A TSINGHUA University Ph.D. student and his doctoral advisor had their respective degrees and job titles revoked after at least 11 published papers authored by the pair were retracted from international academic journals for various misconduct, according to the school’s recent statement.

Initial reports uncovering potential problems in these published studies surfaced in March 2016, the statement said.

However, it’s unclear whether the university disclosed the information previously, or issued the late statement after the recent allegation surfaced on Retraction Watch, a blog which reports on scientific papers being retracted, and the growing media coverage on the topic which has garnered widespread attention.

On Oct. 21, the Graduate School at Shenzhen, Tsinghua University, disclosed that two material scientists, a student surnamed Ye and his supervisor surnamed Tang, were found guilty of academic fraud back in 2017 for multiple papers authored by the two.

The statement revealed that Tsinghua’s branch in Shenzhen City, Guangdong Province, had stripped Ye of his Ph.D. on Apr. 28, 2017, and removed Tang, the advisor – who has retired now – from his position as head of the materials department and deputy director of the New Materials Research Institute in the following June, as the result of an internal investigation launched by the school committee in Jan. 2017.

Evidence of the misconduct, unveiled by Retraction Watch, involves self-plagiarism including content duplication, image manipulation, data fabrication, as well as deceptive authorship such as fake signatures, and other issues.

Ye and Tang’s names often appeared together as authors in a variety of science journals dating back to 2014, with the most recent publications arriving in 2016.

The latest retraction was regarding a paper published by the pair, entitled “Effects of high-energy electro-pulsing treatment on microstructure, mechanical properties and corrosion behavior of Ti–6Al–4V alloy” in the journal Materials Science and Engineering.

(CGTN)