学海无涯，小心造假风波

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The first thing that went through Alison Avenell's head when she heard Yoshihiro Sato had died was that it might be a trick.

当听到佐藤义宏去世的消息时，艾莉森.艾文内尔的第一反应是这恐怕是假的吧。

It was March 2017, and in the previous years, Avenell, a clinical nutritionist at the University of Aberdeen in the United Kingdom, had spent thousands of hours combing through Sato's papers, together with three colleagues in New Zealand.

当时是2017年3月，在之前的日子里，艾文内尔，英国阿伯丁大学的一名临床营养学家，跟她的三个在新西兰的同事一起已经花了上千个小时来整理佐藤的论文。

They had discovered that Sato, a bone researcher at a hospital in southern Japan, had fabricated data for dozens of clinical trials published in international journals.

他们发现佐藤教授，日本南部一家医院的骨干研究员，他在国际杂志上发表的很多临床试验的论文中都有数据造假。

"With so much going on, so much fabrication, you just wonder if it's convenient for the person to go and hide," Avenell says.

“涉案之光，编造之多，你会想这个人是不是远走他乡，躲起来比较好，”艾文内尔说道。

Her second thought was that Sato might have killed himself.

她转念一想，佐藤有可能是自杀的。

"We have no indication that he committed suicide, but it concerns us," Avenell said  in late 2017.

“我们无法指明他是自杀了，不过我们确实担心，”艾文内尔在2017年末的时候说。

Three years earlier, Japanese stem cell scientist Yoshiki Sasai had hanged himself in the stairwell of the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology in Kobe after he was caught up in a stem cell scandal.

三年前，在陷入干细胞丑闻后，日本的干细胞科学家笹井芳树在神户的发育生物学理研中心的楼梯井里上吊自杀。

"We were aware of the culture in Japan and the dishonor something like this could bring," Avenell said.

“我们认识到了日本的文化以及这种事情会带来的耻辱，”艾文内尔说道。

It was one more mystery in a deeply unsettling case.

这是一个非常令人不安的案件中的又一个谜。

Sato's fraud was one of the biggest in scientific history.

佐藤的造假是科学上上最大的造假案之一。

The impact of his fabricated reports—many of them on how to reduce the risk of bone fractures—rippled far and wide.

他所编造的论文的影响—其中很多是关于怎样减少骨折风险的—非常广泛而深远。

Meta-analyses that included his trials came to the wrong conclusion; professional societies based medical guidelines on his papers.

很多引用了他的试验的分析得出了错误的结论；专业协会还以他的论文为基础制定医疗指导方针。

To follow up on studies they did not know were faked, researchers carried out new trials that enrolled thousands of real patients.

研究员们为了重复这些他们不知道是造假的研究，他们还进行了包含上千名真实患者的新试验。

Exposing Sato's lies and correcting the literature had been a bruising struggle for Avenell and her colleagues.

揭发佐藤的骗局并将文化拨乱反正对于艾文内尔和她的同事们来说是一场激烈的斗争。

Yet they could not understand why Sato faked so many studies, or how he got away with it for so long.

不过他们仍然无法理解为什么佐藤要在这么多的研究中造假，而他又是怎么在这样长的时间内逍遥法外的。

They puzzled over the role of his co-authors, some of whom had their names on dozens of his papers.

对于他的共同作者们所扮演的角色他们也很困惑，在他的很多论文中都有这些共同作者。

("Do we honestly believe they knew nothing at all about what was going on?" Avenell asked.)

（“我们真的能相信他们对此一无所知吗？”艾文内尔问道。）

They wondered whether other doctors at his hospital read Sato's work—and whether the Japanese scientific community ever questioned how he managed to publish more than 200 papers, many of them ambitious studies that would have taken most researchers years to complete.

他们很好奇他的医院其他的医生们是否也读了佐藤的文章—以及是否日本科学界曾怀疑过他是怎么发出超过200篇的文章的，其中很多都是需要花费大部分研究员们多年才能完成的充满雄心的研究。

The tools of science that the group had used—analyzing studies, calculating statistics, writing papers—could reveal fraud.

这只调查团队所使用的科学工具—研究分析，统计计算和论文写作—可以揭发出造假。

But they could not expose the personal and cultural factors that drove it, or assess its emotional toll.

但他们无法揭露驱动它的个人和文化因素，也无法评估它的情感代价。

关于这次佐藤造假事件朋友们有什么看法呢？欢迎给amber留言哦！