海归饶毅致信《自然》杂志总编反击对叶诗文报道

老由

斐尔,
　　你可能因 Ewen Callaway 对叶诗文的报道而被 email 狂炸，过去二十小时，给你email的人里面小部分也给我来信。

　　如果你奇怪《自然》非本质部分一篇报道为何带来这么大的反应，你应该高兴中文读者比世界其他读者更看重你们的新闻报道，与科学相关的（即使关系很小）也可能重于《纽约时报》，中文媒体报道用你们的新闻也远多于一般西方媒体用你们的新闻。

　　Callaway报道最好也是草率、最差是种族偏见：1) 最初的副标题暗示叶可能舞弊; 2) Callaway用了两件事实说明叶惊人地异常，而两件都错了;
3)Callaway没咨询意见不同的专家，导致报道不平衡，低于公平报道的最低标准。所以，Callaway至少不负责任，可能太快就暗示中国运动员容易舞弊。他肯定没有达到新闻报道的通常标准。

　　我很高兴看到在我草拟此信的过程中，《自然》可能意识到原副标题的偏见，将之由“成绩追踪记录有助于抓体育舞弊者”更正为“成绩追踪记录有助于驱散疑问”。舞弊的前设改为疑问。

　　Callaway报道用的两个“事实”让叶诗文看起来比真实的要更“异常”：说她比自己在2012年7月的记录要快7秒，说她在最后五十米比男子冠军Ryan
Lochte还要快，而后者是男子第二快的世界纪录。

　　第一个“事实”错了，第二个误导。1)叶比自己只快5秒，而此前她的记录创于2011年、不是2012年，这位16岁运动员用了一年而不是少于4周刷新自己。2)叶只在混合泳400米中最后自由泳一段比Lochte快，而非整个400米。Lochte在400米是世界第二快的记录，叶在400米丝毫不能接近他（慢了二十多秒)。叶只是自由泳最强，而在前300米落后于好些女选手。虽然Lochte在400米很快，他在最后50米的自由泳慢于五、六位男选手。叶最后五十米自由泳也慢于那些男子。所以，叶只在她自己的强项而他的弱项快于Lochte。如果Callaway多做的功课，他就难以用这些“事实”来使“问题”醒目。如果Callaway多查询，他就能发现其他游泳运动员也曾在十几岁发育阶段显著提高记录。这些事实更正后，Callaway的报道就没基础。

　　还有好些事实，可以让一般读者更理解叶诗文的成绩，我不在此赘述。可以参见《附件1》，wikipedia对叶的成绩有一个相当快而公平的描述。署名的《自然》报道应该优于Wikipedia。Callaway报道与Wikipedia条目的差别也显示该记者未采访已经公开提出不同意见的专家。

　　你应该收到了王立铭博士的一封email。他在发表多篇《自然》和《自然神经科学》的第一作者论文后，获加州理工学院的博士，并因此得到有声誉的奖学金到伯克利加州大学做独立的博士后。万一他给你的email埋在你收到的成百上千邮件中，我将其拷贝为《附件2》。他email给了我、要我看看此事。

　　Callaway在线报道下面有很多跟帖讨论。有些学生以为有些很有道理（且有实质内容）的讨论被删了，他们寄给了我。我选Lai
Jiang的一份为《附件3》，Zhenxi Zhang的为《附件4》。你们可以看到学生和一些更有经历的《自然》读者不高兴是有依据的，而这些为Callaway忽略。

　　英国人常忘记、而现代华人不易忘记，世界上很多人以为鸦片战争是中国人卖鸦片给英国人。我自己6月份（这确是2012年）又经历一次，我和一位老朋友（麻省理工学院教授）在香港开会时，发现她竟然也是这么认为。

　　英国人的国际形象好，部分原因是你们的科学和科学家：当全世界中学生都要从教科书学牛顿和达尔文时，英国赢得了世界的尊重。《自然》应该以这些伟大（且客观）的科学家建立的传统和声誉为自豪。他们其中有些曾在《自然》发表过论文，才有《自然》的今天。你们如果采取措施修复你们的新闻记者造成的损害，可以加强你们的声誉。

　　英国人从来没因鸦片战争对我们道歉，即使在1997年离开香港时也未显示丝毫悔意。而香港是英国在鸦片战争后强迫我们割让的土地。所以，记忆是犹新的，而不仅是1840年代的残余。如果《自然》拒绝承认此报道不公平，可能很难“驱散”英国至上的“疑问”（借用《自然》对叶报道的词汇）。

　　中国人受形象不佳的牵累。我们也知道我们还有很多感到羞耻的未解决的问题，包括舞弊。越来越多的中国人能接受合理与平衡的批评，我们在伦敦奥运会为我们羽毛球的问题公开道歉就是证据。但我们对缺依据、有偏见的批评还很敏感。叶诗文不过是个16岁的年轻人，本该为自己职业生涯的成就而满心欢喜。当已知她通过了奥运会赛前、赛中多次测试，而毫无证据指责她的时候，还有很多媒体，特别是《自然》这样的刊物，渲染负面舆论多于正面，当然令人深感不平。

　　我希望你们能澄清记录，发表平衡Callaway报道的意见。

　　北京大学生命科学学院
       神经生物学教授 饶毅

　　原文（2012年8月4日1:57am发送）

　　Dear Phil,
　　You might have been bombarded with emails about Ewen Callaway’s report on the Chinese Olympic gold medalist Ye Shiwen. Over the last 20 hours, I have received emails from a small fraction of those who had emailed you.

　　If you wonder why a piece in a non-essential section of Nature has brought you so much response, you should be happy to know that Chinese readers place much more weight in Nature news reports than the rest of the world does. If an event is related to science (even tangentially) and Nature publishes a news report, many Chinese readers treat the Nature report more seriously than New York Times. Chinese news media also use Nature news pieces much more than the regular Western news media would.

　　The Callaway report was sloppy at the best and racially biased at the worst: 1) the original subtitle implied cheating on Ye’s part, setting a negative tone for the report; 2) Callaway presented two facts to establish that Ye was strikingly anomalous, but both “facts” were wrong; 3) Callaway did not check with experts whose opinions did not support the doping explanation, and thus did not provide a balance report
that is the minimal standard of fair reporting. Therefore, Callaway is at least irresponsible, and could have jumped too quickly to imply that Chinese athletes were prone to cheating. He has certainly not held onto the usual standard of news reporting.

　　I am glad that, while I was drafting this letter, Nature may have already noticed the bias in the original subtitle and corrected it by changing it from “Performance profiling could help to catch cheaters in sports” to “Performance profiling could help to dispel doubts”. A presumption of cheating has changed to doubts.

　　The Callaway report presented two “facts” which made Ye Shiwen seem more “anomalous” than she really was by stating: that she was 7 seconds faster than herself in the same event in July 2012, and that, in the last 50 meters, she was faster than Ryan Lochte, the gold
medalist of the same event for men, with the second fastest record.

　　The first “fact” was wrong, while the second was misleading. 1) Ye was only ~5 seconds faster than her own record in July, 2011, giving the 16 year old a full year rather than less than 4 weeks to improve her own record. 2) Ye was faster than Lochte only in the freestyle, not for the entire 400 meters. Lochte’s time was the second fastest for the entire 400 meters, for which Ye was not even close (she was more than 20 seconds slower than Lochte in 400 meters). Ye was only at her best in freestyle and trailed behind other women in the same event in the first 300 meters of the individual medley. While Lochte was the fastest in 400 meters, he was slower than 5 or 6 men in the last 50 meters of freestyle. Ye was slower than those other men. Thus, Ye was only faster than Lochte in a style that was her strength and his weakness. Had Callaway done a bit more home work, then he would have had a hard time to use these “facts” to highlight the “problem”. Had Callaway done double-checking, he would have found that other
swimmers had significantly improved their own records when they were in the teens. Corrections of these facts would have changed the basis for the Callaway report.

　　There are more facts that would have made the performance of Ye Shiwen more understandable to the general readership, which I will not go into
details here. See Attachment 1 for an amazingly quick and well-balanced description of Ye’s performance by Wikipedia. Signed reports in Nature should
have been better than Wikipedia. The contrast between the Callaway report and the Wikipedia item shows that the reporter did not interview experts who had publicly voiced different opinions.

　　You should have received an email from Dr. Liming Wang, who obtained a PhD from Caltech after publishing first author papers in Nature and Nature Neuroscience. He was awarded a prestigious fellowship for an independent postdoc at Berkeley. In case his email has been buried among the hundreds you have received, I am copying it here as Attachment 2. He had sent a copy of his email to me and asked me to look at the
issue.

　　There are many online posts below the Callaway report. Some students think that a few very reasonable (and substantive) posts have been
deleted. They have sent these to me and I am including one authored by Lai Jiang as Attachment 3 and another by Zhenxi Zhang as Attachment 4. You can see that the anger of students and more established scientists who read Nature was supported by facts neglected by Callaway.

　　One point the British often forget, but the modern Chinese do not, is that many in the world wrongly think that the Opium Wars occurred because the Chinese sold opium to the British. I personally experienced this in June (2012) when a long time friend of mine at MIT thought that way while she and I were in Hong Kong attending a meeting.

　　The British have a good international image, partly because of your science and your scientists: when every middle school student has to know Newton and Darwin in textbooks, the entire Britain wins the respect of the world. Nature should be proud of the tradition and prestige built by the great (and objective) scientists, some of whom have published in Nature to make Nature what it is today. Your prestige will be strengthened when you take steps to repair the damage caused by your news reporters.

　　The British have never apologized to us about the Opium Wars and did not show slight remorse when leaving Hong Kong in 1997 which the British forced us to cede after the British won the Opium Wars. So the memory is rather fresh, not just lingering from the 1840s. If Nature refuses to admit that this report was not balanced, it will be difficult to “dispel doubts” about British supremacy.

　　The Chinese suffer from a poor image. We also know that we have many unsolved problems that we are ashamed of, including cheating. More and more Chinese are receptive to legitimate and balanced criticism, as evidenced by our public apology for our faults at the badminton games during the London Olympic. But we are sensitive to ill-founded criticism with apparent biases. Ye Shiwen is only a 16 year old and should have enjoyed her moment of professional achievement. When she is known to have passed multiple tests before and during the London Olympic and there is no
evidence to accuse her, it is certainly unjustified when the negative opinions were highly publicized but the positive ones were not, especially in a journal like Nature.

　　I hope that you will set record straight and publish opinions that balance the Callaway report.

　　Yi Rao, Ph.D.

　　Professor of Neurobiology, Peking University School of Life Sciences

　　Beijing, China

向饶教授致敬，中国人就应该维护自己的权益！这是尊严！

向您致敬，中国需要更多这样的学者和专家。来维护我们的尊严

向饶毅致敬！不接受毫无根据的诋毁与猜疑。