong University who is accused of falsely claiming to have developed a series of digital signal-processing chips, was fired with no other repercussions. Meanwhile, others involved in the scandal have gone unpunished.
"You send out a very wrong signal when such high-profile cases are not dealt with properly," says Rao.
-Nature
The Chinese government’s promise last week that researchers will
enjoy another year of increased funding was not unexpected, given the
country’s relatively buoyant economy and high regard for science. But
some scientists fear that too little money will be spent on good-quality
basic research, and that too much will be wasted in a funding system in
which good connections often trump academic expertise.
In a speech at the opening session of the annual National People’s Congress, China’s Premier, Wen Jiabao, lauded science and technology as key drivers of economic growth and individual prosperity, and backed up the rhetoric with hard cash. This year, central-government expenditure on science and technology is set to rise to 228.5 billion renminbi (US$36.1 billion), a 12.4% increase on last year’s spending, which slightly trails the country’s overall projected budget increase of 13.7%. Of that science budget, 32.5 billion renminbi will go towards basic research, a 10.1% increase on the 29.5 billion renminbi spent in 2011. Wen also stressed the government’s continuing commitment to improving agriculture, promising an additional 10.1 billion renminbi — a 53% rise on last year — for developing new agricultural technologies and modernizing China’s seed industry. Further details of funding allocations will emerge in the coming months, but sources close to government say that other areas likely to receive increased support include information technology, drug discovery, regenerative medicine, renewable energy and the exploitation of mineral and fuel resources.
In the past decade, China’s total expenditure on research and development (R&D) increased by about 20% per year. In 2009, it overtook Japan to become the world’s second-largest investor in R&D after the United States. “This increasing flow of investment has seen a jump in the total scientific output,” says Cong Cao, a science-policy researcher at the University of Nottingham, UK. Last year, a study by Britain’s Royal Society found that, in 2004–08, China produced 10% of the world’s published scientific articles, putting it second after the United States.
However, a study conducted by the World Bank and China’s cabinet
concluded last month that Chinese research quality falls short. It noted
that the country produces relatively few high-impact articles, and that
the majority of Chinese patents constitute minor novelties rather than
genuine innovations. These problems are “less about the amount of money
spent in science than how the money is spent”, says Su Jun, a
science-policy researcher at Tsinghua University in Beijing.
“Weak capacity in basic science has become the main constraining factor for most R&D in China, including drug discovery,” says Liu Gang, a pharmacologist at Tsinghua University. In 2006, China unveiled an ambitious plan to invigorate its drug industry, with funding of about 20 billion renminbi over 15 years. “I’m not optimistic that we will be able to get any blockbuster drug out of that programme,” says Liu.
Some researchers also criticize the large share of funding typically given to government-led initiatives. “Genuine scientific breakthroughs cannot rely on such top-down mega-projects,” says Mu-Ming Poo, director of the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Neuroscience in Shanghai. The United States, by contrast, funnels a large proportion of spending to investigator-initiated research. In China, such research is mostly sponsored by the National Natural Science Foundation, but its funding, which amounted to 12.4 billion renminbi last year, is only a small proportion of the government’s science expenditure.
Lack of fairness and transparency in funding decisions — with success often depending on personal connections — could also be holding back Chinese science. “A huge amount of money is often controlled by a small number of people, and there are significant irregularities in their funding decisions,” says one Beijing-based researcher. And in comparison with other research expenditure, investment in human capital is limited, with many young scientists deterred by poor salaries, adds Su. “Most labs in China struggle to find good postdocs, the key workforce of research,” agrees Poo.
The science ministry is under growing pressure from the scientific community to reform the research funding and appraisal system to help address these problems. Many researchers contacted by Nature hope that China will make the changes a top priority after its new government takes office later this year. “The extent to which the reform can be instigated and successful will determine the future of China’s technological and economic competitiveness,” says Cao.
-Nature
Publish or perish in China
The pressure to rack up publications in high-impact journals could encourage misconduct, some say.
Chinese universities often award cash prizes, housing benefits or other perks on the basis of high-profile publications, and the pressure to publish seems to be growing. A new study from Wuhan University, for instance, estimates that the market for dubious science-publishing activities, such as ghostwriting papers on nonexistent research, was of the order of 1 billion renminbi (US$150 million) in 2009 — five times the amount in 2007. In other studies, one in three researchers surveyed at major universities and research institutions admitted to committing plagiarism, falsification or fabrication of data.
"The extent of the misconduct is disturbing," says Nicholas Steneck, director of the Research Ethics and Integrity Program at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. "It highlights the challenges China faces as it struggles to rapidly improve the research capacity of a very large system — with significant variations in quality — to be a world-class player in science."
Two weeks ago, reacting to the retractions of the crystallography papers, Jinggangshang University fired the correspondent authors, Zhong Hua and Liu Tao. It is unclear whether their co-authors, who include researchers from other institutions in China, will also be investigated.
The journal's editors say that the discrepancies came to light during tests of software designed to flag possible errors and unusual chemical features, such as abnormal distances between atoms. The software identified a large number of crystal structures that didn't make sense chemically; further checking, the editors say, suggests that the authors simply changed one or more atoms of an existing compound of known structure, then presented that structure as new. Zhong and Liu could not be reached for comment.
Editors at the journal are now checking the authenticity of other published crystal structures, including all submissions from Jinggangshan University.
Half of the 200,000-odd crystal structures published by the journal during the past five years have come from China. William Harrison, a chemist at the University of Aberdeen, UK, who is one of three section editors for the journal, would not discuss the ongoing investigation but says that the generation of large numbers of structures by one group would not necessarily raise questions, because diffractometers can easily collect a couple of data sets a day. "In terms of papers submitted to Acta E, the vast majority coming from China are correctly determined structures, and they make a valuable contribution to science," he says.
Nevertheless, the Wuhan University study suggests that misconduct could be widespread in many fields. The team, led by computer scientist Shen Yang, used website analyses and onsite investigations to identify a wide range of dubious publishing activities. These include ghostwriting theses and academic papers on fictional research, bypassing peer-review for payment, and forging copies of legitimate Chinese or international journals.
The researchers analysed the most popular 800 websites involved in such activities — which together rack up 210,000 hits a day — and found that the cost of each transaction is typically 600–12,000 renminbi. Three-quarters of the demand comes from universities and institutions, says Shen. "There is a massive production chain for the entire publishing process," he says.
Concerned by such trends, China's science ministry commissioned a survey of researchers, the results of which remain under wraps. However, several sources revealed to Nature that roughly one-third of more than 6,000 surveyed across six top institutions admitted to plagiarism, falsification or fabrication. Many blamed the culture of jigong jinli — seeking quick success and short-term gain — as the top reason for such practices, says Zeng Guoping, director of the Institute of Science Technology and Society at Tsinghua University in Beijing who was involved in running the survey.
The second most-cited cause is bureaucratic interference in academic activities in China. Most academic evaluation — from staff employment and job promotion to funding allocation — is carried out by bureaucrats who are not experts in the field in question, says Fang Shimin, a US-trained biochemist who runs a website called 'New Threads' that exposes research misconduct in China. "When that happens, counting the number of publications, rather than assessing the quality of research, becomes the norm of evaluation," he says.
Cao Nanyan, a colleague of Zeng's at Tsinghua, conducted a similar survey commissioned by the Beijing municipality, which surveyed 2,000 researchers from 10 universities and research institutions. It, too, found that roughly one-third of respondents admitted to illegitimate practices.
To critics such as Rao Yi, dean of the life-science school at Peking University in Beijing, the lack of severe sanctions for fraudsters, even in high-profile cases, also contributes to rampant academic fraud. Many researchers criticize the fact that Chen Jin, a former researcher at Shanghai Jiao Tong University who is accused of falsely claiming to have developed a series of digital signal-processing chips, was fired with no other repercussions. Meanwhile, others involved in the scandal have gone unpunished.
"You send out a very wrong signal when such high-profile cases are not dealt with properly," says Rao.
-Nature
China’s budget backs science
Yet reforms to funding systems and more support for basic research are needed, say scientists.
In a speech at the opening session of the annual National People’s Congress, China’s Premier, Wen Jiabao, lauded science and technology as key drivers of economic growth and individual prosperity, and backed up the rhetoric with hard cash. This year, central-government expenditure on science and technology is set to rise to 228.5 billion renminbi (US$36.1 billion), a 12.4% increase on last year’s spending, which slightly trails the country’s overall projected budget increase of 13.7%. Of that science budget, 32.5 billion renminbi will go towards basic research, a 10.1% increase on the 29.5 billion renminbi spent in 2011. Wen also stressed the government’s continuing commitment to improving agriculture, promising an additional 10.1 billion renminbi — a 53% rise on last year — for developing new agricultural technologies and modernizing China’s seed industry. Further details of funding allocations will emerge in the coming months, but sources close to government say that other areas likely to receive increased support include information technology, drug discovery, regenerative medicine, renewable energy and the exploitation of mineral and fuel resources.
In the past decade, China’s total expenditure on research and development (R&D) increased by about 20% per year. In 2009, it overtook Japan to become the world’s second-largest investor in R&D after the United States. “This increasing flow of investment has seen a jump in the total scientific output,” says Cong Cao, a science-policy researcher at the University of Nottingham, UK. Last year, a study by Britain’s Royal Society found that, in 2004–08, China produced 10% of the world’s published scientific articles, putting it second after the United States.
Back to basics
Experts say that one factor holding back China’s research quality is its modest spending on basic research. According to the annual report released last month by the National Bureau of Statistics of China, the country’s total public and private R&D expenditure last year was 861 billion renminbi (1.83% of gross domestic product), of which only 39.6 billion renminbi (4.6%) was spent on basic research. This falls far behind the 15–25% share in most developed countries.“Weak capacity in basic science has become the main constraining factor for most R&D in China, including drug discovery,” says Liu Gang, a pharmacologist at Tsinghua University. In 2006, China unveiled an ambitious plan to invigorate its drug industry, with funding of about 20 billion renminbi over 15 years. “I’m not optimistic that we will be able to get any blockbuster drug out of that programme,” says Liu.
Some researchers also criticize the large share of funding typically given to government-led initiatives. “Genuine scientific breakthroughs cannot rely on such top-down mega-projects,” says Mu-Ming Poo, director of the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Neuroscience in Shanghai. The United States, by contrast, funnels a large proportion of spending to investigator-initiated research. In China, such research is mostly sponsored by the National Natural Science Foundation, but its funding, which amounted to 12.4 billion renminbi last year, is only a small proportion of the government’s science expenditure.
Lack of fairness and transparency in funding decisions — with success often depending on personal connections — could also be holding back Chinese science. “A huge amount of money is often controlled by a small number of people, and there are significant irregularities in their funding decisions,” says one Beijing-based researcher. And in comparison with other research expenditure, investment in human capital is limited, with many young scientists deterred by poor salaries, adds Su. “Most labs in China struggle to find good postdocs, the key workforce of research,” agrees Poo.
The science ministry is under growing pressure from the scientific community to reform the research funding and appraisal system to help address these problems. Many researchers contacted by Nature hope that China will make the changes a top priority after its new government takes office later this year. “The extent to which the reform can be instigated and successful will determine the future of China’s technological and economic competitiveness,” says Cao.
-Nature
No comments:
Post a Comment