Darwin's chow chow makes big bow-wow
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Claims of infallibility
"Integrity is a must for academia," reads a New Threads mission statement. "We will catch anyone cheating regardless of their rank or reputation."
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Fang, an evolutionary biology advocate, wouldn't mind being nicknamed "Darwin's chow chow." |
In practice, rank and fame play a critical role in how fights are picked. Leading university professors, academicians, researchers and business executives are targeted for scrutiny. Fabricated credentials and plagiarized dissertations are exposed to public ridicule.
Some high-profile humiliations include former president of Microsoft China Tang Jun, whom Fang in 2010 caught lying about his doctoral degree, and urologist Xiao Chuanguo, whose surgical procedure was questioned by Fang in 2005 and then banned by China's health ministry last year for safety reasons.
Xiao was convicted on October 11 of hiring thugs to attack Fang near his Beijing home on August 29, although the charge was "seeking trouble,"not attempted murder as Fang had demanded in trademark belligerent fashion.
In an earlier spat with Fang, Xiao wrote on New Threads on July 8, 2001 that he had gone from liking Fang to despising him, accusing Fang of self-promotion by attacking famous people.
"Fang is both evil and righteous," said journalist Feng Yongfeng of the Guangming Daily in Beijing. "He only picks easy targets."
Feng himself is still on a long New Threads list of "bad journalists," for reporting in 2003 that a so-called "nano fuel additive" raised fuel efficiency and lowered emissions.
Fang claims he had experts review the technology and prove it wasn't nanotechnology or inductive to fuel efficiency.
"The technology was real," says Gong Yan, a Peking University-graduated material engineer and patent holder for the addititive.
Gong says the product sold well in 2001-02 despite Fang's attacks on the credibility of his company headed by Peking University physicist Li Zhengxiao.
Confrontational approach
Disagreement over the company's development and China's state monopoly of the petrol market eventually caused the company to collapse. Fang's loud denunciations had not helped.
"Chinese culture values harmony and a non-confrontational approach to social life," Fang says. "That's one of the reasons why many people hate me."
He has never been wrong in investigations in which he was personally involved of academic misconduct, he says.
Gong entertains no visible bitterness toward Fang, even though he asserts Fang was completely wrong to denounce his fuel-efficient invention.
"I think he was more against Mr Li than my technology," Gong says, "and he was against Mr Li because he was a Peking University professor, the kind of target he was after."
He still appreciates what Fang is trying to do for research ethics on the Chinese mainland, Gong says.
"We need someone like Fang Zhouzi because Chinese don't have a lot of free debate over science or their lives," Gong says. "The more debate we have, the faster we can improve."
Unfortunately Chinese are brought up being told to listen to authorities and not to ask questions. "Then along comes Fang Zhouzi showing us all how to be a skeptic," he says.
"If he comes off as provocative or even abusive, that's because he cannot kill that uncritical faith in authority without bringing down some famous personalities to whose unquestioned authority the public defers.
"He's like a trailblazer beating his way across the wilderness. He's not a perfect man, but until a road is clear, we need more trailblazers."
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