Recently, popular educational science blogger “Geng Student Tells Stories” with 1.8 million followers on the Chinese video platform Bilibili, publicly reported that the team led by Chen Quan, the Dean of the School of Life Sciences at Nankai University, falsified a research paper published in the sub-journal of “Nature.” This incident has sparked widespread attention. On May 1st, Nankai University responded by stating that an investigation team has been established to look into the matter.
On April 25th, “Geng Student Tells Stories” raised questions in a post; then on April 30th, released a video report (click to watch), providing detailed evidence of the academic misconduct.
The blogger pointed out that in the supplementary materials of the paper, the data points after the decimal in Figures 6B and 6C were completely identical to the second decimal place. Such exact matching in experimental data is highly unlikely in reality, raising suspicions of human manipulation. Additionally, the report also questioned the rationality of the funding usage by the dean, who is recognized as a “Changjiang Scholar” and has received substantial national research funding.
On May 1st, the related topic trended on Weibo, a popular Chinese social media platform.
Netizens expressed their views, “First Tongji University, now Nankai University. Will there be another next? Academic misconduct and doubts about research paper validity emerge one after another, with controversies continuing. Surprisingly, it’s often individuals from outside academia who first notice and raise questions about these issues. After all, everyone knows that when the sedan chair passes by, everyone benefits.”
“Shouldn’t the Ministry of Education or relevant departments establish investigation teams to look into such matters? My thinking might be flawed, but I’m not sure.”
Financial blogger “Bull Demon Banner” commented, “The incident of data manipulation in the Nature sub-journal at Nankai University really challenges my perception of the moral bottom line in academia. For a dean of a prestigious university, recipient of national funding, and published in a top journal, how is it possible that 64 sets of data points match up to the second decimal place and then claim it’s due to ’rounding off’?
“Putting aside the fact that rounding off cannot possibly align random data to such precision, in a normal biological experiment, with operational errors, instrument variations, and individual differences, the data distribution itself should be chaotic. Yet here, it seems like a copy-paste job with slight alterations, not even bothering to follow the proper procedure for falsification?
“Just a few days after the incident at Tongji University, the same drama of ‘absurdly perfect data’ unfolds at Nankai. Geng Student is spot on each time. Does it mean that top journal papers have become a hotbed for academic fraud? Running projects on taxpayers’ money, manipulating data, watering down research papers, and when things go wrong, using ‘margin of error’ as a shield, all just on the pretext of saving costs?
“Stop talking about ‘not generalizing,’ as for deans publishing in top-tier journals, they should be the benchmarks of domestic scientific research. Yet one after the other, they are blowing up one by one, overdrawing the trust of the entire academic community. Rather than arguing about ’rounding off’ on Pubpeer with netizens, why not just present the original experimental data? Dare to showcase the truth? Academic fraud.”
On May 1st, Nankai University’s official website issued a statement confirming that they have received feedback online regarding concerns about the research data of professor Chen (Chen Quan), and the university takes this matter seriously. An investigation team has been established, and the investigation process has been initiated.
Public records show that Chen Quan was born in 1964, graduated from Hubei University, and has been serving as the Dean of the School of Life Sciences at Nankai University since 2019. He has long been engaged in research in the fields of cell biology, tumor biology, and enjoys high visibility in the academic community.
According to Nankai University’s official website, Chen Quan is a chair professor and dean of the School of Life Sciences at the university. He was introduced as part of the “Hundred Talent Program” of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1999 and has received honors such as the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars, the Ministry of Education’s “Changjiang Scholar” program, the Tan Jiazhen Life Science Innovation Award, and the title of National Excellent Science and Technology Worker. He has also served as the director of the National Key Laboratory of Biomembranes and Membrane Engineering and the National Key Laboratory of Pharmacology.