Who Tried to Kill Fang Xuanchang?
A chilling attack on a controversial science journalist in Beijing bodes poorly for scientific progress.
BY SAM GEALL | JULY 6, 2010
谁试图杀害方玄昌？
对持异议北京科学记者的冷酷袭击预示科学进程不平坦
作者：山姆.吉尔，２０１０年７月６日
On the evening of June 24, Fang Xuanchang, a 37-year-old science and technology editor at China's Caijing magazine, finished work around 10 p.m. and began his walk home. Half an hour later he was nearing his apartment by Beijing's third ring road when he felt a sudden blow to his back. Fang turned to see two large men behind him brandishing steel bars.
６月２４日晚，方玄昌，37岁的中国财经杂志科学与技术版编辑，在晚上１０点左右结束工作，然后步行回家。 半小时后当他接近自己在北京三环路附近的公寓时，忽然感到背部受到猛烈一击。方回头看到身后有两个大汉正挥舞着钢筋。
Fang tried to run away and then shield himself as the men, ignoring his attempts to communicate with them, struck him repeatedly across his back and head. Brawny and adept in martial arts, Fang not only remained conscious, but also managed to fight back. Finally, as Fang stumbled toward a taxi, his clothes soaked in blood, the attackers left the scene.
方试图交涉，但两个男子不加理会，继续不停地击打他的背部和头部，方只能设法跑开并尽力保护自己。方身体强壮，熟习武术，因此并未慌张，并寻机反击。最终，当方跌跌撞撞地跑向一辆出租车时，他的衣服已被血浸透，袭击者随即离开了现场。
Later that night at Beijing's Navy General Hospital, doctors sutured a 2-inch gash on the back of his head. His assailants behaved like professionals, carrying out the brutal ambush in about four minutes and showing little concern about passersby witnessing the attack. "Their goal was clear," Fang told me in a June 30 email. "It was to kill me on the spot, or stop me from reaching the hospital in time so that I would bleed to death."
当晚晚些时候在北京海军总医院，医生将他头部后侧深开的一个２英寸伤口缝合。袭击者表现专业，野蛮的突袭持续约四分钟，并无视路人目击整个过程。＂他们的目的很清楚，＂方６月３０日在一封电子邮件中告诉我，＂就是要当场打死我，或让我不能即时赶到医院以至失血而死。＂
Why would someone try to kill Fang Xuanchang? No one knows, or even seems to care. The attackers remain at large, despite an ongoing police investigation and Caijing's best efforts to cooperate with the police and involve the All-China Journalists Association. The attack was covered in brief in Beijing-based newspapers, including a brief editorial in a state-run newspaper arguing that journalists shouldn't be attacked. But no one in the Chinese media has gotten into the question of who would attack Fang -- and more importantly, why exactly Fang might have been attacked.
为什么会有人试图杀害方玄昌？没有人知道，甚至看似也没有人关心。尽管警方正在调查，财经杂志也竭力配合并使中国记者协会介入，但袭击者仍逍遥法外。北京出版的报纸简要报道了袭击事件，其中包括一份国营报纸上一篇简短的社论。社论认为记者不应该受到袭击。但是没有一份中国媒体去追问谁会袭击方--更重要的是，为什么恰恰是方会被袭击。
For Fang's colleagues, however, the message is clear: Reporting on controversial topics, as Fang has done, is unsafe. Journalists who are abused don't necessarily find out who has attacked them or why, but the message sent to their friends and colleagues is clear: Don't go there, or you could be next. It has a chilling effect on a wide circle of people. In the case of science journalism, the financial and political stakes are increasingly high, and the personal risks might be increasingly high as well.
不过，对于方的同事来说，信息是明确的：像方那样报道争议话题是不安全的。被虐记者不必去找出谁攻击他们及背后的原因，但传递给他们的朋友及同事的信息是明确的：不要淌那趟浑水，否则你就是下一个。这在广泛的人群中具有寒蝉效应。仅就科学新闻工作而言，财务和政治风险在逐渐增高，人身危险可能也在逐渐攀升。
Fang is one of the leading figures among China's scientific muckrakers -- a scourge of academic and government-sponsored pseudoscience and a critic of public and private quackery. For more than 10 years as a journalist, editor, and blogger on the influential (although frequently blocked) Chinese watchdog website New Threads, Fang has taken on academics listing faked awards and publishing plagiarized papers; hawkers of herbal cancer "cures," such as Wang Zhenguo, peddler of the Tian Xian herbal cancer treatment; and Chinese scientists who claim to predict earthquakes, among other targets. But paranoia and anger, even violence, mark some recent responses to Fang's work.
方是揭发中国科学丑闻的几个主要人物之一--一个学术界和政府资助的伪科学的鞭挞者，也是一个公共及私人领域骗术的批评者。在超过１０年作为记者，编辑，以及作为有影响力的监督网站新语丝的博主的生涯中，方曾担纲批评过开列伪造奖项和发表剽窃论文的学者；贩卖植物治癌方法者，比如贩卖天仙植物治癌法的王振国；以及声称可预测地震的中国科学家等等。然而对方的工作的最近的一些反应却主要是偏执妄想和脑羞成怒。
Several weeks ago Fang, previously science editor at China Newsweek (unrelated to the U.S. magazine Newsweek), appeared alongside a fellow rationalist, the biochemist-turned-columnist Fang Shimin (no relation, better known by his pen name Fang Zhouzi), on a Shenzhen TV debate about earthquake forecasting -- a largely discredited practice that remains an article of faith for many Chinese scientists and officials. One speaker, an official from China's national earthquake administration, a significant bureau under the State Council, spoke positively about parrots that can predict temblors and the paranormal abilities of a man who claimed he heard ringing in his ears before the quake in Yushu, in northwest China, in April. One guest on the show, Ren Zhenqiu of the Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences, accused the science activists of accepting U.S. money to stifle Chinese innovation. Fang Shimin claimed on his blog that after the recording, Ren Zhenqiu called him a "big Chinese traitor" and threw a punch at him.
几周前，曾任中国新闻周刊（和美国新闻周刊杂志无关）科学版编辑的方，和他的同道，理性主义者，生物学家出身的方是民（非亲属关系，更以笔名方舟子为人所知）一起出现在深圳电视台组织的一场关于地震预测的辩论节目中 --地震预测，基本上被推翻但仍被许多中国科学家和官员奉为信条 。一名发言者来自中国国家地震局，为国务院下属重要机构。他支持鹦鹉可以预测震动以及一个男性的超自然能力--此人声称在四月份中国西北玉树地震之前在自己耳中听到鸣响。节目上，任振球，来自中国气象科学研究院的一名观众，指责这些倡导科学的人士拿了美国的钱压制来中国的创新。方是民在其博客上称在节目录制结束后，任振球指他是大汗奸，并以一拳相向。
And this is not the full extent of the threats against Fang Shimin. On July 2, Fang said on his Sina microblog that he had received a threatening phone call. "Be careful in the next few days," the voice said. "Someone is going to fix you."
而这并不是针对方是民的威胁的全部。７月２日，方在他的新浪微博上说他接到一个威胁电话。＂小心点＂，那个声音说，＂这几天有人要整你。＂
Scientific ideas have a complex life in China. Today an important government slogan is the "scientific view of development," yet academic fraud is widespread. In January, the scientific journal Acta Crystallographica Section E, a peer-reviewed international journal based in Britain, announced the wholesale retraction of more than 70 papers by Chinese scientists who had falsified data. Three months later, the same publication announced the removal of another 39 articles "as a result of problems with the data sets or incorrect atom assignments." According to New Threads, 37 of these were entirely produced at Chinese universities. One Chinese-government study cited by Nature found that about one-third of more than 6,000 scientists surveyed at six top Chinese institutions said they had practiced "plagiarism, falsification or fabrication."
科学观念在中国命运多舛。今天政府的一个重要的口号是＂科学发展观＂，然而学术欺诈却普遍存在。一月份，科学期刊<晶体学报E辑>，一份在英国出版的同行评议国际刊物，宣布一次性撤消超过７０篇中国科学家伪造数据撰写的论文。三个月后，同一杂志宣布因数据问题或不正确的原子配置撤消另外３９篇论文。根据新语丝，其中３７篇完全由中国大学炮制。自然杂志援引一项中国政府研究发现, 来自中国六所高级研究机构的超过6000名参与调查的科学家中三分之一说他们曾经有剽窃，伪造或编造的行为。
Critics have blamed the pressure to produce fraudulent papers on unrealistic publication targets set by bureaucrats. But for Fang Xuanchang, the problem goes deeper still, as he told me when we met in May. It represents a slide backward from the scientific spirit of the anti-imperialist May 4th Movement -- the early 20th-century uprising that championed democracy, critical thought, and innovation. Speaking after the attack, Fang described himself and his colleagues as "quixotic." "Not many people understand the work we are doing," he said. "Most Chinese people's attitudes to science are superstitious and fearful." Things might be even worse at the elite level, he said, where science is encouraged in the abstract, without a grasp of the scientific method. Regarding scientific and critical thinking, Fang added, "Chinese people need a new enlightenment."
批评者把出版欺诈文章的压力归咎于官僚们设定的不现实的发表指标。但是对于方玄昌而言，问题更加复杂，当我们五月份碰面时他这样告诉我。这代表着从反帝的五四运动 (二十世纪早期为民主，批判性思考，和创新而斗争的运动) 的科学精神的大倒退。在受袭后的谈话中，方把自己和同事们描述为＂唐吉诃德。＂＂没有很多人理解我们所做的工作，＂他说，＂大部分中国人对科学的态度是迷信和害怕。＂在精英阶层问题可能更加严重，他说，抽象的科学得到鼓励，而没有掌握科学的方法。谈到科学和批判性的思维方式，方补充到，中国人需要一次新的启蒙。
Such issues are not only of parochial concern: Renewing China's oft-cited historical reputation for scientific innovation is a matter of urgency for the world. Last month a report from Britain's National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts suggested that as China enters a new phase of economic and geopolitical might, the country's potential to roll out new, low-carbon technologies becomes an increasingly important factor in global efforts to address climate change.
这些问题不仅只对中国重要：重振中国被经常提及的古代科学创新声誉对当今世界是一个迫切的课题。上个月英国全国科学技术与艺术基金会一份报告表明随着中国成为一个经济和地缘政治强国，其开发低碳新技术的潜力成为全球应对气候变化努力日趋重要的一环。
Harnessing scientific prowess requires promoting good academic practice, scientific education, critical thinking -- and science journalism.
驾驭科学之力需要推进良好的学术习惯，科学教育，批判性思维方式以及科学新闻工作。