The World in Brief (3/28/06)

In China, faculty plagiarism a “national scandal”

Tim Johnson, Knight Ridder… In China, faculty plagiarism a “national scandal”

Tim Johnson, Knight Ridder Newspapers

SHANTOU, China – Charges of plagiarism roil China’s universities, but they’re not about students cheating. They’re about professors who filch from one another.

Some professors pilfer the work of other scholars. Some employ teams of graduate students and publish large numbers of articles with their names on the students’ work.

Among those implicated in recent scandals are a star legal scholar, a biomedical researcher and a journalism ethics teacher. The cases, exposed in the Chinese press, have people talking.

At the core of the scandals is an academic system that rewards scholars for prolific results in publishing and pays little regard to quality.

“It’s a national scandal,” said Chan Yuenying, the dean of the school of journalism at Shantou University, near Hong Kong.

Chan helped spark debate last December when she forced Hu Xingrong to resign amid accusations that Hu had plagiarized part of a paper written by a Ph.D. candidate at another school. Hu had taught journalism ethics, lecturing students not to copy from others.

“In general, in China there is a kind of climate of temptation to use other people’s work and put your name on it. No one condemns you for it,” said Choi Kai Yan, an assistant professor at Shantou University. “No one takes plagiarism very seriously.”

Plagiarism isn’t unknown among American academics and writers. But there’s been more discussion of it in China and throughout Asia since January, when South Korean embryonic stem cell scientist Hwang Woo-suk was unmasked for faking data. Hwang lost his job Monday at Seoul National University.

Researcher predicts a future of treating preclinical cancers

Judy Peres, Chicago Tribune

CHICAGO – Richard Schilsky has a recurring fantasy that cancer will someday be a manageable disease, like diabetes. Maybe even a curable disease, like strep throat.

X-rays and ultrasound – crude imaging tests that detect tumors big enough to be seen by the naked eye – will be history. Blood and saliva tests will be able to discover genetic abnormalities before they cause cells to start multiplying out of control, and doctors will have a stash of molecular tools that can target and destroy cancer cells selectively, the same way penicillin targets streptococcus bacteria.

One of the nation’s foremost cancer researchers, Schilsky is methodically working toward that day – a time when prevention, early detection and successful treatment of cancer are commonplace.

“I predict that 15 years from now, we won’t be treating so many advanced cancers,” Schilsky says. “Our focus will be on treating preclinical cancers – essentially, on prevention.

“That’s where the field is moving. If we’re successful, fewer cases will be diagnosed and outcomes will be better. People will die of something else.”

He should know. As a professor of oncology and associate dean for clinical research at the University of Chicago, Schilsky, 55, is the principal investigator for nearly a dozen clinical trials. But as chairman of a cooperative cancer research group known as CALGB, he’s involved with about 100 ongoing trials at any given time, with an additional 50 or so in development.

He commands a budget of some $15 million per year, most of it from the National Institutes of Health. That’s more than any other medical researcher in the state, and it puts him among the top researchers in the country in government grants.

Slowly, painstakingly, he has helped build the body of knowledge that informs how cancer patients are treated today, and that offers insights into how they will be treated tomorrow.

Free condoms on campus before Spring Break

Mary Kay Quinn, Knight Ridder Newspapers

When Kent State University students hit the beaches this weekend, some are likely to be better prepared than before.

In a safety presentation this week, 448 students received a condom, a breath mint and lots of tips for surviving the heady days of spring break, said Hilda Pettit, coordinator of the Women’s Resource Center at Kent.

Monday’s presentation occurred days before Kent’s spring break begins and just several days after the release of an American Medical Association survey that called attention to “disturbing” reports of reckless behavior among female students on break.

In the survey released this month, a majority of college women said they experienced more booze and promiscuity on their spring travels.

All that is nothing new, Pettit said.

“We all know that people drink on spring break, and we all know that they have sex on spring break,” Pettit said.

And free condoms on campus aren’t new, either, she said.

Various campuses across the nation include condoms in spring-break safety kits, said a spokeswoman for American College Health Association.

Speakers offered tips on avoiding alcohol-related problems, including sexual assault. Students were advised to relay their itinerary to friends and family and avoid going to parties alone, for example.