Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Real Reality]

Professor Caught Faking Breakthrough Research
By Park Bang-ju and Ser Myo-ja, JoongAng Ilbo (March 1, 2008)
http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2886848

[Horangi Munshin]

[bondjimbond]

Geez, another one?

[TML1976]

Are they ever gonna learn.

[TheChickenLover]

You guys are missing something here. Most of the 'old guard' in this country are from a time when dictatorships were common, people never questioned their authority or credentials.

To get into a 'good' university or a position of 'standing' required substantial donations to the university. Many of the senior faculty at many universities in this country had to 'donate' between $250k - 500k to guarantee their position at the university for life. They did NOT earn their degrees as we would have. In the common tradition that is university today, students are passed more or less regardless of their academic achievements. Merely showing up is good enough to warrant a good grade.

The quality of graduates here is very poor & it is still common for professors to have graduate students also have to give 'gift money' to their professors to pass. They do try to do some research, but it's mostly based on other people's work as they learn to copy & eventually try to adapt some of their thinking. Under intense pressure to produce, they do copy & fabricate their results. This is normal practice here. They've done it all their life & it's not such a big deal here.

In the West though, the ramifications are very different. Asian thinking of coying & Western views on plagiarism are very different. Copying & fabricating results now to fix the problems 'later' are very common. It's cultural, it won't change for at least 20-30 years as the current generation that bribed their way through academia retire & die off.

The reason these people have paid so much money to obtain their positions of authority is easy to see. They pay so much so they can simply attain bribes from those in lower positions. There are endless scandals about faculty & gov't ministers receiving bribes that were common in the past, but not as accepted by the younger generation in the present. Again, if you've accepted bribes for 20 years without a problem, I would suspect it's very hard to break the habit. The current & past gov't are no different in this respect. Suitcases full of money & bribes by large companies to gov't officials in positions of power are part of the fundamental workings of gov't here, & are the root of the level of corruption that has plagued this country since it's creation again in 1953.


Look at our current president & his cabinet nominees. A perfect example of the rich & corrupt who bought their way into positions of authority, but are mere straw men. Questions about how they could accumulate so much wealth on gov't salaries are very well justified. We know they're corrupt, but it's a witchhunt in a manner to get rid of the worst while trying to at least deflect attention from your own greed.

Nothing will change.

Chicken

[RobinR]

Excellent, insightful post, ChickenLover.

[Ilsanman]

If Korean science were in a wrestling match, 'Dr.' Hwang gave it a piledriver, and this new guy, 'Dr.' Kim gave it the flying elbow off the top rope.

When will the next guy come along and count the 1-2-3 for Korean science for the next 30 years or so?

[Roch]

[mikekim]

I get what chicken is saying but when you have to go through all the protocols to get published in interntional journals it seems to be a little arrogant to think they can do this. Oh well now Korea has 3 ben johnsons

[Roch]

I may have been a bit out of line in my last post: Is corruption as bad in North America, the U.K., Australia or New Zealand as it is here in the R.O.K.?

[thiophene]

I've worked in a few labs in Canada and seeing so many 'reputable' profs fudge data here and there put me off of research entirely. GLP and GCP's are so important for cases like these. The research I was involved in was pre-early stages of pharmacy, but still it was/is a waste of money, time, and animal life. To be a bit fair, the profs I've worked with truly believed in the research, and thought the procedures were wrong, not the hypotheses.

[Real Reality]