Recently, the Organization Department of the Hunan Provincial Party Committee announced that in the pre-appointment announcement of the provincial party committee's management cadres, Dong Lan, the second-ranked candidate, is currently a member of the party group, vice president and second-level senior judge of the Hunan Provincial High People's Court, and intends to be promoted to the leading position of the provincial unit. However, during the publicity period, a high-profile report quickly appeared on the Internet, accusing Dong Lan's doctoral dissertation of serious plagiarism.
This is the second time that Dong Lan has been reported for plagiarism. As early as June 2019, someone publicly reported the plagiarism of Dong Lan's doctoral dissertation. At that time, Hunan University, which was involved, quickly reacted and issued a statement on July 3 of the same year, saying that a special working group had been set up to investigate and verify the matter. However, as of today, five years have passed, and Hunan University has not released any survey results.
"This raises questions about the efficiency and transparency of academic supervision." The whistleblower told reporters on July 11.
According to the inquiry, Dong Lan's doctoral dissertation was submitted on October 16, 2007, the defense date was December 13, 2007, the supervisor was Liu Dinghua, and the chairman of the defense committee was Wang Quanxing.
According to the report, the test results of the electronic version of the paper provided by CNKI showed that in Dong Lan's 130,000-word doctoral dissertation, the amount of suspected plagiarized words was as high as more than 60,000 words, and the total text copy ratio reached 44.7%. Further analysis shows that if the Chinese and English abstracts are excluded, the actual reproduction ratio of the main text is more than 50%. Two of the chapters had a reproduction rate of 82 per cent and 75 per cent.
In response to the whistleblower's latest public report, the reporter asked the Organization Department of the Hunan Provincial Party Committee for confirmation on July 11.
The staff of the Cadre Supervision Department of the Organization Department of the Hunan Provincial Party Committee responded on the same day, saying that they had received the relevant report about Dong Lan, and had registered and handled it in strict accordance with the regulations, and at the same time transferred the matter to the relevant departments for in-depth investigation. The staff member also stressed that if the results of the investigation can be released before the end of the publicity, the follow-up will be carried out in strict accordance with the procedures; On the contrary, if no clear conclusion can be reached during the publicity period, the announcement will be suspended.
At the same time, the reporter also contacted the real-name whistleblower who initiated the two reports - Wu Danhong, associate professor of the Institute of Evidence Science of China University of Political Science and Law, director of the Research Center for Difficult Evidence Issues of China University of Political Science and Law, doctor of law, postdoctoral fellow, and master's supervisor. "Academic fraud is my hobby." Wu Danhong once introduced himself like this.
On July 11, Wu Danhong told reporters that when he was working and living in Hunan as a lawyer, he first came into contact with Dong Lan because of his work. At that time, Dong Lan was the secretary of the party group and president of the Intermediate People's Court of Yiyang City, Hunan Province. When he discovered the plagiarism of Dong Lan's doctoral dissertation in 2019 and reported it, he was then a member of the Standing Committee of the Yiyang Municipal Party Committee and Secretary of the Political and Legal Committee of the Municipal Party Committee, and was promoted to a member of the party group of the Hunan Provincial High People's Court in the same year.
Five years ago, Wu Danhong did not receive a response from any department. Therefore, after the Hunan Provincial Party Committee recently released the latest announcement before the appointment of cadres, Professor Wu not only reported to the relevant departments again, but also tried to take the initiative to provide more detailed evidence. However, according to Wu Danhong, in the process of submitting evidence, the relevant departments did not provide him with a clear channel for submitting evidence, "which increased the difficulty and uncertainty of reporting to a certain extent."
Between July 11 and 12, the reporter tried to contact the relevant departments of Hunan University, Dong Lan's doctoral school. As of press time, the reporter has not received any substantive response from Hunan University.
Article 7 of the Measures for the Handling of Dissertation Fraud promulgated by the Ministry of Education stipulates that: "If a degree applicant's dissertation is purchased, written by others, plagiarized or falsified data, the degree-awarding institution may cancel his or her qualification to apply for a degree; If a degree has already been obtained, the degree-awarding institution may revoke the degree and cancel the degree certificate in accordance with law.
The decision to revoke the qualifications for applying for a degree or to revoke a degree shall be announced to the public. If the (counterfeiter) is an incumbent employee, the degree-awarding unit shall notify the unit to which he belongs in addition to giving disciplinary sanctions. ”
Source: Poster News (Reporter Li Yifang, Zhu Xiaochong, Intern Zhang Qing), Top News (Reporter Yang Guang), @湖南大学