China Should Identify Local Bullying and Quantify Biomedical Researchers’ Contributions for the Evolution of Parity and Originality

One recent Nature article ‘Underpaid and overworked: researchers abroad fall prey to bullying.’ covered the bullying of foreign researchers in Europe and the USA [1]. However, A few Chinese universities, unusually, bully local people home. To contribute better research to the world, China needs increased diversity in its research culture, but local governments might go to the opposite extreme of sacrificial parity.

It has been in online news reported that in Shandong University, some attractive female Chinese female students had to act as escorts to foreign students from Africa to help ease the financial burden of their families. They were forced to attend parties and drink alcohol because the foreigners could have complained to the university about racial discrimination or disrespect, which would lead to these women losing college points and subsidies. Some girls ended up pregnant and had to undergo abortions. What reason for such a local policy remains poorly understood. One guess is that such international collaboration could give priority to students from high rank official family and relatives from Africa, and we cannot exclude some corruption cases might exist.

To increase parity in research in China, it is essential to quantify the contribution of blockchain technology and DOIs [2] to increase directors’ knowledge of copyrights. Some SCI articles should be marked as advertisement especially if pharmaceutical companies are involved, and forms of bribery given to medical doctors should be avoided, particularly for directors, chairs or presidents holding power, to shift the responsibility for the evolution of parity and transfer grants away from foundations with complicated personal and official networks. Often, those in power try to claim that they are the major contributor to a project, as occurred for Tu Youyou’s Nobel prizewinning research on artemisinin. In China, most academic are nominated and selected almost from high-ranking directors or the presidents of institutions, and even gender [3].

I have been faculty member as an instructor at Harvard Medical School and as a research associate in the Toronto University Health Network. However, I experienced typical bullying when I returned home to the first clinical college, Harbin Medical University (HMU), as if I had travelled back in time to 30 years ago. Harbin attracted me because it has a diverse of mixture of Russian and Western architecture and culture, as well as Chinese.

Director Zhang is one medical doctor in my former department and would initially promise something but would later give excuses for reducing the salaries and allowances, providing a minimal starting package and not having any students under my name. Such directors of hospitals’ departments enjoy long-term or even lifelong tenures and sometime consider most if not all of their colleagues just as backup, footmen, retainers, henchmen or even assets during their term, similar to an autocratic king of the feudal era. During my stay there for around 5 years, we cannot discuss any academic research in depth if I remember correctly. Lastly, the feedback system is insufficient.

By not sincerely designing or managing the research program, to my knowledge, some the directors in hospitals holding the power may push researchers to write proposals for them but will claim all to be the first or senior authors so they can apply for governmental awardsoo certain, such cases now become less but previously I was once told that directors tried to destroy each other’s programs. While they dislike other competitors. One possible reason is that one generation from culture revolution has suffered lacking sufficient education.

My colleague, Vice-Director M, published an SCI article following the ICMCE guidelines for authorship, and Zhang complained even tried to shout at her for doing so in the departmental meeting. Later, when M finally obtained an independent position as director and left for her new hospital, she had to host an international conference in Shenzhen as one of the requirements of her starting package. Zhang then nagged me and other speakers or moderators to refuse to participate in her conference. After M left, for her new hospital and university regulations, the new Vice-Director was suspended and the position was not refilled, as Zhang claimed that one Vice-Director fewer would mean fewer decisions so it would be easier to achieve the results he desired.

Before I had to move to Shenzhen due to some complaints from Zhang; however, he insisted on requesting me to remain main energy in HMU but I was late shocked to know that he would like to entrap me with this for a novel complaint with such a part-time job. his politics is over evidence. Shenzhen is an open and innovative young mega-city, I helped my colleagues in HMU department directly obtain five NSFC grants (success rate: 16–20%; equivalent to RO1 in USA) and published 10 SCI articles. Actually, I was told that another three obtained NSFC grants last year after my leaving have been indirectly helped my colleagues in HMU department based on some previous drafts during my stay.

However, when my graduate students started to discuss their research plans publicly, the bullying started. One student chose the topic of ferroptosis, in which Dr David Wang is among the best ferroptosis, topic research experienced expert who had worked on this at Harvard Medical School. However, Zhang did not allow me to include Dr Wang in the expert committee panel for my students’ research program but wanted me to only include his close friends. During a discussion, he did not allow me to disagree and agrue with his friends to defend my graduate student’s research plan. He even told me once that he was proud when a student claimed to be terrified about seeing him. During my 54 years there, I helped with a completely new lab setup, and trained and educated his graduate students and post-docs, but the director tried to minimize my contributions.

He is almost unable to read English, as his first forgein language is Russian. Although he can barely communicate regarding the latest academic topics, he insists on having senior authorship. This is why some medical doctors that hold the power to obtain money and human resources to do almost anything appear to publish 5–30 SCI papers monthly despite a busy schedule of clinical work and conferences.

In my final there, I was the supervisor for six graduate students, including some intelligent and attractive young women. Zhang was reported to publicly share his inappropriate intentions for them, which was buzzed and followed by complaints of sexual harassment and scandals from students’ conversation, which became notorious. I was told that he also stalked my PhD student during the weekend(s) under the COVID-19 epidemic. On top of this, he was caught and tried for driving drunk [4]. Which risks not for himself but also others. Besides, as one PhD supervsior, I will need to take of the responsibility for my students according to HMU regulation for supervisors. Previously, medical disputes and hospital-related deaths have occurred in his department [5], and there is a risk that yet another medical treatment scandal could arise, similar to the latest news-reported nortious case of Xiangya Second affiliated Hospital of Central South University, Department of Cancer therapy.

Nobody reported this bullying because they feared the backlash, which could come in the form of students being denied access to labs. Happily, most of my graduate students requested transfers to follow me when I left for Shenzhen. Unbelievably, I later learned from them that Zhang could even have said to some of them and intimated or had tried to leverage his network of cronies to force me back to Canada.

So far, it can also be noted that most of China’s SCI retractions are mainly by hospitals. Since 2020, for example, 91 articles on cellular physiology and biochemistry have been withdrawn by Chinese scholars (as of 4 September 2022), mostly published by medical doctors from hospitals. Local governments know why this happens and who is involved but cannot prevent because they probably lacked an effective feedback system [6] until a new regulation came out (Law of the People’s Republic of China on the Progress of Science and Technology, 2021 edition) [7]. The Ministry of Education of China has officially published “The Code of Conduct for Graduate Tutors” (2020 edition) [8]; however, it seems that many cases are delayed, or unresolved, and little feedback is given because it is hard for those at the bottom the social system to achieve parity.

However, for medical research and academics, maybe we need a system to allow decision-makers to inform multi-parties such as Switzerland before similar cases occurs, doing so more democratically rather than autocratically by single member or even a totalitarian dictator-like guy. The chairman of Switzerland federation Government is annually selected from the presidents of 7 among 9 different national parties. The chairman of department in some local universities was rotated by full professor(s) every two years. About 20 years ago, we initiated there to found the the Association of Sino-Swiss Science and Technology along with China Embassy in Switzerland. Indeed, either in medical and pharmaceutical research from Roche and Novartis or many others, Switzerland continuously ranks 1st for the parity and originality for about one decade. China may learn some merits from Switzerland (9).

1. Flemming N (2022) Underpaid and overworked: researchers abroad fall prey to bullying. Nature 608(7922): 437-439.
2. Zhang Y (2013) Authorship: An Engine for Research, and a Guarantee of Quality of Publication and Currency for Career Development. Curr Synthetic Sys Biol 2: 1.
3. Bao Z, Huang D Reform (2022) Scientific elections to improve gender equality. Nat Hum Behav 6: 478-479.
4. https://wk.baidu.com/view/81e7de93de3383c4bb4cf7ec4afe04a1b071b093?pcf=2&_wkts_=1673767018118&bdQuery=%E5%93%88%E5%8C%BB%E5%A4%A7%E5%BC%A0%E5%BF%97%E6%AF%85+%E9%85%92%E9%A9%BE&bfetype=new
5. https://m.sohu.com/a/275580926_100281680
6. Bar-Yam Y, Harmon D, De Bivort B (2009) Systems biology. Attractors and democratic dynamics. Scienc 323(5917): 1016-1017.
7. https://www.most.gov.cn/xxgk/xinxifenlei/fdzdgknr/fgzc/flfg/202201/t20220118_179043.html
8. The Ministry of Education of China (2020) The Code of Conduct for Graduate Tutors”.