To prevent getting lost, the elevator goes directly to the safety island to report Liu Yadong A
图源：Freepik撰文 | 陶斯盛● ● ●
At the end of 2023, many scientific research projects will be completed one after another. During a casual conversation, a friend talked about receiving a phone call from an acquaintance in the second half of the year, who said that "I can't do the problem in my hand" and hoped that he would help.
"He wants to package the project for me as a whole, and he provides some key metrics and data, but I do the rest, which of course doesn't show up in the contract, because nominally I'm just doing some ancillary work. I was so busy that I didn't say yes. ”
Coincidentally, on other occasions, I have heard several similar "academic outsourcing" operations.
In these operations, the project leader is more like a project manager, after the project is established, the contract is issued to different groups of people, and he mainly follows up the progress and carries out project management.
In today's scientific research streamline, this subcontracting model is gradually maturing, and even forming a complete industrial chain. From the application and approval of the project, to the formation of the specific experimental plan, the implementation of the experiment, the data analysis, and the writing of the project materials, there are third-party services, but there is a huge controversy about the specific operation.
In some discussions with the scientific community, they expressed support for the collaborative outsourcing of some work, such as the more common outsourcing of experiments, "to improve efficiency and save money." Researchers can focus their energies on the core questions. In particular, some technologies may not be commonly used, but in order to solve the current problem, you can consider outsourcing this part of the work and reduce the cost of purchasing expensive equipment. ”
However, as mentioned at the beginning, when the project leader outsources almost all aspects of scientific work, is it a certain degree of academic misconduct? How do we define reasonable division of labor outsourcing and illegal academic outsourcing? When the project leader becomes a project manager, how will science itself exist and develop?
Is it a researcher or a project manager?
Some people in the scientific community said that some of the initiators of academic outsourcing are researchers who are under pressure to be promoted.
A researcher working at the institute told me, "Because scientific research projects are so important, they are important indicators in the promotion of professional titles and the selection of talent plans." For example, a researcher working at a 'double non-African' university has a much harder time applying for a program than the platforms in Beijing and Shanghai, and the lack of a program means a lack of funding, which means it is difficult to recruit students. At this time, some teams in Beijing and Shanghai may take on the project softly, but they may not have time to complete it, and may split the project and outsource. If one of the members of the team is an acquaintance of the above-mentioned researchers, there is room for maneuvering. ”
"According to the regulations, this kind of cooperation between foreign units should sign a contract to reflect the contribution of the other party. If the contract you signed only mentions that the other party is responsible for some auxiliary work, but in fact, you package all the topics in your hands to the other party, from the design idea to the writing of the article, it is all operated by others, and the person in charge of the project is still you, this is a violation. ”
Why would anyone be willing to accept such outsourcing?
The researcher explained, "Take the researcher from the 'double non' university as an example, what he needs is funding, and when an acquaintance from another big team tells him that the project is entrusted to you, he may agree to such a form of outsourcing for financial reasons, but there is a possibility of illegal operation here." ”
"In the medical field, this problem is also more prominent," a young researcher in the medical field told me.
There has been a long debate about whether Chinese doctors should write essays. In reality, stimulated by the evaluation system and under the pressure of promotion, the number of papers published by Chinese doctors is increasing year by year. In the past few years, there have also been cases of Chinese doctors being retracted on a large scale, pointing to "paper factories" that help write bids and concoct papers, but the doctors themselves may not be involved in scientific research activities.
Of course, there are also people who feel that the paper factory is unreliable. Take an example of an associate chief physician who wanted to be promoted to director, and his bid was approved, and he had scientific research funding and direction. But his own scientific research is not very good, and he has no students, at this time he may find a doctor or postdoctoral fellow, and promise to give the other party a certain amount of salary every month, and the other party will complete the rest of the work, and the consumables that occur in the process will be contracted by him. ”
"At present, it is more common to outsource the corresponding experiment to the medical laboratory outsourcing company after the doctor has designed the experimental idea by himself. But beyond that, every aspect of the project may be outsourced. For example, before applying for the project, there are companies that provide bidding and editing services, and even provide technical roadmaps; experiments are outsourced, and even some companies provide laboratory animal breeding, help build animal models, staining, sequencing, and other work for you; and even you can find some master's students to help you export and analyze the data, and finally string it into an article. In this regard, the role of the project leader is more like that of the project manager of an Internet company, who needs to manage the project and follow up the progress of the project. ”
In many advertisements on the Internet, to a certain extent, the above statement is confirmed, not only in the medical field, but also in some social science fields, and some companies have said that they provide "half-package" and "all-inclusive" services. If you choose the latter, "As long as you provide the direction you want, you don't have to write all the research materials for the next topic."
The long-standing "academic contractor"
Similar operations are not new.
The Ministry of Science and Technology and the National Science Foundation have exposed the phenomenon of illegal subcontracting and subcontracting from time to time. In January 2024, the Department of Supervision of the Ministry of Science and Technology issued the Guidelines on the Code of Conduct for Responsible Research (2023), which once again reiterates that "the application materials shall be provided truthfully, accurately and objectively, and the same or similar research content shall not be used for repeated declarations." The implementation of the project shall strictly fulfill the task book or contractual obligations, shall not arbitrarily reduce the target tasks and agreed requirements, shall not subcontract or subcontract the research task in violation of regulations, and shall not offset the difference with irrelevant research results. ”
According to a report in the China Social Sciences Daily, a number of scholars have pointed out that vertical projects initiated by scientific research administrative units designated by governments at all levels, as well as horizontal projects led by local governments, enterprises and institutions, have become the lifeline that determines the source of scholars' topics and scientific research funding. Under this system, professors with administrative resources and higher academic standing often apply for projects, subcontracting their projects to less qualified teachers and graduate students, while they themselves are busy socializing to obtain more resources.
The magazine "Half Moon Talk" also talked about the "academic contractor", which quoted the statements of many university teachers and scientific researchers, "Deans, presidents, academicians and other people in 'high positions' are more likely to use their prestige and connections to 'take projects' and 'take projects', and then sell them out." "It has even bred research brokers.
An associate researcher in the engineering department said that project subcontracting has its raison d'être, such as some large-scale scientific research projects with a high degree of complexity, "unless there is a reasonable gradient of research teams, which is most common in academician teams, and there are outstanding young people, Changjiang scholars, professors, associate professors, postdoctoral fellows, and doctoral students, such a configuration may be able to eat a big topic, but more often, everyone will choose to assign the topic to others, such as powerful researchers in the unit, which will also help the development of the unit." ”
"Sometimes, it may also be forced to be helpless, for example, some projects have a short project establishment time, heavy tasks, and it is difficult for one person to complete, or they may be outsourced. ”
"This may be a reasonable part of its existence, and everyone also hopes to hand over the project to someone who can take it, and it may be that a large part of the outsourced project is in line with the achievement determination; For some researchers, this situation will hurt our confidence, and it is difficult for people who can do things to apply for projects, and some project leaders do not have the matching level although they finally implement the task. ”
The China Social Sciences Daily quoted Wang Yanzhong, director of the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, as saying, "Due to its market-oriented operation and management mechanism, the project system of scientific research projects has gradually formed an 'industrialized' input-output mode of scientific research, and its prominent role is mainly reflected in the timely production of 'sufficient quantity' and 'certain quality' scientific research results according to the requirements of the contract." This kind of market-oriented reward mechanism and industrialized product management process are not conducive to scientific research, especially creative scientific research. ”
The above-mentioned associate researcher also expressed a similar view, "For some topics, Party A may only want results, and it does not matter who completed the process and who undertook what work." ”
At the same time, the relevant discussion once again reaffirmed the current problem of uneven distribution of scientific research funds, and the administrative level, region, economic development level, and university level all affect the allocation of scientific research funds. With the blessing of the "Matthew effect", academic leaders large and small have turned scientific research into a game of competition for resources and resource allocation.
Is it compliance outsourcing or contract cheating?
And in the study of international academic misconduct, the Englishmen Thomas Lancaster and Robert Clarke proposed a concept: contract cheating. In their 2006 paper, they elaborated on their findings that students systematically outsource coding assignments.
Many overseas universities have clarified this definition and form: this is a serious kind of academic misconduct, without the confirmation or permission of the teacher, asking others to complete assignments and other academic work on their behalf, these people may be family members, friends, tutoring companies, essay writing companies, etc. It is called contract cheating because it involves some kind of exchange or contract between two or more people, even if it does not involve money, it can be considered contract cheating.
Researchers have also explored this, such as a 2021 study showing that the implementation of online education and assessment in colleges and universities under the COVID-19 pandemic is believed to breed large-scale contract cheating. Legislation and preventive measures are also being discussed, and in 2020 it was considered illegal for third parties to provide academic work to Australian students.
The University of Sydney states on its website the pernicious consequences of this practice: "In addition to the personal risks, the contract cheating industry poses a serious risk to public health and safety. We originally believed that professionals were qualified experts in their field. Imagine if you were about to undergo heart surgery from a surgeon, and the surgeon asked someone else to do their homework on human anatomy for them. Contract cheating can also cast doubt on a graduate's skills and knowledge, which can undermine the value of one's college degree. ”
In addition to contract cheating, ghostwriting is one of the types of academic misconduct that has been attacked by the international academic community over the past few decades. This behavior is when researchers attribute an entire article written by a third party, who is anonymous, may be a friend or family member, or someone employed by a private company within the industry.
The practice is very prevalent in the biomedical field, and some large pharmaceutical companies fund ghostwriters to prepare manuscripts, forward them to well-known scientists in the field, who may or may not be allowed to revise the article, and then send the manuscript to a reputable journal for publication. These ghostwriting articles are meant to show the positive side of the drug, and many times, ignore the side effects of the drug.
In 2005, a survey published in Nature showed that 10 percent of more than 3,000 scientists had "inappropriate attribution" when asked whether they had committed specified academic misconduct in the past three years.
Ghostwriting is considered a form of academic misconduct because, in order to conceal the interests of both parties, the parties involved may need to keep secrets, forge credentials, and fabricate the real author. Practitioners and policymakers would have been required to base their decisions on the results of the study, but because ghostwriting may have deleted some key data, decisions based on this could create an even greater crisis of trust in the future.
"In this process, it is necessary to figure out what is reasonable outsourcing cooperation and what is contract cheating," said Jia Hepeng, a professor at Soochow University's School of Media and Communication, who has long focused on technology policy. Academic research is becoming increasingly interdiscrossed, with larger peers rather than smaller peers, and even completely cross-disciplinary collaborations, such as those between life sciences and AI model developers. In addition, it is good to allow the PI to focus more on the core ideas and core contributions of scientific research by outsourcing specific technical work. ”
Jia Hepeng also pointed out that the problem is that the actual practitioners of contract cheating will package scientific research as a reasonable division of labor and cooperation on the surface, and the governance of this process has become particularly complicated.
"Academic production is first and foremost the production of a creed of moral self-discipline, that is, the scholars themselves constantly explore the boundaries of cooperative practices. If academics become cheaters themselves and continue to explore how to succeed, I personally feel that there is no solution from a management perspective, because over-focusing on this aspect of management may also lead to the impact of normal academic outsourcing. ”
Bibliography:
1. Honest Labor and Improper "Academic Contractor", China Social Science Journal, July 2013
2. One hand wants, the other hand pours: there are many chaos in scientific research "subcontracting" Half Moon Talk, 2018(16):2.
3. Clarke R , Lancaster T . Eliminating the successor to plagiarism? Identifying the usage of contract cheating sites[J]. 2006.DOI:doi:http://dx.doi.org/.
4. Hill G , Mason J , Dunn A . Contract cheating: an increasing challenge for global academic community arising from COVID-19[J]. Research and Practice in Technology Enhanced Learning, 2021, 16(1). DOI:10.1186/s41039-021-00166-8.
5. Turnitin. Ghostwriting in academic journals: How can we mitigate its impact on research integrity? [ EB/OL]. [2022-11-22].https://www.turnitin.com/blog/ghostwriting-in-academic-journals-how-can-we-mitigate-its-impact-on-research-integrity.
6. Martinson B C , Anderson M S , De V R . Scientists behaving badly. [J]. Nature, 2005, 435(7043):737-738.DOI:10.1038/435737a.
7. Bosch X, Ross J S. Ghostwriting: research misconduct, plagiarism, or fool's gold? [J]. The American journal of medicine, 2012, 125(4): 324-326.
This article is reprinted with permission from the WeChat public account: intellectuals (ID: The-Intellectual), written by Tao Sisheng