Primary school student’s prize-winning cancer research：fraud?

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Screenshot from the China Adolescents Science and Technology Innovation contest official website

A sixth-grade student in Southwest China's Yunnan Province whose research into cancer won a national-level award has become embroiled in controversy after he was found to have little knowledge of biology and his research bore similarity to a program conducted by an Institute of Zoology where his father works as a researcher, reported CCTV on Tuesday.

The work of the pupil focuses on a colorectal cancer related gene study, and won third prize at a prestigious annual event that attracts around 10 million young contestants nationwide every year.

However, the complexity of the research and the vast biological basis it required led to suspicion of fraud, as the young author indicated in his experiment notes that he had to do an internet search to find out what genes are when he started his research.

Two corresponding authors of the study were later found to work at the Kunming institute of zoology, whose independent research shares a similar direction with the controversial study. 

The institute said on Monday that the author is a child of a research fellow at the institute, and an investigation is underway.

Teacher under fire for claiming China’s participation in Korean War was ‘invasion’

A history teacher at New Oriental school claims in an online class that China's participation in the Korean War (1950-1953) was an "invasion". Photo: Screenshot of the teacher's class video

A Beijing-based test training school announced Wednesday night it terminated all contracts with a teacher after he was caught in a controversy and criticized by netizens for making comments in class that claimed China's participation in the Korean War (1950-1953) was an "invasion."

The remarks were made by Wang Cheng, a part-time contracted history teacher tutoring postgraduate entrance examinations at New Oriental School in Beijing. 

In a video of a recorded online class in 2013 that was recently found and circulated on the internet, Wang claimed that "the one and only invasion war in China's history, which was widely recognized by the world, is the Korean War (1950-1953)," and "China was then only used as a cat's paw by the Soviet Union." 

The video sparked heated criticism among netizens, who slammed Wang for distorting and disparaging history and not having integrity as a history teacher. 

Wang has 300,000 followers on social media platform Sina Weibo. Many of the students who had taken his class left comments saying they were disappointed at him. 

Some netizens also questioned the screening mechanism for teachers at New Oriental, and urged it to deal with the matter. 

"Big educational platforms with a large number of students should strengthen screening and raise the standard for teachers they hire, especially history teachers who are responsible for guiding students to set up a correct understanding and view of history," one netizen commented. 

The school later responded by saying that Wang has been fired and all of his online class videos have been deleted. It also apologized for failing to find out about the matter first during their review of the contents of his classes.

Source: Global Times

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