Four hundred eighty-six authors have been found guilty of misconduct by the Chinese government, the fall-out from a sweep of retractions by one journal earlier this year.
In April, Tumor Biology retracted 107 papers that had been accepted based on faked reviews. Since many of the authors were based in China, the country’s Ministry of Science and Technology (MST) launched an investigation. On Friday, the news outlet Xinhua reported the results of the government’s investigation:
“Of the 521 authors implicated, 11 were deemed innocent with 24 still under investigation. Among the remaining authors, 486 authors were found guilty of misconduct at various levels. A total of 102 were found to be mainly responsible, 70 secondarily responsible and 314 did not participate in fraud, said He Defang, a ministry official in charge of rule enforcement.