China introduces ‘social’ punishments for scientific misconduct
nature.com
nature.com
Do you think the person denying a bank loan, hiring, approving jobs, etc. is going to check and verify that what the person did is wrong? Or can this at any moment be used against anyone.
If the government wants to punish someone it should be through the courts and through a fine or some sort of government restriction, not enforced by the public sector.
We have this in the US with terrorists watch lists and no fly lists.
Imagine someone standing outside one of these shadow court houses protesting the fact they're being harassed and persecuted without due process.
> it should be through the courts and through a fine or some sort of government restriction, not enforced by the public sector. Legal system in China is weak and probably doesn't have enough capacity to handle such large volume of court fights. Any major city in China can have tens of millions of people.
TBH I think restriction on taking high-speed transportation is quite genius, better than fine, and only China is able to do that because there's no boundary between public sector and government there. Fine can be easily got over by rich people, and may incentivize over-enforcement.
Government and laws in China is fundamentally different from Western ones, also quite different from those depicted in Western fictions about authoritarianism. Don't blindly assume government can impose whatever they want onto the people, social unrest can cause disaster and CCP doesn't have another party to blame.
I see absolutely no evidence that this is true.
> social unrest can cause disaster
I believe that’s what the re-education camps are for.
When people say things like "US is a republic, not a democracy", they're using the archaic definition of "democracy" from 200 years ago. Modern English has a different definition.
There are many countries in the world that fulfill all these criteria without being republics. Canada would be the closest example - they have a constitution that limits democratic decision making, and they have people elect representatives rather than deciding on issues directly. But they're not a republic, solely because they have a monarch.
And what I’m trying to get at as one definition of democracy is the idea that policy should track majority preferences, totally aside from any structural features of the system that might make that likely. For example, someone arguing that a certain bill should pass because a majority of citizens support it is making an argument from this idea. That argument in itself is totally aside from whether the legislature is even elected by the citizens.
But it's usually redundant, because all modern democracies are representative. Some have more direct democracy features than others (e.g. Switzerland, or some western US states with their public initiative process), but they're still fundamentally representative.
“Republic” alone is correct, but overly nonspecific; essentially any government that isn't a hereditary monarchy or similar system where government power isn't private and heritable is a republic.
> The definition of republic is 2000 years old.
Well, sure, there is a definition that old (older, actually), but the one you seem to be using (the colloquial American one referring specifically to a system of elected representatives) is much newer, peculiar to American non-technical usage, and equivalent to “democratic republic” and very close to “representative democracy” (differing only in that the latter can coexist with constitutional monarchy.)
After a little thought, I'm not so sure.
Could such a system prevent scientists and doctors claiming, on behalf of their employer, that there's no connection between smoking and health, or that there's no anthropogenic climate change, or that there's no asbestos in the baby powder? Then there's the countless pseudo scientific cures and remedies. Could it do better than the system we have?
Clearly, it could be abused, but so can the system we have and it is being, heavily.
Which produces the more honest result?
I'd rather a situation where scientists are given freedom to publish what they produce, than fear excommunication for challenging the current theories and conventional science.
If you want a system where scientists aren't bought as mouthpieces by industry, instead find a way where they can get paid and fund their research without commercial interference.
Who might be more honest - a government funded body, or a commercial entity making profit off one particular answer?
How do you think they'd be punished in China under this system? Maybe they can't ride a train anymore, or forced into dingy second rate establishments, or refused certain services. I wonder how that will work when facial recognition hits big.
And to answer your question, trusting the government is always foolish.
It's perfectly possible to trust an independent body set up, and funded, by government whilst entirely distrusting party politics and the government of the day. I have yet to lose trust of, for example, the BSI Kitemark. Nor trading standards despite governments occasionally limiting their funding, and thus their effectiveness. Despite being funded by the state they are not the government. (Actually I think BSI is self-funded these days, but the point stands)
Professional bodies, such as those for lawyers, doctors etc, frequently attract criticism for being to lenient. The market clearly heavily weights where the money is. Government action is one of very few opportunities to balance that.
Now, I don't know enough from the article about how this will be set up, or which government agencies are being granted this role. Nor do we know how it will work - Party Members punishing errant scientists is clearly very wrong, an independent body of scientists "striking off" an errant scientist may be a very good thing. Little different to a doctor being struck off, but perhaps freer from commercial influence. We can assume, but we don't know. Hence my original question.
Harsher, further reaching penalties for faking peer review, falsifying data or CVs seems a reasonable goal, that might just work. The devil, as mentioned above, is in the unknown details.
The government very much works like a business does: there are worker-bees, managers, committees, higher people in charge, crooks and thieves, power-abusers and criminals. On the other hand, the private sector is literally made up of competing groups and individuals who are looking for success when the market is fair.
The same problems above exist in some businesses as well. The benefit with the private sector is, when we find corruption we can destroy contract, sue, and find a competitor. You can't do that with the government.
Always cracks me up when people think corporations are full of evil people but noble government would never be similarly evil.
What about someone that publish a study that says that second hand smoke is not dangerous (except at ridicule high levels)? IIRC the evidence against second hand smoke is not conclusive. What about third hand smoke? That is just ridiculous.
What about pronuclear research, that compares the danger of nuclear contamination and the reduction of CO2 emission?
The real question is who is in charge of deciding what is good science and what is bad science. The president? The Nobel committee? The UN? The consensus? Who organize the pools to decide what is the consensus? Do they use secret ballots or everyone vote is published for enabling public shamming?
If someone publish article against homeopathy who will vote? The homeopathy specialists or the corporate allopathy drones payed by big pharma?
This comment raised a reasonable, and frankly, quite meaningful, question about the prospect of this new system.
I can't help but feel this is some reddit-grade "downvote because I don't agree" voting.
To be honest, I downvoted because I disagree, yes. But more to the point, I find it so dangerously ridiculous AND the same sad “whataboutism” that always gets commented in response to whatever China’s latest human rights atrocity is. It annoys me. Yes, I could post a long substantive comment explaining why I think this is the road to civilization’s ruin, but I don’t always have the time :)
Also, if you think that HN doesn’t downvote based on agreement, you must not post anything controversial often. I can almost always predict how my comments are going to perform within a few points.
There is far more temptation to cheat when money, job, promotion is on the line and you have no social welfare to fall back on. False scientific data worsens the country’s image and threatens lives etc.
We have our own deep deep problems with research but that’s another discussion.
I’m sure the system has abuses, I think it is opaque but not sure but I imagine beaurocrats will abuse it with petty grudges and bribes. Just in this case, I’m glad China is cracking down on scientific fraud and I prefer these measures to jail. I don’t think going against the state’s narrative for hard sciences is possible. For policy, sociology, history, I’m sure there is already an iron hand there with no room to wiggle.
I am extremely curious what this letter contained. Do you have any idea what it was called or any ideas on how to find it? Key words or a time frame or anything like that. (Not accusing you of making it up at all by the way, if it sounds like that.)
1.) What if the topic on which someone wants to publish is still developing, and the researches in the meantime produces wrong results which can be a genuine case, then does the individual get penalized?
2.) Also if point 1 is allowed then one might always claim this as a backdoor escape for all wrong publications.
3.) What role does a reviewer have if there is a false publication, will the reviewer be also punished?
I am not suggesting this is a bad move, it is just a different view point which might actually work out for good, but unless all points have been addressed correctly, claiming that something might be a punishable offence is definitely a step in the wrong direction.
I think people need more economic mobility, and the ability to live where they want when policies like this come up. Bringing the smartest / most entrepreneurial Chinese away from China because of bad policy is one way of driving economic incentives... but I'm not sure how to deal with this in itself.
Makes me want to study sociology more though.
Spotted the person who hasn’t seen the relevant (and really awesome) Black Mirror episode.
Or put another way, what do you think a government agency might see as misconduct that you see as legitimate?
I'm not the GP, but that one is easy:
- Discovering that some drug is ineffective (or worse) when the manufacturer has made party contributions;
- Discovering that some public policy does not benefit the population while it benefits some politician;
- Any research on a propaganda line with results that are not aligned with the official truths.
But then these were thrown away under Communism, and in particular during the Cultural Revolution period there was paranoid chaos, and a great loss of social trust. And then a further radical change with the capitalist industrial revolution under Deng Jiaoping.
The consequence is that people don't trust anyone outside their immediate circles, and often feel no obligation to act in a non-harmful way toward them. The Government is trying to restore a sense of moral obligation to the members of the population. It will be interesting to see how well it goes.
Will this cause researchers to become adverse to speaking out for fear of retaliatory attacks on themselves?
Seems like a major step in the wrong direction for Chinese society.
It sounds like a step in the right direction. It feels less gross if you think of "social punishment" as a lighter version of "legal punishment". No need to send cheaters to jail, but don't let them off the hook either.
Assuming the system won't be abused for political (I'm sure it will), the detection is accurate (I'm sure it'll be hard), the social punishment is reasonable (we'll see), it sounds reasonable in theory.
It is not a legal score, it is a social score (both in theory and in practice)
I completely agree that it is stupid to send non-dangerous people to jail, but we should punish them with fines and possibly specific job restrictions decided on a per-case basis by a tribunal if there is a clear danger, but not by restricting their every aspect of their private, public, social and professional life.
The government can’t tweak at such a fine level but wherever it can, that’s what the system feels like from my very far and biased point of view.
The mental gymnastics people present for support on these policies is astounding to me.
That's what's disturbing here, the link to this other system that is, in itself, nightmarish.
What will a society look like where people aren't free to learn from their mistakes but are instead perpetually held back by them?
Compare this to a prison system based on punishment instead of prevention, leading to depressing recidivism.
I didn't realize the point system so subjective until I watched that clip you shared. How do they decide who becomes an "Information Collector?" Those positions will surely be highly coveted because they come with a massive amount of power and influence over their neighbors' lives. What concerns me about the payment system is that it seems like a fast-track to massive inequality - wealth, social, and justice. If someone can simply pay to erase their "bad" behavior then there's functionally one set of "rules" for those who can afford not to follow them and another set of rules that are actually enforced, in life changing ways, for everyone else.
I have the same thought behind UBI and drug decriminalization as well: thought experiments be damned, go try it and see.
If you have to stereotype Chinese dominated community, I think one pattern might emerge, the disregard towards rules particularly if that leads to personal advantages. In other words, rules speak louder when employed for punishment rather than respected as means to obtain the greater good.
There is possibility such punishments could be abused, but as many things happened in China, the execution of such is contextual and selective, so only time will tell.
It most probraly will because as soon as the system starts working the definition of "misconduct" will probably include ideologically-incorrect research results and subjects, failures to comply to the Chinese job etiquette etc.
And the Chinese Government reaction on Dr. He's breakthrough is an example of how policy can stand against science.
>dozens of government agencies will have the power to hand out penalties to those caught committing major scientific misconduct
The key insight here is that you are not being punished as a result of a long, careful process administered by judges and a jury of your peers (which has some problems but at least is designed to be careful and not political), but instead will be at the mercy of a few government agencies which must by their very construction be political.
In the US, there is a similar problem in a much smaller dose, where the government is likewise attempting to assign itself more power without introducing controls to let the citizens be the ones who ultimately decide what happens. One example would be the "secret courts" in the NSA problem. Although the US government is presently much nicer to its citizens than the Chinese government, the only reason this is true is because US citizens have more leverage on the US government than Chinese citizens do on theirs. This can change, and unsurprisingly the officials are trying to gain more authority.
Besides, the Chinese authorities already said what he did violates Chinese law, so what would introducing new laws achieve here, unless they're applied retroactively?
The last thing I heard was that he went missing, any updates on that?
Sounds very reasonable to me.