Fang Zhouzi Should Reflect On His Own Beating

--- An analysis of the curious case of Xiao Chuanguo versus Fang Zhouzi

(Translated directly from the Chinese article dated 2010-10-05 by YDX)

The personal vendetta between Zhouzi Fang (Shimin Fang) and Dr. Chuanguo Xiao has a tortuous history. Years ago, Dr. Xiao accused Fang of plagiarizing a paper from the “Science” magazine in one of his Chinese articles. This allegation, after a sentence-by-sentence comparison of Fang’s article with the English original, was found to be true (ref, the book by Yi Ming titled “The Vicious Struggle between Fang Zhouzi and Xiao Chuanguo”). Others also alleged that Fang habitually plagiarized material in his writings (See, e.g., “Fangzhou Zi plagiarized Yin He”). One may conclude that Dr. Xiao’s accusations were not slanderous per se.

Thus, it was Dr. Xiao who accused Fang of fraud first. Any attack by Fang on Dr. Xiao must therefore be presumed to be retaliatory and of personal nature. Under the ethical norms of our society, even if Fang is suspicious of Dr. Xiao’s credentials and integrity, he should disqualify himself from making the judgment to avoid the appearance of bias. However, Fang wrote many articles accusing Dr. Xiao of academic fraud.

The main thrust of Fang’s fraud case was the following allegations : (1) Dr. Xiao falsely counted conference summaries as research papers in his resume; in the past 20 years, Dr. Xiao had published 4 papers only, which had been cited a meager 9 times; (2) the so-called “Xiao Reflex Arc” was self-acclaimed, it was not recognized by the medical community; (3) Dr. Xiao served simultaneously as full-time faculty in the New York University Medical School and China’s Huazhong University of Science & Technology; with his feet in two boats, Dr. Xiao was disqualified from becoming an academician of Academia Sinica.

Dr. Xiao filed a defamation lawsuit against Fang at a District Court in Wuhan, China. In 2006, after a bench trial, the Court adjudged that Fang had injured Dr. Xiao’s reputation with false statements of fact. The Court ordered Fang to publish an apology to Dr. Xiao and pay Dr. Xiao RMB 30,000 within 15 days of the judgment. Fang appealed the decision. He provided the higher court a letter allegedly from his overseas supporters. However, the Court excluded the letter as unreliable on the ground that it had no signatures. The Court affirmed the lower court’s judgment.

According to documents published on-line, the Wuhan Court considered dozens of pieces of evidence, including but not limited to the following: (1) Dr. Xiao offered a verified list of 93 published papers; (2) The somatic-CNS-autonomic reflex arc discovered by Xiao (also called Xiao’s reflex arc, Xiao’s surgical procedure) had been incorporated into advanced medical textbooks published by the PRC Ministry of Health and the internationally renowned urology textbook “CAMPBELS UROLOGY”; (3) Dr. Xiao had been twice honored with the Grand Prize of the International Jack Lapides Award on Urodynamic and Neurourology Research (attached letters from the Jack Lapides  foundation and leading experts in the field); (4) Dr. Xiao was granted research funding in the amount of USD 2.51 million by the U.S. National Institute of Health (attached NIH’s review of the Xiao reflex arc research); (5) The NYU certified that Xiao' faculty position there was part-time. Based on the evidence, Fang’s attack on Dr. Xiao indeed constituted defamation.

Before the West developed its laws into a more contemporary form, private parties often resolved their disputes by violent means. Germanic legal traditions provided “trial by combat” as a judicial procedure for determining substantive rights. Personal insults were often settled by a duel to the death, initially with swords, and later, pistols. The development of civil law mitigated the need for violence in resolving personal conflicts. However, if a civil judgment is not enforced, judicial sanction will not achieve the desired effect of relieving the distress of an injured party.

Had Fang acted as a law-abiding citizen, complied with the court order and apologized to Dr. Xiao, the hostilities between the two men might have not escalated. However, Fang did not follow the court order. Instead, his blog is replete with emotionally charged attacks on the Wuhan District Court, and devoid of rational analysis of the controversy. For instance, Fang wrote an article titled “Wuhan Xiao’s Court Abused the Law and Stole Citizen’s Rightful Property”, another article referred to the District Court as “Xiao’s Reflex House”, yet another derided the “Intermediate People’s Court” as the “Intermediate Xiao’s Court”. If this kind of behavior happened in the U.S., a judge would have immediately sent Fang to jail. Against Dr. Xiao personally, Fang continued to label him “a cheat”, and posted an essay “recommending mental illness evaluation for Xiao Chuanguo”. This kind of verbal assault is no different from redneck bickering and cussing on the street.

Dr. Xiao is a world-renowned scientist. However, a scientist is also a human being, with emotions and temper, not to mention that Xiao had repeatedly forewarned Fang of his retaliatory intent.

Mr. Fang should seriously reflect on why he took a beating.