Does science mean something different in China?

Re: PLAN Anti-Piracy Deployments

It was organic chemistry. I'm more into physics and inorganic stuff, but I was shocked from the moment I entered and it didn't improve. So much stuff they used was already broken and had sharp edges all over, everything was soaked in so much solvens smell that I asked myself whether any fume hood worked (so they were at least having a good time) and when there would be the deflagration. I have been to many kinds of labs, but that one was simply outstanding and it was the way they worked as a group, not just one messy.

Concerning misconduct, the best way is always to ensure reproduction by someone else before publishing.

Re: PLAN Anti-Piracy Deployments

below_freezing said:

I think the standards for biology and physical sciences/engineering are quite different in all ways: the way articles are written, results presented, types of students attracted, even time to graduation. For example, a physics article like this

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would simply not be good enough for a biosciences journal, which is expected to have alot of citations, statistical analysis, a clear control... physics papers (outside of astro and particle) nowadays are much more straightforward, as you can see. Physics, at least applied physics, cares more about whether the device designed is operational and followup questions like if yes, can it be optimized and if no, what are the failure modes. Since there aren't that many experiments run, and there's more modeling done, you don't need statistics.

Click to expand...

Yeah, because of the complexity of the system, biology needs more rigorous experimental design, including statistical analysis and control. Even with statistics and control, we don't have a clue what's going on 50% of the time. even when we have some clue, it's more like blinds feeling an elephant, which demonstrates how long we have to go to understand biology...

BTW, what do you think about PLoS One? I have one publication in PLoS One. Even though it finally got an impact factor, which, at ~4.7, is not so bad, I still feel a little weird about it...

---------- Post added at 08:07 AM ---------- Previous post was at 07:59 AM ----------

Kurt said:

That's interesting, I had the chance to work at a Chinese chemistry lab in Europe and was appalled at the insecurity standard, it felt like exploding any time and no, they didn't work on anything dangerous, explosive or toxic.
On the other hand, the laboratory leader gave me a lengthy introduction on Chinese thinking that you need a very long education to become someone with special capabilities to create things.
The summary of the other chemists at the university was: "We have no idea what they're doing, but we expect them to blow themselves up anytime soon. They are a pet project of this professor."
My conclusion was that China has a great history, but the current leap in new scientific research has little connection to the old scientific roots and they hardly care about anything but positive results, including simple personal safety measures. That's a problem in science because negative results are also results and such a focus ultimately leads to fakes.

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WOW! Your example might be an isolated case? Although I have never walked into a Chinese lab before, both of my parents are scientists and have worked in China many years. My dad is an inorganic chemist and my mom is a nuclear chemist. from what I can tell from their photos in the lab, they had well-organized labs. Of course, the level of the research was also different. My parents worked at Institute 401 (formerly 601) in Beijing, which is still the pinnacle of China's nuclear research.

---------- Post added at 08:15 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:07 AM ----------

below_freezing said:

Organic or physical lab? I've seen pretty lax safety standards, of course, but nothing fatal.

I see the same focus on positive results in US labs all the time, especially particle and astro. And lets not forget, in my field, materials science, the biggest fraud of all time was by a German.

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Well, everyone likes positive results. Who doesn't want to be proven right? The difference is, I think, we have been trained NOT to ignore the negative. Since the first day in graduate school, my adviser has drilled into me that negative data can lead to surprises, which might lead to amazing discoveries. I think one thing to be sure is that most of the CHinese scientists are more short-sighted and they only look at the immediate results that can prove their hypothesis correct. Of course, that ties with how well they can get funding in the future. If they show their original hypothesis is wrong, that might affect their credibility and their ability to get funding. Of course, this also reflects their insecurity. People here in the State love to be proven wrong. That means your understanding of the matter has elevated to a new level. I guess it all depends on how you look at things.

I think this also leads back to my initial point. Chinese simply don't have the patience to do deeper science. In order to develop a good theory, one has to propose hypothesis and design experiments to test it. Most of the time, you'll get negative data suggesting your hypothesis is wrong. You just have to keep modifying the hypothesis until it gets right. Sometimes, this process might take months, if you are lucky. Most of the time, it might take years or even decades. You need to be patient and have the dedication and resilience.

I'm going through this exact process as we speak with one of my projects. We saw this interesting phenomenon and are trying to find the molecular mechanism for it. We can see the light at the end of the tunnel because this potential mechanism could explain how a protein that is critical in cancer development is activated. However, no matter what we try, it gives us negative data. It's frustrating, to be honest. It's like you can see the treasure sitting there on the other side of a river. You just can't seem to find a bridge/boat to get to the other side. The treasure just sits there and taunts you. But, we now know what mechanism is NOT a factor in activating this protein...

---------- Post added at 09:29 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:15 AM ----------

I used to work in an organic chemistry lab as an undergrad. I have to say that organic chemistry is the messiest science field ever. No one cares how much of the stuff you are adding. I still remember, on my first day in the lab, my adviser simply pour half a bucket of some chemical into the flask and spill chemical powder everywhere on the bench. I was shocked, to say the least. I was sophomore at the time and was taking organic chemistry class. In the lab section, we had been shown how to carefully measure everything. And yet, this expert in the field was simply pouring stuff out... And this was not a Chinese lab at all. in fact, I was the only Asian in the lab.

Re: PLAN Anti-Piracy Deployments

vesicles said:

Yeah, because of the complexity of the system, biology needs more rigorous experimental design, including statistical analysis and control. Even with statistics and control, we don't have a clue what's going on 50% of the time. even when we have some clue, it's more like blinds feeling an elephant, which demonstrates how long we have to go to understand biology...

BTW, what do you think about PLoS One? I have one publication in PLoS One. Even though it finally got an impact factor, which, at ~4.7, is not so bad, I still feel a little weird about it...

---------- Post added at 08:07 AM ---------- Previous post was at 07:59 AM ----------



WOW! Your example might be an isolated case? Although I have never walked into a Chinese lab before, both of my parents are scientists and have worked in China many years. My dad is an inorganic chemist and my mom is a nuclear chemist. from what I can tell from their photos in the lab, they had well-organized labs. Of course, the level of the research was also different. My parents worked at Institute 401 (formerly 601) in Beijing, which is still the pinnacle of China's nuclear research.

---------- Post added at 08:15 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:07 AM ----------



Well, everyone likes positive results. Who doesn't want to be proven right? The difference is, I think, we have been trained NOT to ignore the negative. Since the first day in graduate school, my adviser has drilled into me that negative data can lead to surprises, which might lead to amazing discoveries. I think one thing to be sure is that most of the CHinese scientists are more short-sighted and they only look at the immediate results that can prove their hypothesis correct. Of course, that ties with how well they can get funding in the future. If they show their original hypothesis is wrong, that might affect their credibility and their ability to get funding. Of course, this also reflects their insecurity. People here in the State love to be proven wrong. That means your understanding of the matter has elevated to a new level. I guess it all depends on how you look at things.

I think this also leads back to my initial point. Chinese simply don't have the patience to do deeper science. In order to develop a good theory, one has to propose hypothesis and design experiments to test it. Most of the time, you'll get negative data suggesting your hypothesis is wrong. You just have to keep modifying the hypothesis until it gets right. Sometimes, this process might take months, if you are lucky. Most of the time, it might take years or even decades. You need to be patient and have the dedication and resilience.

I'm going through this exact process as we speak with one of my projects. We saw this interesting phenomenon and are trying to find the molecular mechanism for it. We can see the light at the end of the tunnel because this potential mechanism could explain how a protein that is critical in cancer development is activated. However, no matter what we try, it gives us negative data. It's frustrating, to be honest. It's like you can see the treasure sitting there on the other side of a river. You just can't seem to find a bridge/boat to get to the other side. The treasure just sits there and taunts you. But, we now know what mechanism is NOT a factor in activating this protein...

---------- Post added at 09:29 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:15 AM ----------

I used to work in an organic chemistry lab as an undergrad. I have to say that organic chemistry is the messiest science field ever. No one cares how much of the stuff you are adding. I still remember, on my first day in the lab, my adviser simply pour half a bucket of some chemical into the flask and spill chemical powder everywhere on the bench. I was shocked, to say the least. I was sophomore at the time and was taking organic chemistry class. In the lab section, we had been shown how to carefully measure everything. And yet, this expert in the field was simply pouring stuff out... And this was not a Chinese lab at all. in fact, I was the only Asian in the lab.

Click to expand...

PLOS one is good. Its sort of like Arxiv for physics. Its pretty important to see what the articles are *for free*, so that even if the articles are junk, you might learn something from that junk. At least you'll learn what the important questions are in the field, because in my opinion, the hard part is asking the right questions. I don't think impact factor is too important. I mean, Acta Crystallographica got an impact factor of 45 because they ordered everyone that used a technique published in 2008, to cite it. So their IF went from around 2 to 45. Seriously, even leading journals in my field like Applied Physics, IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics and Physical Review don't have high impact factors (all 3 are around 2), so I think its just junk.

I agree that biological systems are usually more complicated than physical ones due to non-negligible interactions between 'particles' and the resulting nonlinearity, and needs statistics in general, but Chinese universities are not that good at biology so we can't ask "what are the important questions that need to be answered" since they just don't know and people just don't get paid enough (there's no equivalent of NIH, so physical science and life science compete for the same bowl. Physical sciences is easier and has bigger payoffs. Physical sciences wins). Surprisingly, Chinese universities are not that bad in theoretical studies (like molecular dynamics simulations), but experimental excellence is probably more limited in scope due to more restrictions on equipment and funding, since all you need for most theoretical studies is a brain, paper, pencil, computer and lots of time.

And yes, organic chemistry is messy as hell. Have to be much more precise in physics and engineering, but thankfully machines do that for us. No robots to do the job in o-chem unless you scale up to pilot plant level. No robots in bio either, but you have to be as precise as one, and that's annoying...

Re: PLAN Anti-Piracy Deployments

It could be just a euphemism. If you watch the TV show Whale Wars, the Japanese use and paint "scientific" and "research" on their whaling ships to describe what they're doing.

Re: PLAN Anti-Piracy Deployments

AssassinsMace said:

It could be just a euphemism. If you watch the TV show Whale Wars, the Japanese use and paint "scientific" and "research" on their whaling ships to describe what they're doing.

Click to expand...

In those situations its more like "philosophical truthiness" PR presentation than anything involving critical unbiased empirical analysis that underpins real science.

Re: PLAN Anti-Piracy Deployments

below_freezing said:

PLOS one is good. Its sort of like Arxiv for physics. Its pretty important to see what the articles are *for free*, so that even if the articles are junk, you might learn something from that junk. At least you'll learn what the important questions are in the field, because in my opinion, the hard part is asking the right questions. I don't think impact factor is too important. I mean, Acta Crystallographica got an impact factor of 45 because they ordered everyone that used a technique published in 2008, to cite it. So their IF went from around 2 to 45. Seriously, even leading journals in my field like Applied Physics, IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics and Physical Review don't have high impact factors (all 3 are around 2), so I think its just junk.

Click to expand...

I agree that impact factor, IF, has its limitations. However, it is still one of the best ways of estimating the quality of a journal/publication. You can always find exceptions in everything. However, in general, IF is pretty consistent in terms of correlating a numerical value to the quality of a journal. In case of biology, most of the excellent journals have IF between 4 and 10. Of course, we have journals like Journal of Biological Chemistry, which is widely considered one of THE best biology journals in the world, but has an IF of ~5.8. JBC is leading a campaign against IF. If you go to their website, you'll see that they openly criticize IF. I like to publish in JBC and have several JBC papers. With an exception of JBC, we still check and consider IF of other journals when we submit papers. And when departments look for new faculty or giving promotion, journal IF's are still an important parameter. Any IF lower than 1.5 is not even considered as peer review. High impact publications are needed to secure a job or a promotion.

Another well-known parameter for evaluating research quality is the h-index. It emphasizes # of citations, in addition to the quality of the journal. If your paper is cited more, it suggests that it has higher impact and you will get a higher h-index. It also has limitations, one of which is lack of considering the order of authorship. It gives same values to all authors of a publication. We all know that what matters the most is the first author, which is the lead author, and the last author who is the boss. Most of the middle authors are there either because of minor contribution or because of political reasons. So obviously, these people should NOT be given the same credit as the first author. Yet, the h-index gives all these people the same value.

So I guess we haven't found the perfect thing yet.

Most of the Physical Review journals have IF between 2 and 4. Yet, the best of them all, Physical Review Letters, has an IF of at least 7.

One cannot compare IFs across fields, i.e. we cannot say that Physical Review E is a worse journal than Biochemistry because PRE has an IF of 2.55 while Biochem has an IF of ~3.5. Biology journals typically have higher IFs because more people study biology and more people cite. Actually, PRE is one of the leading journals in physics while Biochemistry is only a mediocre one in biology. However, one CAN compare IFs within the same field. We can conclude that PRL is better than PRE because PRL's IF is 7.8 while PRE's IF is 2.55.

This actually reminds me something. I mentioned before that my parents are chemists. One time, I wanted to give them a hard time. So I calculated average IFs for all the papers I published and compared with the average IFs of those published by my mom and dad. Of course, they have been publishing in chemistry journals all their career. The leading journals in their fields, like Inorganic Chemistry, Organic chemistry and Analytical Chem, all have IF's at ~3. So their average IFs are considerably lower than mine. While my dad understood what I was trying to do and simply laughed, my mom got upset and gave me a lecture about how her field, nuclear chemistry, is such a small field; and that there is no way that even the best journals can match those in biology. She then said that it's possibly my journals are actually mediocre ones in biology since all biology journals have high IFs. That got me upset. And we had this big argument about it. then at the end, my mom smiled and said "see? be careful what you are getting into". So she knew what I was trying to do all along and gave me the same medicine that I was trying to give to them...

Re: PLAN Anti-Piracy Deployments

vesicles said:

I agree that impact factor, IF, has its limitations. However, it is still one of the best ways of estimating the quality of a journal/publication. You can always find exceptions in everything. However, in general, IF is pretty consistent in terms of correlating a numerical value to the quality of a journal. In case of biology, most of the excellent journals have IF between 4 and 10. Of course, we have journals like Journal of Biological Chemistry, which is widely considered one of THE best biology journals in the world, but has an IF of ~5.8. JBC is leading a campaign against IF. If you go to their website, you'll see that they openly criticize IF. I like to publish in JBC and have several JBC papers. With an exception of JBC, we still check and consider IF of other journals when we submit papers. And when departments look for new faculty or giving promotion, journal IF's are still an important parameter. Any IF lower than 1.5 is not even considered as peer review. High impact publications are needed to secure a job or a promotion.

Another well-known parameter for evaluating research quality is the h-index. It emphasizes # of citations, in addition to the quality of the journal. If your paper is cited more, it suggests that it has higher impact and you will get a higher h-index. It also has limitations, one of which is lack of considering the order of authorship. It gives same values to all authors of a publication. We all know that what matters the most is the first author, which is the lead author, and the last author who is the boss. Most of the middle authors are there either because of minor contribution or because of political reasons. So obviously, these people should NOT be given the same credit as the first author. Yet, the h-index gives all these people the same value.

So I guess we haven't found the perfect thing yet.

Most of the Physical Review journals have IF between 2 and 4. Yet, the best of them all, Physical Review Letters, has an IF of at least 7.

One cannot compare IFs across fields, i.e. we cannot say that Physical Review E is a worse journal than Biochemistry because PRE has an IF of 2.55 while Biochem has an IF of ~3.5. Biology journals typically have higher IFs because more people study biology and more people cite. Actually, PRE is one of the leading journals in physics while Biochemistry is only a mediocre one in biology. However, one CAN compare IFs within the same field. We can conclude that PRL is better than PRE because PRL's IF is 7.8 while PRE's IF is 2.55.

This actually reminds me something. I mentioned before that my parents are chemists. One time, I wanted to give them a hard time. So I calculated average IFs for all the papers I published and compared with the average IFs of those published by my mom and dad. Of course, they have been publishing in chemistry journals all their career. The leading journals in their fields, like Inorganic Chemistry, Organic chemistry and Analytical Chem, all have IF's at ~3. So their average IFs are considerably lower than mine. While my dad understood what I was trying to do and simply laughed, my mom got upset and gave me a lecture about how her field, nuclear chemistry, is such a small field; and that there is no way that even the best journals can match those in biology. She then said that it's possibly my journals are actually mediocre ones in biology since all biology journals have high IFs. That got me upset. And we had this big argument about it. then at the end, my mom smiled and said "see? be careful what you are getting into". So she knew what I was trying to do all along and gave me the same medicine that I was trying to give to them...

Click to expand...

If there is a large spread in the IF, then maybe it is a useful tool, but I still think its junk for physics since the distribution is small and therefore it is hard for IF to be a distinguishing factor. Physical Review Letters may have higher citations because it has a broad spread, whereas Physical Review (A,B,C,D,E...etc) are field-specific. For example I only care about B, materials, and not say... D, particles and gravitation.

I think its another thing about biology; the paper publishing culture is different. They expect you to have alot of citations in bio papers. The reference section is comparable in length to the article sometimes! And to refute something, you're supposed to write a long review which also has many citations.

And of course in industry, they don't really care what the IF of your paper was, they just care its in the same field as what they're hiring for.

Re: PLAN Anti-Piracy Deployments

Here's another interesting discussion about Chinese vs Greek logical development:



If Chinese logical postulates could be substituted for Greek postulates in scientific philosophy, this could help produce a new method of scientific analysis as a matter of course.

Re: PLAN Anti-Piracy Deployments

Chinese are the dragon race.

Ever wonder about China's growth?

Its because in the end, after WW3, China wins and rules the world and its getting rid range on its energy level.

Ever wonder why people are duped into thinking immigration to Western countries is only by black/brown people considering the fact FAR MORE chinese immigrate and slip through the net?

They've been hinting at us for decades.

Re: PLAN Anti-Piracy Deployments

^^^ Not sure what you are smokin.

But give China another generation and interaction with Western scientists and then we will see.