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Real culprit in scandal over plagiarism is our publish-or-perish mantra
By Wan Lixin |
April 21, 2010, Wednesday
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NOTED scholar Wang Hui has been in hot water these days.
Wang, a professor of Chinese at Tsinghua University, has been accused of plagiarism in his work "Against Despair."
He was not only awarded a doctoral degree 20 years ago for this work, but much of his prestige as an authority on contemporary literary giant Lu Xun also seems to rest on that work.
The whistle-blower, Professor Wang Binbin from Nanjing University, has made a strong case against Wang Hui in a recent article published in an academic journal.
When this expose was published, Wang Hui was attending a seminar in the United States, and in a message to the press expressed his hope that "the matter can be cleared up by academia itself."
Several well-known critics, among them Peking University Professor Qian Liqun - an authority on Lu Xun studies - has come to Wang Hui's defense.
Qian said that in the 1980s, rules regarding academic citation and attribution were neither as rigorously set out, nor strictly followed, as they are today.
It was later revealed that defender Qian seemed to be on very good terms with Wang Hui.
Some Netizens felt compelled to conduct independent investigation, and they unearthed fresh, and even more damning evidence against Wang Hui.
For instance, one amateur investigator found that huge slabs of paragraphs in Wang's "Against Despair" had been lifted virtually verbatim from a journal article by Li Longmu in 1958.
I guess no critics, whatever their motive, would dareto continue to support Wang Hui when confronted by even one piece of such overwhelming evidence.
It is rare for an academic work like Wang Hui's to be studied so avidly by so many laymen today.
Twenty years ago a PhD title was still rare and carried far more weight than it does today.
For several years Wang Hui was editor of an influential scholarly magazine Dushu (Reading), and that position inspires awe and respect.
Dushu once enjoyed much influence among the well-educated and the thinking people, though a kind of skepticism is developing against it in recent years.
As Professor Zhao Yong from Beijing Normal University claims, as editor of Dushu, Wang Hui contributed considerably to the awkward style and warped, Westernized syntax that Dushu was known for while in Wang's decade of stewardship.
Major articles become exercises in obscurity, and rarely is obscurity not a disguise for poverty of true understanding.
Yesterday I took a cursory look at a 2003 issue of Dushu and it reconfirmed my earlier suspicions that it is ostentatious, pretentious, and very shallow.
If that's the case with a work that built the fame of such a scholar as Wang Hui, what would we expect of the hundreds of theses manufactured yearly by universities and research institutions?
Here arises the question why people attend universities.
Do they go there for sweetness and light, or for a certificate that helps them in the job market?
The purpose of true education is to teach us how to live, while modern education has degenerated into an institution teaching us how to make a living.
This mercenary motivation makes modern scholars look steadily downward, and those few who do see more elevated and meaningful work are punished for failing to answer the publish or perish mandate.
The significance of the current scandal will be lost if our attention is limited to Wang Hui as a mere plagiarist.
The true question is, why has so much energy been invested in churning out academic bombast that neither the authors nor others can have faith in?
Wang, a professor of Chinese at Tsinghua University, has been accused of plagiarism in his work "Against Despair."
He was not only awarded a doctoral degree 20 years ago for this work, but much of his prestige as an authority on contemporary literary giant Lu Xun also seems to rest on that work.
The whistle-blower, Professor Wang Binbin from Nanjing University, has made a strong case against Wang Hui in a recent article published in an academic journal.
When this expose was published, Wang Hui was attending a seminar in the United States, and in a message to the press expressed his hope that "the matter can be cleared up by academia itself."
Several well-known critics, among them Peking University Professor Qian Liqun - an authority on Lu Xun studies - has come to Wang Hui's defense.
Qian said that in the 1980s, rules regarding academic citation and attribution were neither as rigorously set out, nor strictly followed, as they are today.
It was later revealed that defender Qian seemed to be on very good terms with Wang Hui.
Some Netizens felt compelled to conduct independent investigation, and they unearthed fresh, and even more damning evidence against Wang Hui.
For instance, one amateur investigator found that huge slabs of paragraphs in Wang's "Against Despair" had been lifted virtually verbatim from a journal article by Li Longmu in 1958.
I guess no critics, whatever their motive, would dareto continue to support Wang Hui when confronted by even one piece of such overwhelming evidence.
It is rare for an academic work like Wang Hui's to be studied so avidly by so many laymen today.
Twenty years ago a PhD title was still rare and carried far more weight than it does today.
For several years Wang Hui was editor of an influential scholarly magazine Dushu (Reading), and that position inspires awe and respect.
Dushu once enjoyed much influence among the well-educated and the thinking people, though a kind of skepticism is developing against it in recent years.
As Professor Zhao Yong from Beijing Normal University claims, as editor of Dushu, Wang Hui contributed considerably to the awkward style and warped, Westernized syntax that Dushu was known for while in Wang's decade of stewardship.
Major articles become exercises in obscurity, and rarely is obscurity not a disguise for poverty of true understanding.
Yesterday I took a cursory look at a 2003 issue of Dushu and it reconfirmed my earlier suspicions that it is ostentatious, pretentious, and very shallow.
If that's the case with a work that built the fame of such a scholar as Wang Hui, what would we expect of the hundreds of theses manufactured yearly by universities and research institutions?
Here arises the question why people attend universities.
Do they go there for sweetness and light, or for a certificate that helps them in the job market?
The purpose of true education is to teach us how to live, while modern education has degenerated into an institution teaching us how to make a living.
This mercenary motivation makes modern scholars look steadily downward, and those few who do see more elevated and meaningful work are punished for failing to answer the publish or perish mandate.
The significance of the current scandal will be lost if our attention is limited to Wang Hui as a mere plagiarist.
The true question is, why has so much energy been invested in churning out academic bombast that neither the authors nor others can have faith in?
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