寻正

从我开始向物理学专业人士进行调查至现在已经有数月之久，确信不再会有人回复当初的调查，我将调查结果总结了一下，再次向普度大学发出质询，看普度大学如何对待这一事件。由于胡震剽窃发生在四川大学，很大程度上超越了普度大学的管理范围，不过，胡震现在是普度大学学生，他面对公众撒谎却属于普度管理范围，四川大学不针对明显的剽窃案进行调查处理，导致了胡震大学学位的水份，也某程度上让普度有介入理由，因此，普度在面对一个边界比较模糊的问题。我的质询让普度大学处于尴尬境地——当然，如果真心维护学术纯洁，其实普度也很容易处理这一事件。

在这一质询信中，我列举了部分学者在我调查中的回复。这一信件抄送校长办公室、主管学务的副校长、物理学系、普度大学学生报、钱思进教授、以及胡震。

附件一：致普度大学公开信

I’m writing to you regarding a plagiarism case that involves one of your students, Hu Zhen.

I was drawn to this case because it received widespread coverage in Chinese media. While other people focus on the row between a student and his academic adviser, I was interested in particularly if Mr. Hu had committed the alleged plagiarism or not.

Upon close examination, I believe Mr. Hu had not been honest in many of his statements. A particular one is that he was cleared of plagiarism charges by a Purdue committee. I had made an inquiry of Purdue’s Department of Physics but received no response. Later I examined Mr. Hu’s bachelor’s thesis and found it almost full of plagiarism. Mr. Hu challenged my conclusion suggesting that any physicist would agree with him and I did not understand statistics (I’m a part time biostatistician). I undertook Mr. Hu’s challenge and queried students and faculty in physics in several universities both from China and U.S.A., including Purdue.

In general the students and faculty I surveyed were reluctant to respond. Out of Purdue there is only one faculty responded and this faculty sided with Mr. Hu, to a great degree. Most of Purdue physics students challenged me on my motives to bring the case against Mr. Hu, failing to argue any positions that they may have. About half the responses I had received agree with me that Mr. Hu had plagiarized a great deal of his thesis and it is not acceptable. The other half perceived it as acceptable or expressed sympathy toward Mr. Hu. Most of the responses siding with Mr. Hu were from someone associated with Mr. Hu in a certain way, many were Purdue students. Very few responses held equivocal positions regarding whether if Mr. Hu had plagiarized other than refusing to be involved and give their opinions.

Even though there was a wide divide of opinion between those who agreed that Mr. Hu’s thesis is a clear-cut plagiarism case and those who denied it, no one had taken on Mr. Hu’s position that only a physicist can judge plagiarism in the field of high energy physics. Anyone giving opinion on this matter considers the idea that high energy physics has special ethical standards only specialists in the field can judge as incorrect, if not ridiculously absurd.

The Purdue faculty response I received was that Mr. Hu’s thesis was up to standard and acceptable in an American university. The particular excuse was that in high energy physics, there is text recycling going on because everyone shares the same equipment and methods. Mr. Hu’s thesis was duplication in almost everything of the source (Yang and Qian 2006) he had copied from. The source article involved analyzing CMS data bt03_B0sJPsiPhi, of all 40 .root files. Mr. Hu’s duplication had been restricted to 30 of the complete set of files. Then Mr. Hu translated most of the original source article and submitted as his thesis. In my attached analysis, all unique writing of Mr. Hu had been counted, which amount to 1,043 words in Chinese. Up to 80% of Mr. Hu’s experiment chapter was translation of text from Yang and Qian. Half of the English Abstract of Mr. Hu was copy-and-pasted from Yang and Qian. All conclusions of Mr. Hu were verbatim translation of Yang and Qian’s conclusion. All of the references cited in Mr. Hu’s thesis were duplicated from Yang and Qian except where Mr. Hu cited Yang and Qian. In other words, Mr. Hu did not need to read any of the references at all but to translate everything from Yang and Qian.

Being repeatedly misunderstood (surprisingly by highly trained physicists or physicists to be), I would like to highlight one point. My report has been based solely on the level of text translation from English to Chinese. The fact that Mr. Hu used 30 of the 40 files used by Yang and Qian has no bearing on my analysis. I think it’s perfectly acceptable for an undergraduate student to repeat an experiment and write a report for thesis. The key is of course that he writes it himself and demonstrates appropriate level of understanding of the underlying topic. My essential counter challenge to those sympathizing with Mr. Hu is that, given me two days, I have no problem to duplicate a study like Mr. Hu did, even though I know very little of the subject. I can translate, or even better, I can translate and paraphrase to a degree that the final product will bear minimum similarity to original text, but of course, with similar contents.

I have done everything possible to help comparing the text in Mr. Hu’s thesis (in Chinese) and the original article (in English). Most of the physicists who were willing to respond to me agree with my conclusion if they were not connected with Mr. Hu. I have no connection with Mr. Hu or his former advisor, professor Qian, who is also the victim of the alleged plagiarism. I have maintained deliberate distance from both Mr. Hu and Prof. Qian, with knowledge of but no interest in their hatred of each other. With all my investigation and reporting, I have been transparent with both Mr. Hu and Prof. Qian, although understandably Prof. Qian has been much more open and cooperative in all my endeavors in this case. I am fully aware that simply because I rendered my opinion over the underlying plagiarism, Mr. Hu may have considered me as biased.

With the case clearly stated from my perspective, I also acknowledge the fact that Mr. Hu’s plagiarism allegation was of academic activity in another institution, the Sichuan University in China. A particular challenge arose from this case. The alleged plagiarism was almost out of the jurisdiction of Purdue University. What actions, if any, are appropriate for Purdue in this case? With the leading role of U.S. academic institutions in the world, such a question begs the best minds of educators in the country. Sichuan University has not been up to task in terms of maintaining academic integrity and disciplining dishonest behaviors. Inquiry to Sichuan University has similar fate of my inquiry to Purdue physics program. The university has not been willing to take responsibilities. With such a clear-cut plagiarism case and the previous academic institution utterly incapable of maintaining academic standard, is it appropriate for a U.S. educational institution to turn deaf ears to plagiarism charges of its students? If needed, I may survey deans and presidents of U.S. educational institutions, but here I’m mostly interested in Purdue’s response, or a non-response.

A common annoyance in fighting plagiarism is the overwhelming interest of the accused and his/her sympathizers in my motivation in spending time poking into other people’s affairs instead of watching TV. For the record, I am not anybody’s enemy. I sympathize a great deal with Mr. Hu and consider that part of the blame belongs to Sichuan University in his plagiarism in his bachelor’s thesis. It concerns me least how Mr. Hu should be punished or he should be punished at all. The thesis was and is NOT ACCEPTABLE and it is a wrong to be corrected. Making my position explicit, I consider the plagiarized thesis to be stricken from record and substituted with an acceptable one as the minimum or starting point. The various acts of Mr. Hu lying to public to evade responsibility were WRONG. Even if the audiences are Chinese, they deserve the TRUTH, especially from someone who is currently proudly a Purdue graduate student and who will bear a Purdue Ph.D. title in the future.

T.S. Eliot once said, “Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.” I have been frustrated a lot in my effort exposing academic dishonest. A professed passion to maintain academic integrity sometimes is matched with incapability to take actions and responsibilities. I could never know how far related parties are willing to walk unless I try them out. Therefore, I boldly inquire again of Purdue’s position and appropriate actions on an apparent case of plagiarism. Purdue official Dr. Akers so wrote, “Purdue University values intellectual integrity and the highest standards of academic conduct.” I hope Purdue will not disappoint me.

P.S. I have provided help identifying all text matching original source article. I do not think that inability to read both languages is a valid point anymore. Here I provide verdicts from professionals in the field of physics from my survey:

A Physics Graduate Student from Princeton,

Undergraduate papers do not normally present entirely new material, but the wording must be their own!  Undergraduate papers are usually written at a level of sophistication that is indicative of undergraduates.

A High Energy Physics Professor from China,

(The plagiarism conclusion of the report) is indeed true. Mr. Hu had plagiarized. Plagiarism is usually for the purpose of fame or gaining other advantages, in case of Hu, he was probably for graduation.

A Physics Graduate Student from the University of Florida,

It is very alarming the amount of overlap between his paper and the sources he is quoting and it certainly should be addressed as well. He should learn to phrase the though using his own language and to be able to paraphrase scientific findings.

A Physics Faculty from the University of Florida,

(Is there special standard in evaluating plagiarism in physics?) No.  It would be a bit ridiculous for Mr. Hu to even suggest it.  From the physics standpoint, in the US it is not uncommon for a student to write an internal (to the collaboration) technical document describing their work, include that technical document almost verbatim in their thesis, and to use a good portion of the document in paired down form for a publication.  However, this all stems from an original internal document created by the student, describing the student's work.

A Physics Faculty from Harvard University,

The case you raise is more subtle, because it involves a translation. This is not something I have dealt with yet.  If the content has 70% overlap with a source in the *same* language that is clearly unacceptable and the student should fail (in my opinion).  We always say "write it in your own words!"  However, a student who has translated a source *has* written it in his own words.  That makes the situation difficult, and has probably prevented the relevant authorities from taking more severe action.

A Physics Graduate Student from Purdue University,

I am interested to know what your goals in obtaining this information is? Will you bring this forward to an ethics board at your university or at a university in China?

I can easily say that Root makes plots that look very similar (labeling etc.). I can also say that without being able to fully understand the Chinese text it is impossible to answer these questions. An undergraduate paper could very well be a simple review or slight variation of previous work as you have said it is. Also I cannot simply take your word that the thesis  lacks proper citations as that is not very objective.

A Physics Graduate Student from Purdue University,

What I know is that Hu is a good student and a kind friend. That's all I know.

A Physics Graduate Student from Purdue University,

Let’s talk about plagiarism in China. A lot of people publish papers which are not their own, You can randomly pick any low level academic journals or letters in China, a lot of them are totally ''junk''(here ''junk'' means the paper they publish are well known or just copied from foreign journals)! Why people don't criticize theses ''scientists'' rather than an undergraduate thesis.

A Physics Graduate Student from Purdue University,

I do not know Zhen Hu, and I have never met him. I will only help you if I understand your intentions, which you have not made clear.  If plagiarism is rampant, why have you specifically targeted Zhen Hu?  Who else have you targeted, and at what other universities?  Before the allegations of plagiarism, have you had any contact with Zhen Hu, with his advisor, or with Sichuan University?

A Physics Graduate Student from Purdue University,

(Is my assessment of plagiarism of Hu’s thesis fair and correct?) Based on the statistics in the first few pages, it is very objective, and can be regarded as fair and correct.

(Is there special standard in evaluating plagiarism in physics, especially in high energy physics?) No. As far as I know, the standard for plagiarism should be the same. As long as you copy words from somewhere else without citation, or as long as copy someone else's data, it can be regarded as plagiarism. In summary, any non-self work without citation can be regarded as plagiarism. There may be cases that some principles and theorems are not new and well accepted, and can be found in many text books. In these cases, in their derivations, physicists may use such results without citation (for example basic quantum mechanics, etc) because you cannot cite everything, or you may even have to cite the original paper by Newton in 18th century. But this kind of activity occurs naturally, and will not be the main content, so it will not occupy a large potion and will appear sporadically, instead of as a whole part. If you find 80% of words are copied or translated, then it should be plagiarism.

A Physics Faculty from Purdue University,

I don't think I can go quite so far as to say that I think his thesis is acceptable since I don't read Chinese.  Based on what I have seen and the descriptions of evidence for alleged plagiarism, it appears that it is likely that his thesis would be acceptable at most major US research university as an undergraduate thesis.

附件二、更新版的分析报告

Eval of Hu Zhen Bachelor Thesis Sichuan Univ Eng.pdf

转载本文请联系原作者获取授权，同时请注明本文来自廖俊林科学网博客。
链接地址：https://blog.sciencenet.cn/blog-460310-557113.html

上一篇：静态硬盘与Win7的配置
下一篇：入境岂能不随俗——也说说南加州大学的枪击案