The extramarital affair of a research scholar with the Institute of Geology and Geophysics, affiliated to the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), has drawn widespread public attention to research funding. Apart from scholars' moral decline, people are also questioning the role of research funding supervisors, says an article in China Youth Daily. Excerpts:

Since project leaders are in charge of allocating funds for and managing research, they can easily know the details of the use of the research funds.

The public is angry with the CAS researcher's affair because research funds have been grossly misused in recent years. For long, people have criticized the way research funds are allocated and researchers misuse them. They have also criticized the "unconditional trust" placed in project leaders and utilization of research funds.

The use of research funds is not transparent because many research institutes consider it "unnecessary to know how or on what the funds are being used".

A recent media survey shows that the utilization rate of research funds in China is generally quite low, and that some researchers even use research projects as a tool to "make money".

Though higher departments do send experts to do a mid-term review of research projects and check the use and progress of project funding, internal inspection by research institutes almost always turns out to be a mere formality.

The "black hole" in research funding cannot be solved until society gets to know how exactly the funds are used and what benefits they bring.