China’s elite Fudan University has concluded that the doctoral thesis of Zhang Wenhong “met all the criteria required at the time of submission,” and issued a statement on Monday exonerating the top epidemiologist from accusations of plagiarism.
But the university’s committee on academic standards acknowledged in the statement that, “There exist, in the overview section of the appendix, writing irregularities and improper literature citations that strayed from present-day standardization.”
The statement went on to say that the writing and citation issues have “no effect on the scientific originality and scholarly quality of Zhang Wenhong’s research and doctoral thesis.” The committee concluded that the accusations of academic fraud were “unverified.”
Fudan launched an investigation on Zhang's paper on August 15, after some netizens took to China's Twitter-like platform Sina Weibo saying that Zhang's doctorate paper is suspected of academic fraud. The netizens said Zhang cited a paper by Huang Hainan, from Qilu Institute of Technology, which was published in the Chinese Journal of Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases in 1998, without quotes, notes, or an acknowledgement.
Media platforms pointed out by careful comparison of the two articles that the overlapping part concentrated mainly in literature review part, which consists about 3,300 words. Zhang's 95-page doctorate paper, accounts roughly 70,000 words.
The hashtag "Zhang Wenhong's paper doesn't make up as academic misconduct" was soon trending on Sina Weibo, with more than 280 million reads within less than two hours. Zhang is a leading infectious disease expert in Shanghai.
