"I'm cool with what I'm doing," says Fang Zhouzi when asked if he enjoyed hunting down fake intellectuals or regarded it more as a rod on his back. "A man can't stay angry all day every day." Photo: CFP

By Huang Shaojie

He's a devoted crusader against "corruption in ivory towers."

He's also a relentless satirist, a cruel, bullheaded fighter who takes no prisoners and shows no mercy.

He dodged assassins sent by a bitter, discredited urologist and called a pop singer "superstitious" for marveling at a Buddha statue that had survived a high-rise fire.

He's a man described as both evil and righteous, a nightmare, some say, for academic plagiarizers, although others suggest he tends to tackle softer targets without confronting the harder issues.

Fang Shimin, better known by his pen name of Fang Zhouzi, founded the Chinese language e-magazine New Threads in 1994 when he was studying biochemistry at Michigan State University.

Within a few years, New Threads would transform into China's first, and arguably only, independent research ethics investigation body that enlists volunteer watchdogs to identify fraud, plagiarism and false credentials.

Fang was awarded a doctorate in 1995. Instead of working full-time as a biochemist in a lab or pharmaceutical company, he quit to write about science for lay audiences and hunt down the miscreant academics of China.

"I'd probably make a decent scientist," Fang says, recalling how he cut short his postdoctoral studies on molecular genetics at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, California, in 1998 to become a full-time writer.

"I liked writing. Plus China already had a surplus of scientists, but not enough people to explain science to the general public."

In his first book The New Interpretation of Evolution (1997), Fang presented to Chinese readers new understandings of life gained through genetic studies and in defense of Darwin's grand theory.

Far from undermining evolution as believers of intelligent design had claimed, scientific discoveries such as gene mutations only strengthened the case for, he argued.

"Growing bones in a fish fin [to evolve into a leg] is a one-step job that requires one or a few gene mutations, not intermediate morphologies going from a tenth of a bone to two-tenths of a bone, etc.," he wrote.

The theme of devotion to science resonates throughout his later writings.

"What is so boring about science for so many people?" Fang posits in the foreword to Fang Zhouzi Brings You Close to Science (2007).

"Science tells us about everything from quarks to the universe. It reveals to us who we are and where we are from. It shows us the way to a healthy life…Who could find these questions boring?"

Fang, an evolutionary biology advocate, wouldn't mind being nicknamed "Darwin's chow chow." Photos: IC, CFP

Fang is famous for saying on various occasions that science alone answers the questions about life that philosophy and religion cannot.

"Of all the things I have done in my life, I would like to be remembered for these books more than anything else," he says.

"I think of Darwin as the greatest scientist of all time. He laid the foundation for the science of life as we know it today."

Fang has dispatched himself on a one-man crusade to promote the scientific mode of thinking in China, much like Thomas Henry Huxley and Richard Dawkins have tried in the Western world.

Huxley was dubbed "Darwin's bulldog" for his work popularizing the theory of evolution during the 19th century, while Dawkins the British atheist and evolutionary biologist is "Darwin's Rottweiller."

"Dawkins is of course a lot more accomplished than me as a scientist and a science writer," Fang says.

He wouldn't mind following Huxley and Dawkins into Darwin's doghouse, he jokes, as long as he isn't portrayed as a fluffy Pekinese. When the reporter suggests a chow chow, the Chinese dog famous for its strong-willed character, Fang accepts.

Fang's career hit a more aggressive level in 2000 when New Threads started to investigate academic misconduct in China. Fang's militant posture soon made him enemies, some of them violent.

The New Threads website receives a tip every few days and has dealt with some 1,000 cases in 11 years.

In a country with no properly functioning academic integrity committees, Fang administers his own a self-executed brand of justice based on his judgment as a scientist and the evidence he has collected.

Access to the website goes down intermittently on the Chinese mainland and a Google search with the keywords "New Threads" in Chinese returns an error notice.

Claims of infallibility

"Integrity is a must for academia," reads a New Threads mission statement. "We will catch anyone cheating regardless of their rank or reputation."

In practice, rank and fame play a critical role in how fights are picked. Leading university professors, academicians, researchers and business executives are targeted for scrutiny. Fabricated credentials and plagiarized dissertations are exposed to public ridicule.

Some high-profile humiliations include former president of Microsoft China Tang Jun, whom Fang in 2010 caught lying about his doctoral degree, and urologist Xiao Chuanguo, whose surgical procedure was questioned by Fang in 2005 and then banned by China's health ministry last year for safety reasons.

Xiao was convicted on October 11 of hiring thugs to attack Fang near his Beijing home on August 29, although the charge was "seeking trouble,"not attempted murder as Fang had demanded in trademark belligerent fashion.

In an earlier spat with Fang, Xiao wrote on New Threads on July 8, 2001 that he had gone from liking Fang to despising him, accusing Fang of self-promotion by attacking famous people.

"Fang is both evil and righteous," said journalist Feng Yongfeng of the Guangming Daily in Beijing. "He only picks easy targets."

Feng himself is still on a long New Threads list of "bad journalists," for reporting in 2003 that a so-called "nano fuel additive" raised fuel efficiency and lowered emissions.

Fang claims he had experts review the technology and prove it wasn't nanotechnology or inductive to fuel efficiency.

"The technology was real," says Gong Yan, a Peking University-graduated material engineer and patent holder for the addititive.

Gong says the product sold well in 2001-02 despite Fang's attacks on the credibility of his company headed by Peking University physicist Li Zhengxiao.

Confrontational approach

Disagreement over the company's development and China's state monopoly of the petrol market eventually caused the company to collapse. Fang's loud denunciations had not helped.

"Chinese culture values harmony and a non-confrontational approach to social life," Fang says. "That's one of the reasons why many people hate me."

He has never been wrong in investigations in which he was personally involved of academic misconduct, he says.

Gong entertains no visible bitterness toward Fang, even though he asserts Fang was completely wrong to denounce his fuel-efficient invention.

"I think he was more against Mr Li than my technology," Gong says, "and he was against Mr Li because he was a Peking University professor, the kind of target he was after."

He still appreciates what Fang is trying to do for research ethics on the Chinese mainland, Gong says.

"We need someone like Fang Zhouzi because Chinese don't have a lot of free debate over science or their lives," Gong says. "The more debate we have, the faster we can improve."

Unfortunately Chinese are brought up being told to listen to authorities and not to ask questions. "Then along comes Fang Zhouzi showing us all how to be a skeptic," he says.

"If he comes off as provocative or even abusive, that's because he cannot kill that uncritical faith in authority without bringing down some famous personalities to whose unquestioned authority the public defers.

"He's like a trailblazer beating his way across the wilderness. He's not a perfect man, but until a road is clear, we need more trailblazers."

Fang in his own words

"Religion is nothing but a more organized bunch of superstitious ideas."

"Whoever thinks that statue is incredible should set it on fire and see what happens." After pop singer Faye Wong publicly marveled at a Buddha statue that allegedly escaped a devastating fire, indicating it was a miracle.

"I'd recommend Westerners who believe in feng shui or wu xing quit believing in them. Oriental ideas like these may seem exotic or profound, but they are just like horoscopes or astrology."

"Throw away traditional Chinese medicine theories, but test its prescriptions in random controlled clinical trials."