Expert says disclosing a complainant’s identity would be ‘really bad practice’
SHIRLEY.ZHAO@SCMP.COM
UPDATED : Tuesday, 10 May, 2016, 1:57am
Academics call for more protection for whistle-blowers. Photo: K.Y. Cheng
A group of university academics has set up a concern group to lobby the government to set up laws to protect whistle-blowers.
This came after the latest controversy over the University of Hong Kong’s handling of an academic scandal, which revealed that the university’s policy says the identity of the whistle-blower shall be disclosed to the accused parties, raising concerns over retaliation.
An expert in whistle-blowing practices said disclosing a complainant’s identity would be “really bad practice”.
In the scandal, a former assistant professor in the department of chemistry accused his then-supervisor, Professor Yang Dan, and two of Yang’s doctoral students, of falsifying research results in a paper published in an authoritative international journal, Journal of the American Chemical Society.
The complainant, Professor Roger Wong Hoi-fung, said he received an email of dismissal from Yang in February last year, two months after he made the complaint. He said he then complained to the university about the dismissal and the university in May decided to retract the termination of his contract.
But he resigned two months later, saying he wanted to show that his complaint was not about his personal interest.
Yang said she had given Wong notice of termination in December 2014 before he made the complaint. HKU has not responded to a request for comment on the dismissal.
Wong, one of the founders of the concern group on research honesty, said the involved paper used HK$1.65 million of public money funded by the University Grants Committee, but that Hong Kong has no laws regulating research fraud or protecting academic whistle-blowers.
“There is an urgent need for the legislation on this,” said Wong.
Wong said he would release a full membership list later, but several academics from HKU and Baptist University had confirmed they were members.
HKU’s whistle-blowing policy states that “the identity of the whistle-blower, if known, shall be made known” to the alleged parties unless there is a special request from the complainant with good reasons not to do so.
David Lewis, a professor of employment law and head of the Whistleblowing Research Unit at Middlesex University in London, said universities around the world normally would state in their policy that complainants’ identity would be protected unless in special circumstances where the disclosure of the identity would be compelled by law or critical to investigation.
“Good practice is to allow confidential reporting and to keep the identity of the whistle-blower away from the accused person because there is no positive reason for passing on that information, unless it appears a calculated malice,” said Lewis. “The idea that we will pass on your identity to anybody else is really bad practice.”
Lewis said in protecting complainants’ identity, universities would be serving their own interest because it would prevent whistle-blowers from seeking attention from the press or external regulators.
Wong said the concern group has submitted a letter to HKU’s council chairman Arthur Li Kwok-cheung, requesting him to investigate the handling of the scandal by the senior management team, led by vice chancellor Professor Peter Mathieson.
http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/education-community/article/1942974/academics-call-laws-protect-whistle-blowers-after
