Troubled Chinese academia
Scandals, corruption and shady deals have also blackened the title.
52-year-old Duan Zhenhao, former director of the Key Laboratory of Earth's Deep Interior at the China Academy of Sciences (CAS)，was arrested for misusing government research grants and having affairs with women--including his students--last month.
Duan, who had been in line for a senior role with the CAS, was found guilty of corruption and using public money to pay personal travel expenses.
Had the crimes not been exposed, Duan would very likely have been recommended as a candidate for academician this year.
"Over the past two decades, tolerance to fraud has led to more people taking risks to achieve gain without pain, which has significantly harmed healthy academic development in China," noted Zhu Qing, an academician at the CAS.
As if things weren't bad enough, more senior officials have recently starting joining the ranks of academicians, causing more headaches to an already troubled academic community.
This year's candidate list of the Project Management Department at the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE) shows that nearly half of the 44 candidate academicians are senior managers of state-owned enterprises and senior government officials.
"Many academicians speculated that all the candidates for this department were senior managers or officials," said Pan Jiazheng, 82, vice head of the CAE.
Backhanded cooperation between academicians and companies has also aroused discontent among the public.
The Annual Report on Science Communication of China (2011) by the Chinese Institute for Science Communication revealed that in an unnamed province in 2009, 18 advertorials in a newspaper were written by academicians from the CAS and CAE.
