Chen Jin, a former head of microelectronics at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, has been fired after it was said that much of his research was stolen or inaccurate.
Here's the BBC report:
China's Xinhua state news agency said that the Hanxin digital signal processing chips were not based on research carried out by Mr Chen.
Nor could the chips carry out the functions, such as reading fingerprints or playing MP3 files, that they were supposed to, it reported.
This isn't the first claim of fakery to hit sci-tech academics - after all, just a few months back we saw the truth about South Korean cloning pioneer Hwang Woo-suk. But I wonder what this latest development shows us: are fakers any more prevalent today, or is it just easier to catch them?
The internet and other communications technologies cut both ways: they make it easier for cheats to subvert the rules - in, say, their exams - but they also make it easier to aggregate knowledge and uncover fakers.
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