The president’s thesis of Wuhan University of Technology was exposed to plagiarism and the plagiarism record was deleted.
Two versions of the CD cover of the proceedings of the Second National Academic Conference on Intelligent Manufacturing. A plagiarized paper by Zhou Zude, president of Wuhan University of Technology, and Xie Ming, a student, was included in the first edition of the paper collection. After plagiarism was detected, the meeting launched the "official edition" and deleted the article. Our reporter Zhang Guoshe
Wuhan, August 3 rd (Reporter Zhang Guo) When this stolen paper was submitted to the academic circles, the "author" obviously didn’t realize that a time bomb was planted.
One year later, the reputation of Professor Zhou Zude, the 64-year-old president of Wuhan University of Technology and the candidate of China Academy of Sciences in 2009, is being threatened by it.
Although its readers are few, among the limited readers, only a few people understand its origin.
However, the occurrence of plagiarism is indeed blatant.
truth
At the second national academic conference on intelligent manufacturing held in Shantou University in December 2008, more than 60 scholars attending the conference received a bag of conference materials. There is a CD-ROM containing 49 conference papers.
The English paper entitled "Diesel Generator Using Doubly-fed Induction Machine" ranks 30th. The first author is Zhou Zude, president of Wuhan University of Technology, who belongs to the "211 Project", and the other author is Xie Ming, a doctoral student of President Zhou.
According to the academic practice, the conference has been writing essays for peers for a long time, and submissions will be accepted from March to August. Paper No.30, submitted in August, was quickly accepted and collected in the CD-ROM conference proceedings published by Huazhong University of Science and Technology Electronic Audio-Visual Publishing House before the conference. So far, a new research achievement has been published in the form of a conference paper.
For Professor Zhou Zude, who has published more than 300 papers in important academic journals and conferences at home and abroad, this only adds new entries to his rich catalogue of works. Among the 49 papers in this meeting, there are 3 under the names of Zhou Zude and Xie Ming.
However, this paper, which takes mechanical power as the research object, has a much stronger influence on the master and apprentice than predicted.
Roberto Cardennas, a Chilean scientist on the other side of the globe, asserted to the China Youth Daily reporter: "This is an abridged version of our paper."
Cadenas is currently a professor at the University of Santiago, Chile, and a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the largest multinational academic group. His paper was published in IEEE Transactions on Energy Conversion.
Published in March 2008, this paper, entitled "Wind-Diesel Generator Using Doubly-Fed Induction Machine", was completed by five scientists from Magellan University in Chile, the University of San Diego and the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom.
Five months later, Zhou Zude and Xie Ming submitted similar papers in China. There is only one word difference between the two titles, and "wind-diesel generator" is changed to "diesel generator". In terms of length, the foreign version is more than 12 pages, and the domestic version is less than 5 pages.
After comparison, Cadenas said that the substantive difference between the two is only the length.
He pointed out that all the charts in Zhou and Xie’s papers are exactly the same as those in their own papers, and most of them are experimental results obtained in Chilean laboratories. All the equations in Zhou and Xie’s papers are exactly the same as those in their own papers.
Many paragraphs are the same. "I wrote most of the content with one of my colleagues, and I recognize my writing style." Robert Cadenas said.
Due to the deletion of the text, Zhou Zude and Xie Ming listed 8 references at the end of the article, which is just the first 8 of the 25 references listed in the original paper.
Generally speaking, the censors are too careless and urgent, but in the process of "innovation", they sometimes do it carefully.
For example, in the diagram of wind-diesel power generation system designed by Cardinas et al., the wind energy system with a wind blade is on the right, but in the scaled-down paper, with the disappearance of "wind power", the blade is also gone.
From the submission in August to the collection in December, the copied papers easily passed the organizing Committee of the National Intelligent Manufacturing Academic Conference.
expose
But just before the meeting, it was revealed. The organizing Committee intends to evaluate several excellent papers and recommend them to the journals in the industry. The conference papers are classified as A, B and C, 11 as A and 28 as B.. This paper was originally a class 6. It was not until the teachers and students who participated in the evaluation occasionally searched its title online that the truth came out. The first result that popped up at that time was the original version published by scientists such as Robert Cardenas in IEEE Energy Conversion Transactions.
The meeting is about to open. One judging expert recalled that "fortunately, it was found out" and it would not shame the conference. The organizing Committee decided to cancel its qualification for awarding prizes. However, due to the publication of the anthology, the paper itself cannot be revoked.
On December 18th, the conference opened as scheduled. Professor Zhou Zude gave an academic speech at the meeting. When he left the meeting, under the auspices of Xiong Youlun, director of the Intelligent Manufacturing Committee of China Artificial Intelligence Society and academician of China Academy of Sciences, the organizing committee decided to inform the author about the plagiarism of the paper.
Academician Xiong Youlun, 70, told the China Youth Daily reporter: "Later, for the sake of prudence, the academic Committee handled this matter."
Li Bin, chairman of the conference and professor of Huazhong University of Science and Technology, and Chen Dingfang, member of the academic committee of the conference and professor of Wuhan University of Technology, found Zhou Zude together and raised the issue of plagiarism.
According to Chen Dingfang’s memory, President Zhou said on the spot that he didn’t close it well and wanted to go back and trace it. But more than half an hour later, Zhou Zude, who was on his way back, told the organizing committee that the paper had been checked by two other professors in our school.
Why should someone else who has nothing to do with a paper that he cooperates with students check? Zhou Zude did not explain this.
The three-day academic grand meeting soon closed. The participating scholars returned to Shanghai, Tianjin, Hubei, Zhejiang, Liaoning, Hong Kong, Canada and other places separately. They brought back a collection of essays, but only a few people knew the story that happened around paper 30.
cover
Those insiders also avoided talking about it. "I’m driving now, which is inconvenient," someone told reporters on the phone. "I’m driving all day today-I’m on the highway."
Wu Bo, a professor at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, who is the secretary-general of the conference, repeatedly stressed that the plagiarized papers of Zhou Zude and Xie Ming were not included in the final edition of the papers.
Wu Bo said: "Anyway, there is nothing in the final collection of essays. The back is marked as the official version, and the front is just for the convenience of the meeting."
The officially published conference proceedings actually have a "formal edition", which is exactly what puzzles the participants. A scholar recalled that he received a copy at the time of registration and sent another copy after the closing ceremony. People were very strange about this rare situation. After asking, I realized that there was something wrong with Zhou Zude’s paper. At first glance, he thought the quality of this paper was quite high, but he didn’t expect it to be "imported".
The reporter found two CDs with the same publication number, both of which were printed with "The Second National Academic Conference on Intelligent Manufacturing". The difference is that the words "Essays (Official Edition)" are added to a CD.
The "official edition" not only lost its plagiarism, but also the other two papers by Zhou Zude and Xie Ming disappeared. The number of papers received was reduced from 49 to 28. A person in charge explained that this was the result of plagiarism, and other papers "accompanied" disappeared to prevent plagiarism from appearing abrupt.
But a detail makes it hard to avoid a sense of suddenness. The number of "official edition" papers still follows the original order. Paper No.5 became the first article in the new collection, as if to remind people that papers No.1, No.2, No.3 and No.4 did exist. Papers No.28, No.29 and No.30 by Zhou Zude disappeared without a trace.
One scholar believes that this practice is not clever. Even if plagiarized papers can be deleted from the collection, how can plagiarism records in academic career be deleted? On the other hand, it is unfair to those who accompany the deletion.
In any case, the reputation of plagiarists was temporarily preserved until July 2009. During this period, Zhou Zude entered the ranks of effective candidates for China scientists’ highest academic honor-Academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences’ co-election in 2009. Xie Ming also passed the examination of academic degree evaluation committee of Wuhan University of Technology on June 24th. If there is no objection within the three-month publicity period, he will be awarded a doctorate.
Xie Ming said that due to this disgraceful record, the process of getting his doctorate met with resistance. He should have graduated before the spring of 2009.
The young man’s life plan has also been rewritten. He had decided to stay in school to teach, but after the plagiarism incident, his stay in school ran aground.
"Because of this, I was also punished." Xie Ming, who has just left the school gate, is somewhat depressed. Things could have been forgotten.
Until the end of July 2009, our reporter received an e-mail to report Zhou Zude and Xie Ming’s plagiarism.
Xie Ming responded that this paper was not published publicly. I contributed 3 articles at that time, and all of them received the employment notice. However, when looking for a tutor to apply for the publication fee, finalize the paper and determine the author, his paper failed to pass the examination and he did not pay the registration fee for the meeting, which should be regarded as giving up publication automatically.
He also said that on the day of the meeting, he formally submitted an application for retraction.
However, some organizers of the conference did not agree with this argument, because the organizing Committee informed that the paper was plagiarized first and applied for retraction later, and the proceedings of the conference had already been published. The organizer will not cancel the received papers because there is no registration fee. The registration fee is charged to the participants, and Xie Ming did not attend. Moreover, "who would have thought that the principal would default and cancel his thesis?"
Xie Ming believes that things have been "maliciously hyped" by "people with ulterior motives" in the past year, which has deeply hurt Zhou Zude. "Here, I deeply apologize, and I will use my life-long efforts to make my tutor and Wuhan University of Technology proud of me."
One scholar pointed out that Zhou Zude should not feel "hurt". As the first author and the mentor of the second author, even if he is "named" this time, it is difficult to shirk his responsibility. Zhou Zude is almost always the first author in the papers co-authored by them.
Another scholar said: "it is one thing to publish, but it is another to copy."
In distant Chile, before being interviewed by China Youth Daily, the real owner of this wind-diesel generator, Professor Robert Cadenas, was still in the dark. For a year, no one has ever told them what happened to this paper in China.
The plagiarist said that the tutor, President Wuhan Institute of Technology, didn’t know beforehand.
China Youth Daily: I saw two editions of essays about the second national academic conference on intelligent manufacturing. One has your paper and the other doesn’t.
Xie Ming: That’s not the official version. As you can see, in the preface of the official edition, it is said that after the evaluation of the organizing Committee, 28 papers were selected for the official edition.
I don’t know if you have participated in international conferences. The convention of international conferences is that you have to pay the registration fee. I don’t pay the registration fee, which first shows that I have given up the right to make any announcement or discuss anything at this meeting, which in fact constitutes the withdrawal of the manuscript. And on the day of the meeting, about December 19th, a statement was officially issued by email. You can ask the secretary-general of the organizing Committee of the conference about this matter.
China Youth Daily: Why didn’t you withdraw the manuscript in advance?
Xie Ming: One is that we didn’t pay the registration fee, which in itself indicates that we don’t intend to publish. The second is to withdraw the manuscript on the same day, which we think is a very formal practice.
China Youth Daily: That paper really abbreviated a foreign paper, didn’t it?
Xie Ming: This paper is an excerpt. All papers have a revision time, and there is a process for submission, which allows intermediate revisions, including modifying the names of the first author and the second author.
After receiving the employment notice, there was an audit within our research group. As a result, at this time, the audit was not passed, and the registration fee was not paid-all other papers we published were subject to registration fee. I sent the paper to Mr. Zhou, and he organized a research group to review it, but it was not approved.
China Youth Daily: Did President Zhou criticize you?
Xie Ming: He criticized me severely, so even the other two articles were not allowed to be published as a lesson and a punishment for me.
China Youth Daily: In other words, Mr. Zhou was unaware of your submission?
Xie Ming: During the period from submitting the manuscript to receiving the employment notice, Mr. Zhou didn’t know. Because we often contribute widely, if we are hired, we will submit it to the research group for review to see if we need to pay the registration fee.
After the notice of inclusion, I sent three papers to my teacher and asked him to review them. At this time, a decision was made not to pay the registration fee. The draft submitted in August may be reviewed in September. The conference also requested the word document format, and we did not submit it. In addition, on the day of the meeting, we officially issued an application for retraction.
China Youth Daily: You listed Mr. Zhou as the first author, but he didn’t know it himself, did he?
Xie Ming: Yes, he didn’t know it before.
China Youth Daily: Then why did you list him as the first author?
Xie Ming: In our school, if the tutor is the first author, the student (even if the signature is lower) can also be regarded as the first author, and the qualification of the student as the first author is recognized.
China Youth Daily: However, Mr. Zhou didn’t participate in this work!
Xie Ming: No, no, no, you are mistaken. President Zhou, he must be involved in this work. He came to guide me in this work, but when publishing papers, we have such a convention: I will write the papers, and I will definitely put the teachers who guide me in the first place. He didn’t know when I sent the paper, but he did know when I reviewed it.
My teacher finished what he should do, that is, guide me to write my thesis, but he didn’t know when it was sent out, because there were so many conference papers, but when it was finally published, he had to conduct strict examination. We all have a mechanism.
China Youth Daily: But there is nothing original in your paper, so it is impossible to talk about his guidance.
Xie Ming: I can’t discuss this with you in detail. What is our specific research work? Now I won’t talk to you about it.
I think you know this fact very well. I think you should know what role my tutor played in it. If you want to report on this matter, I hope you can restore it fairly.
Related links: