Dear Colleagues,

In the past 24 hours, I have received a large number of emails in response to the Statement. Many colleagues have agreed to sign this statement and/or proposed suggestions/corrections. I have revised the Statement based on the suggestions / corrections. A colleague has kindly translated it into Chinese. Now I am sending you this revised Statement both in English and Chinese.

Why are we doing this? I believe all of us care very much about healthy development of science in our motherland. Many of us have collaborations with scientists in China or directly lead research projects and have students there. We all know the problems we are facing in China. A major problem is about the infrastructure for scientific research in China. To have a right way to deal possible disputes is an important one. To build up a proper environment for scientific communications, we need to work on specific cases. Now the Wei-Si case gives us an opportunity to do this.

It should be pointed out that, in this statement, we do not take any side, or make a right or wrong judgment for Wei-Si case.

What we are doing is to suggest a due procedure for solving this case and also for other future scientific disputes.

We realize that, on one hand, we need to take firm actions against all kinds of misconducts; on the other hand, we must prevent and oppose a "culture revolution" style in handling disputes in scientific issues. This statement is to give our voice on these important issues. In my view, our action could be more necessary than that simply contribute to specific research projects.

We should take our responsibility.

If more of you would sign this statement or have further suggestions/comments, please let me know. I hope to send this signed Statement to CAS, Sichuan University and NSF first. Then we will try to publish it in a newspaper in China.

Cordially,

Xin-Yuan

Xin-Yuan Fu, Ph. D.
Professor
Department of Microbiology and Immunology
Walther Oncology Center
Indiana University School of Medicine
635 Barnhill Drive, MS 420
Indianapolis, IN 46202-5120
Phone: 317-274-2082
Fax: 317-274-4090
E-mail: xfu@IUPUI.edu
http://www.iupui.edu/%7Emicro/fu.html