Fang Shimin, whose pen name is Fang Zhouzi, has long been known as a "science cop" for his fight against pseudoscience and scientific misconduct.

But this time, he has become famous as the losing party in litigation filed by those he criticized and slammed in the courts.

Since late November, Fang has lost two libel cases in the Beijing and Xi'an courts respectively and is still fighting an appeal in a Wuhan court for the second trial of another libel suit he lost in July.

Despite the series of legal failures, Fang remained confident. "I will continue my fight against pseudoscience and scientific misconduct," he told China Daily.

But observers said Fang's individual actions could get challenged even more frequently if a more appropriate approach to reveal scientific misconduct was not adopted.

Policing claims

Fang's "science policing" started in 1998 when he became a columnist for science criticism and analysis. That year, he finished his doctoral study on biochemistry at Michigan State University and post-doctoral research in California in the United States. Since then, Fang has operated a non-commercial website called New Threads (xy3.3322.org) to fight superstitions, pseudoscience and academic misconduct, such as plagiarism and fabricating academic achievements.

In more recent cases, New Threads' exposure of scientific misconduct led to Liu Hui, a professor in Tsinghua University and Yang Jie, a professor in Tongji University, losing their jobs owing to the fabrication of their resumes.

"Since 2000, the pseudoscience and scientific misconduct cases exposed by New Threads have reached 500," said Fang.

Most of these cases were reported by users and readers of New Threads. "Many of the cases were first reported by people close to those responsible. They reported the cases to me because of my outspoken character," Fang said.

As a result, Fang was dubbed "science cop," although the title was never officially acknowledged.

In recent days, however, this "science cop" has been finding himself more in the defendant's seat.

On November 20, the Wuhan Intermediate Court held the sitting for Fang's appeal against an initial ruling in July, which decided that Fang had libelled Xiao Chuanguo, a professor of urology surgery at the Wuhan-based Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST). Xiao was also a clinical associate professor at New York University (NYU)'s medical school.

In September 2005, Fang published an article saying Xiao had exaggerated his academic achievements by including papers in domestic journals among his international publications and by exalting the academic awards he had won. Xiao sued Fang for libel, and Fang was ordered by the Wuhan-based Jiangcheng District Court to make a public apology and pay Xiao 30,000 yuan (US$3,750) in compensation.

Fang complained that the court had been misguided by Xiao's evidence, but Xiao said he had submitted solid evidence and that Fang had deliberately confused the different awards he had won to denigrate his academic achievements.

Soon, Fang was attacked in other fields as well.

On November 21, the Beijing Intermediate Court ruled that Fang had libelled scholar Liu Zihua (1889-1992) in a first trial. Liu claimed that in the late 1930s he had used the Eight Diagrams theory an ancient Chinese philosophical theory to predict the existence of the 10th major planet of the Solar System. The so-called prediction was lauded as a great scientific achievement last year by a local newspaper in Sichuan Province Liu's hometown.

Fang said Liu's astronomy theory was a fraud and cited famous Chinese astronomer Zhang Yuzhe (1902-86) branding Liu as a big cheat. Zhang was head of the Zijinshan (Purple Mountain) Observatory in Nanjing of Jiangsu Province.

Liu's widow and son sued Fang for libel. The court ruled that there could be academic criticisms of Liu's theory, but Fang had defamed Liu by calling him a big cheat. Fang was asked to compensate Liu's family with 20,000 yuan (US$2,500).

Fang said that his attack on Liu's theory was not an academic discussion, and that all of his comments on Liu were based on the conclusions of established scientists. "If the Eight Diagrams astronomy is a totally false science, and if Liu had purposely boasted about his theories, of course I can call him a cheat," Fang said.

Liu's family could not be reached for comment.

One day after the ruling, on November 22, Fang lost another libel suit filed by Xi'an Fanyi University in a local court in Xi'an, Shaanxi Province.

In 2004, some Chinese newspapers extolled the US-based Los Angeles Times for publishing a report by a so-called US 50-states high education union, boasting that the Xi'an university was one of China's 10 most outstanding universities and its president Ding Zuyi one of the most respected university presidents.

Fang wrote in the newspaper Beijing Sci-Tech Report that the Los Angeles Times report was "a self-paid advertisement." He also cited the poor English of the high education union's report to question its credibility.

Fang and the Beijing Sci-Tech Report were asked to pay 150,000 yuan (US$18,750) to Xi'an Fanyi University.

The university refused to comment on the case and Ding, its president, was unavailable for an interview.

Mixed reactions

Fang's legal failures have led Song Zhenghai, a senior research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute for the History of Natural Science, to launch a collective petition, calling for a ban on the term "pseudoscience" from the Law for Science Popularization.

Issued in 2003, the law states that science communicators should fight against pseudo-science. In "Cihai," a grand Chinese dictionary published in 1999, "pseudoscience" is defined as "unscientific theories that claim to be scientific."

"The term pseudoscience has been abused by Fang and others to strike the innovative sciences based on traditional cultures such as Eight Diagrams, and Fang's lawsuit losses show that many of his attacks were wrong," claimed Song, whose petition has the signatures of 150 professors and senior experts.

But for He Zuoxiu, a renowned scientist from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the litigations against Fang show the poor performance of China's official science disciplining departments.

"If more misconduct and pseudoscience cases were investigated and punished by the authorities, there would not be so much litigation directed at Fang," He told China Daily.

Fang's lawyer Peng Jian said a juridical regulation stipulating that the plaintiffs in libel cases can file their accusations to courts in their places of residence had helped Fang's victims accuse Fang.

"Local courts often do not have the professional knowledge to judge libel cases involving science," said Peng.

But Liu Huajie, an associate professor at Peking University's Science Communication Research Centre, said that when exposing scientific misconduct or so-called pseudoscience, people like Fang had not been trained to collect and keep their evidence.

"Courts will not support you simply because you are chasing a righteous cause. The court rulings are always based on evidence," Liu said.

In the face of rising litigation, He and others have been organizing two funds one in China, and another in the United States to support the legal costs incurred by Fang and others. By the end of last month, each of the two funds had more than US$10,000.

"The fight against pseudoscience and scientific misconduct will be continued, and the funds will enable us to make a more systematic investigation of pseudoscience and scientific misconduct," Fang said.

(China Daily 12/14/2006 page13)