Chinese PhD dropout turned whistle-blower exposes data fabrication by renowned scholars
Son of migrant worker from poor rural background uses AI to check academic research papers; pushes for reform to stamp out dishonesty
A Chinese PhD dropout who has become a viral influencer exposing academic misconduct is building a growing army of followers eager to reveal ethical malpractice among scientific researchers.
The former PhD candidate in bioscience at the prestigious Beihang University, Geng Hongwei, dropped out in 2025, and became a full-time whistle-blower with over two million followers on an online platform.
Geng attracted public attention for a video in April, in which he questioned a paper from the team of the dean of the School of Life Sciences and Technology at Tongji University, Wang Ping, published in the British science journal Nature.
Geng noted the abnormal data in the paper.
He listed them one by one in his video, for instance the last digit of almost the whole column of figures was 5, and the figures in one column exactly differ by 0.3 from another column.
He also noted that the 196 laboratory mice’s weight data in the paper were rounded to two decimal places, which was abnormally precise as mice move a lot and cannot be weighed accurately.