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ACM Statement | DOI:10.1145/3473051
Marty J. Wolf, Don Gotterbarn, and Michael Kirkpatrick
Upholding
ACM’s Principles
Repeated ethical violations ends
with membership revocation and ban.
I
N RE S PO N S E TO serious violations against ACM’s Code of
Ethics and Professional Conduct, the ACM Council voted
unanimously to revoke the
ACM membership of Tao Li, a professor of computer engineering at the
University of Florida, at its meeting on
June 11, 2021. The Committee on Professional Ethics (COPE) recommended
this action to Council after considering the evidence it received concerning
Li’s repeated violations of the ACM’s
Code of Ethics (https://www.acm.org/
code-of-ethics). Council’s action demonstrates ACM’s commitment to advancing computing as a profession
and as a service to society. ACM is not
alone in this commitment. Indeed,
other professional organizations have
adopted ACM’s Code of Ethics indicating their support of its values and the
positive impact its Principles afford
the computing community.
Both ACM and IEEE received complaints about Li’s actions surrounding two computer architecture conferences: The 2019 IEEE International
Symposium on Computer Architecture
(ISCA) and the 2017 ACM Architectural
Support for Programming Languages
and Operating Systems (ASPLOS). A
Joint Investigation Committee (JIC)
was convened in early 2020 and a team
of professional investigators were
hired. As a result of the investigation,
JIC filed an ACM Code of Ethics violation complaint against Li, submitting
as evidence the investigators’ final report. COPE reviewed the evidence and
determined that Li willfully violated
scientific research integrity standards.
Quite simply, Li orchestrated an attack
on the ethical computing values expressed in the ACM Code of Ethics and
most other codes of scientific conduct.
In one case, Li’s actions involved a
paper submitted to ISCA ‘19 authored
by his graduate student, Huixiang
Chen. Evidence exposed dozens of
messages that “make clear that Dr. Li
intentionally breached the peer review
process for the paper in multiple ways:
he repeatedly shared the reviewers’
names and their scores of the paper
with Chen; he manufactured support
for the paper by asking Chen to draft
messages for paper reviewers to post
on the conference’s software platform;
he then passed those reviews on to the
reviewers; and, in two instances, the
reviewers posted the reviews that Chen
had written at Li’s direction.” Further,
the evidence showed that Li coerced
Chen to publish the paper after Chen
raised concerns that the work contained incorrect or falsified results.
In another case, Li shared his reviewer credentials for the 2017 ASPLOS conference paper submission system with
some of his students to enable them to
download confidential draft materials.
Further, the investigation uncovered
evidence that Li inappropriately approached reviewers in connection with
other conferences.
Throughout the investigation, Li
knowingly and intentionally proposed
obvious false theories and spurious procedural arguments in order to thwart it.
In the end, the evidence showed
that Li deliberately and repeatedly undermined the peer review process of
at least three conferences, and he had
actively encouraged others to engage
in activities to support and facilitate
these attacks. Li knowingly interfered
with efforts to maintain the integrity
of research and publication processes,
and he violated the community standards expressed in ACM’s Code of Ethics. His actions demonstrated a lack
of respect for, and an unwillingness
to abide by, the Code’s Principles, and
he intentionally organized an assault
on them for his own benefit.
Based on the clear and convincing evidence that Li flagrantly violated
several Principles of the Code, ACM
terminated Li’s involvement with all
ACM-affiliated or ACM SIG-affiliated
activities (including conference organizing or program committees) both in
person or remotely. He is banned from
publishing articles in ACM-affiliated
conference proceedings or journals
until 2036.
Principle 4.2 of the Code has us
“[t]reat violations of the Code as inconsistent with membership in the
ACM.” The evidence presented by
the JIC clearly indicated that Li’s behavior was not only inconsistent with
the Code, but that he actively worked
to attack the core values and ethical
practice expected for members of the
ACM. Consequently, COPE further
recommended that Li’s ACM membership be revoked, and Council voted
in agreement to officially cut all ties
with him.
ACM policy generally prevents
COPE from commenting publicly on
cases it reviews, but in this case Council directed COPE to make a public
statement. ACM’s Code indicates that
“the public good is the paramount
consideration” in decision making
and describes key ethical principles
as essential elements of computing
professionalism. The ACM is committed to upholding these Principles. By
providing some details of this case, we
hope to prevent future behavior that
undermines these values. ACM members should promote the public good
through computing and should actively and publicly resist behavior which
threatens it.
Marty J. Wolf and Don Gotterbarn serve as co-chairs and
Michael Kirkpatrick is a member of the ACM Committee
on Professional Ethics.
Copyright held by authors/owners.
AU G U ST 2 0 2 1 | VO L. 6 4 | N O. 8 | C OM M U N IC AT ION S OF T HE ACM
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