Unreasonable punishment

Providing invoices for all expenses does not prove that research funds have been spent for the right purposes and vice versa, because cases involving embezzlement of research funds are disguised by legal invoices. Therefore, authorities should make the results of those investigations public to clear people's doubts, says an article on guancha.gmw.cn. Excerpts:

Pan Suiming, a well-known Beijing-based professor of sexology, has received disciplinary sanctions from the Ministry of Education for "non-transparent use of research funds" because he paid sex workers for interviews which contributed to his research but could not account for it because he did not get invoices from them.

Embezzlement of research funds is a form of corruption that exists across the world, including China. Some Chinese researchers in science and technology indulge in such corruption because of the loopholes in the existing supervisory system. Even if the researchers provide enough legal invoices to account for their expenses, the department watchdogs cannot be certain that every penny has been spent for its due purpose.