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The latest articles in both the Asia Pacific edition and the regular edition of the New York Times carries the title of “China Tarnished By  Science Fraud”. It reports nothing Chinese ScienceNet readers do not already know. The only new thing I learned is the sophistication  of the techniques of “fake peer reviews” which are elaborate .

The root causes of such academic frauds were left unmentioned but  clear from the entire article –

(i)   The tight coupling of fame and fortune, e.g., large cash awards for publication in prestige journals and for “discoveries/breakthroughs”

(ii)  Reliance of numerical measures (impact factor, quantity v.quality, et al), since it is only way for supervising officials to appear FAIR in administration.