The News-Gazette: Former UI Colleagues Show Support for Fu

The following article was published by The News-Gazette on 12/21/2013:

Former UI colleagues show support for FuSat, 12/21/2013 - 9:18pm | Julie Wurth 

The University of Illinois scientist walked into Paul Magelli's business consulting office and handed him a piece of paper with an algebraic equation. 

As he tells it, Magelli looked at the equation and said, "I know math, but I don't know this level math. What does it do?" 

The scientist, computer expert Ping Fu, told him, "It makes things perfect." 

The 3-D modeling technology Fu developed in the 1990s with her husband, renown mathematician and computer scientist Herbert Edelsbrunner, grew into a business called Geomagic that would eventually make Ping Fu an entrepreneurial rock star. 

Her fame has also brought her heartache, as critics have attacked her accounts of persecution in China as a child in her memoir, "Bend Not Break: A Life in Two Worlds." 

Those who knew her at the UI say they have no doubts about Fu's story. 

"I believe her. I believed her then. I believe she was genuine. In every other way I dealt with Ping, she had the highest integrity, both as a student, as a colleague, as a researcher and as a businesswoman," said art and design Professor Donna Cox, director of the Advanced Scientific Visualization Laboratory at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, where Fu worked. 

After moving to the United States from China, Fu earned a master's degree in computer science at the UI in 1990. She was hired as a visiting research programmer in April 1991 and promoted to technical program manager in August 1995 before leaving NCSA in 1999. 

Fu worked in a software development group at NCSA that produced the Mosaic software project, which led to Netscape and Internet Explorer. Among her collaborators was Netscape founder Mark Andreessen. 

In 1996, she and her husband co-founded Geomagic — originally known as Raindrop Geomagic — "because the raindrop is the most prefect of all shapes," she told Magelli. The company has become a leader in digital shape sampling and processing, which involves scanning objects with optical beams and making 3-D digital replications of them for manufacturing and testing purposes. 

Cox worked with Fu through their visualization work at NCSA. One of their projects was "Cosmic Voyage," an Imax film, using NCSA's virtual reality CAVE. Fu also took a computer animation course from Cox. 

"She came here because of the excitement of NCSA," Cox said. 

Ping shared many of the same stories outlined in her book about repression in China with her colleagues back in the 1990s, Cox said. She finds the attacks on Fu "ridiculous." 

"There was no reason for her to make all of this up. They are trying to just ruin her reputation," she said. "Who knows why. It could be political, given the situation in China. 

"To me, it just characterizes so many oppressed and victimized women who are not believed. They're disregarded. People try to undermine them." 

"I have only positive things to say about Ping. She was so focused and settled on how to solve all kinds of problems, whether they were technical or whether they were management," Cox said. "She seemed fair, honest, with the highest integrity." 

Magelli, who met Fu through a business consulting program at the UI College of Business, has become good friends with her and invited her back to campus several times. She recently delivered the annual Cozad Lecture at the College of Business, speaking about the potential for 3-D printing to reinvigorate American manufacturing. 

He describes her as "brilliant" and a "visionary," who resurrected her life after coming to the United States. Like Cox, Magelli said he has "no doubt" that she has told the truth. 

"Absolutely. Unquestionably," he said. 

He said UI students from China have told him that the Cultural Revolution is a "forbidden topic" in their families. Nor do they learn about it in school or read about it in books. 

"They learn about it when they come to America," he said. "Their parents and grandparents don't want to relive it. They don't want to revisit it. They want it to be forgotten history." 

During his time at the Kauffman Foundation, Magelli was introduced to the editor of Inc. magazine, who was looking for candidates for Entrepreneur of the Year. Magelli suggested Fu, who had by then moved her company to Research Triangle Park in North Carolina. She received that award in 2005, and others followed. 

Of late, they've discussed the criticism of her biography. She described it as a "nightmare."
"She said, 'The last thing I want to be is a liar,'" Magelli said. 

"She's a celebrity in the technology field these days," he said. "It's been very hard to have some of that diminished by some of these charges." 

The last time Cox saw Fu was when Fu gave the keynote address for the College of Engineering commencement last May. They had dinner together, and Fu talked about the controversy and how it's affected her life. 

"This has taken a bit of a toll on her — not being believed," she said. "I simply believe her and have no reason not to believe her."

Los Angeles Times: Criticism of Author Ping Fu Underscores Punch of Internet

The following report was published on December 2, 2013, by Los Angeles Times:

Criticism of author Ping Fu underscores punch of Internet
A fierce online campaign accuses the writer of fictionalizing an account of her childhood during China's Cultural Revolution.

By Lee Romney
December 2, 2013, 10:47 p.m. 

SAN FRANCISCO — Plug "Ping Fu" and "liar" into Google these days and the combo yields more than 6,300 hits. (See, also, "big fat liar," "lie-fabricating machine," etc.) 

But it wasn't always that way. 

A child of China's Cultural Revolution, Fu arrived in the U.S. three decades ago and went on to build a successful 3D-modeling technology company and earn a seat on the Obama administration's National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship. 

Then she did something that shifted her reputation, quite possibly forever: She wrote a memoir. 

"Bend Not Break: A Life in Two Worlds" received glowing reviews when released last December. But soon the online critics amassed. 

Some were in China. Most were immigrants whose families had experienced the Cultural Revolution and found her accounts improbable. Strangers, they united with common purpose. 

And so began the dissection of Ping Fu — a campaign that has underscored the use of the Internet as an attack tool. 

Fu's critics call themselves "truth seekers" intent on exposing her "lies." Yet just as her memoir contains inaccuracies (to which she has admitted) so too does the vitriolic cyber-trail. 

"There has to be a motive," Fu, 55, said at home here this summer — an article on Internet bullying sitting on her table — before legal advisers suggested she stop commenting on the controversy. "But what is it?" 

The initial concept for the book was a collection of business tips, but Fu's publisher wanted the professional story mixed with her more personal one. 

Her memoir tells it this way: Fu was raised in Shanghai by an aunt and uncle. One day in 1966, as Mao Tse-tung was setting the Cultural Revolution in motion, Red Guards showed up to return the 8-year-old to Nanjing, the city of her birth. 

She and her younger sister, Hong, were housed in a dormitory at the Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, where their father once taught. Their parents were considered to be "black elements" — her mother was an accountant and her father had ties to the National Party — and had been sent to the countryside. So Fu raised her sister alone. 

The girls were forced to denounce their lineage. At age 10, Fu was raped by a group of teens on the soccer field. 

She eventually earned a seat at Suzhou University and chose China's one-child policy as her thesis topic. When her research revealed a rural epidemic of female infanticide, she was brought to the authorities' attention, detained for three days and advised to leave the country. 

She arrived in the U.S. in 1984 on a student visa, with little money and limited English. After studying in New Mexico, California and Illinois, Fu went to work at Bell Laboratories and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications before co-founding Geomagic. 

Driving her success was a philosophy gleaned from her uncle about adaptability and compassion: "Bamboo is flexible," he told her, "bending with the wind but not breaking … It suggests resilience, meaning that we have the ability to bounce back from even the most difficult times." 

Barely two months after the book's release, critics flocked to Amazon.com to demand that Fu declare nearly every aspect of her story a fiction. 

Helping shepherd the initial effort was Fang Zhouzi, whose campaigns as a "liar hunter" have earned his microblog more than 13 million followers. It mirrored what in China is called the "human flesh search engine." Individually they had little power, but collectively detractors were able to boost criticism of Fu to the upper reaches of the blogosphere. 

Their doubts touched on topics in the memoir large and small: 

Fu said Red Guards had driven her in a military van, but critics said chances that the teens would have had access to a vehicle were minuscule. Fu described seeing suffocated babies discarded in plastic bags. Skeptics noted such bags were rare then in rural China. 

And a sexual assault by teenagers was "very unlikely if not impossible," poster Z.C. wrote online, because "boys at that time might not know how to do sex." 

In June, Suzhou University officials joined the fray, saying they had no record of Fu's infanticide research or detention. 

Her critics obtained Fu's old resumes from public universities and research institutions in the U.S., culling them for inconsistencies — and found some: Early versions claim a bachelor of arts degree from Suzhou University (Fu said that her book makes clear she withdrew in her final semester); one lists a master's degree from Suzhou (Fu said it's likely a typo). 

What stirred the most outrage was the memoir's assertion that vaginal exams were conducted on all female Suzhou University students to ensure they were not pregnant. Fu conceded she was not aware of such exams occurring on campus, but said a law prohibiting pregnancy among women who already had one child had prompted pelvic checks elsewhere. 

The practice spurred many late-term abortions, she said, and she wanted to draw attention to it. 

Amid the criticism, the memoir's publisher, Portfolio, cited Fu's author's note, which said that many of the events occurred "more than forty years ago and I've tried as much as possible to verify the facts." 

"Sometimes, despite everyone's best efforts, minor mistakes appear in nonfiction books," Portfolio president Adrian Zackheim said in a statement. "Whenever they are brought to an author's attention they are corrected in future printings. Ping has already acknowledged several of these, and if any additional corrections are required, of course those will be made as well." 

A paperback edition with fixes came out last week. 

But for her critics, there is no turning back. 

Some have remained anonymous. "Take her down by all means!" wrote someone with the handle "Sick Liar." 

Others who have revealed their identities said in interviews that they were motivated by the belief that their adopted homeland relies on an honor system that Fu violated. 

Their convictions have at times led them astray. 

Seeking proof that Fu had worked as a UC San Diego teaching and research assistant, Fallbrook attorney Albert Wang was told there were "no records" responsive to his request, as personnel information is maintained for just five years. 

"Ping Fu fabricated her work experience," Wang triumphantly concluded. 

Soon after, Fu tracked down the professor she had worked for and shared their email exchange with The Times. "How could I forget," he wrote warmly of their time together. 

Amy Kristin Sanders, an attorney and associate professor at the University of Minnesota's School of Journalism & Mass Communications, said the explosive criticism seems powered in part by the importance of "reputation and honesty" in Asian culture. 

Adding to the effect is the Internet's power to pull together otherwise-isolated individuals.
"These are people who may in their own geographic communities never express these kinds of views," Sanders said, "but when they see the momentum of hate that comes out on the Internet, it empowers them." 

Family members have corroborated Fu's basic story. 

The beloved "Uncle W." in Fu's memoir said he visited her at the Nanjing dorm and heard her account of rape and the taunts that followed. 

"During the Cultural Revolution, Ping's father and mother were punished for a long time," Wan Ao wrote in an email to The Times, "so Ping had an unfortunate life, too." 

Wan recalled that after Fu went missing during in her senior year at Suzhou University, she returned frightened, insisting on withdrawing from school. He helped her to leave China "so she would not be sent to exile or be persecuted." 

Fu's sister, Hong Bischoff, recalled their life in Nanjing, lining up in the cafeteria to say "how bad our parents were" and eat bread "green with mold." 

And after the assault, Bischoff said, her sister "was crying in the bed for many days. After that, she didn't like to go out. She carried it alone for so long." 

To Fu, the whole experience has had an odd sense of familiarity. 

"In the denunciation sessions, if you said something wrong they would hit you and tell you to say it all again," she said. "They are using [the Internet] as a bulletin board to shame me. In the Cultural Revolution, they put it on the wall." 

lee.romney@latimes.com

Broken Accusation: Human Flesh Search

The Accusation:
When Fu Ping's book started to face a public backlash from the Chinese and Chinese-American community, some in the west media characterized the phenomenon as an operation of "human flesh search".

On February 4, 2013, Katie Baker wrote on The Daily Beast:

The Amazon attack bears elements of the type of Internet bullying—known by the ominous phrase “human flesh search”—that is increasingly common among Chinese bloggers. “Coordinated Netizen action against an individual is not at all unusual in China,” says Emily Parker, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation and an expert on the Internet and democracy. (Parker cautions that she is unfamiliar with Ping’s case and therefore cannot speculate on who might be behind the attacks.)  

While the human flesh search phenomenon has helped expose injustice, it also has been trained on individuals to humiliate them publicly or to punish those who do not align with a strongly nationalist viewpoint. Indeed, recent hacking attacks on prominent American media outlets seem to have been aimed at publications deemed critical of China’s leaders. 

Joe Nocera was even more blunt in his New York Times piece in late June, 2013:

In other words, Fu is the classic immigrant success story. You’d think that would be a source of pride for Chinese immigrants. Instead, she has been subjected to what they call in China a “human flesh search” — an Internet vigilante campaign designed to bring shame on its target. 

The Debunking:
In the eyes of Katie Baker and Joe Nocera, the scarily named "human flesh search" must be some sort of evil reincarnation. However, people who are more familiar with China tend to have a different viewpoint. Indeed, Wikipedia's entry puts the term in a much neutral and even positive light:

Human flesh search engine (Chinese: 人肉搜索; pinyin: Rénròu Sōusuǒ) is a primarily Chinese internet phenomenon of massive researching using Internet media such as blogs and forums. It has generally been stigmatized as being for the purpose of identifying and exposing individuals to public humiliation, sometimes out of vigilantism, nationalist or patriotic sentiments, or to break the Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China.[1][2] More recent analyses, however, have shown that it is also used for a number of other reasons, including exposing government corruption, identifying hit and run drivers, and exposing scientific fraud, as well as for more "entertainment" related items such as identifying people seen in pictures. A categorization of hundreds of HFS episodes can be found in the 2010 IEEE Computer paper A Study of the Human Flesh Search Engine: Crowd-Powered Expansion of Online Knowledge.[3] 

The system is based on massive human collaboration. The name refers both to the use of knowledge contributed by human beings through social networking, as well as the fact that the searches are usually dedicated to finding the identity of a human being who has committed some sort of offense or social breach online.[4] People conducting such research are commonly referred to collectively as "Human Flesh Search Engines".

If this human flesh search engine were employed in Fu Ping's affair, it would have been a good use case of exposing fraud.


But sadly, Katie Baker and Joe Nocera were not even correct in invoking this term. As the wiki entry explained, the primary purpose of the "flesh search" is to identify anonymous individuals who had committed offense or breach. Fu Ping qualifies for the latter characteristics, but she is definitely not anonymous. There was never any need to launch a massive search for her identity.

It is of course perceivable that the "flesh search" could be employed to identify some of the key characters in Fu Ping's life, such as her cousins in Shanghai and the mysterious "Uncle W", who could shed a lot more light in validating her story. It did not happen. To this day, these people have stayed anonymous with their privacy intact, a fact that speaks volumes to the decency of those being accused by Baker, Nocera, and the like.


On the other hand, Katie Baker and Joe Nocera should be more familiar with another derogatory-sounding term: Muckraker, a fine and proud tradition of their chosen profession.

Quite substantial amount of investigative work have indeed been carried out and are continuing in verifying Fu Ping's story. So far, indisputable evidences have been recovered that she had falsified her resumes multiple times ever since the early 1990s, if not earlier. She has exaggerated her role in NCSA and the development of Mosaic browser. These are on tops of the multiple lies she had told in her book and interviews.

Fu Ping is not a simple private citizen. She is a close adviser to President Obama with influence to the national policy in technology and innovation. She was proclaimed by the USCIC as an exemplary citizen by choice while the circumstances of her getting a green card was questionable at best.

But the mainstream western media has stayed silent. They have ignored their duty and responsibility of due diligence as they happily and blindly played the role of cheerleader. That in itself may be understandable. But when a large group of volunteers who decided to take up the role of citizen journalists and rake up more and more muck under the covers of Fu Ping, they were labeled as "attackers" and "vigilantes" by the professionals like Baker and Nocera.


Now, that is injustice.

Broken Accusation: Chinese Hacker Attack

The Accusation:
From the beginning of the controversy, Fu Ping sought to link the criticism of her book with the story of "Chinese hacker attack" on western governments and media. During the question and answer session after a speech in March, 2013, Fu Ping said:

I certainly is on the attack by the Chinese at this point. The day after New York Time had a story broke on Chinese hacking on New York Time, I woke up with 2000 hate mail in my email. And I’m still on the attack by the Chinese. If you go on Amazon and look for Bend not Break Ping Fu, and you will see the full scale of the attack on me. They completely bombarded my book site, and if you saw the titles of five hundred comments, doesn't matter it is one-star or five-stars, they are all smear.
...
They are not just attack me, my family, my colleagues, but anyone who go voice something authentic get attacked. This is attack to democracy.

Katie Baker made the same linkage on The Daily Beast:

While the human flesh search phenomenon has helped expose injustice, it also has been trained on individuals to humiliate them publicly or to punish those who do not align with a strongly nationalist viewpoint. Indeed, recent hacking attacks on prominent American media outlets seem to have been aimed at publications deemed critical of China’s leaders. 

The Debunking:
The "Chinese hacker attack" story was a media sensation for a while, until the more recent disclosure of American government's own hacking activities severely dampened the enthusiasm. No matter what really happened at New York Times and other media sites, neither Fu Ping nor Katie Baker has produced any evidence that Chinese government sponsored hacker attack could be at work in the wave of public opinion against Fu Ping's book.

It is an attempt at guilt by association, pure and simple.

If Fu Ping truly believes that the 2000 hate mail she allegedly had received is an "attack to democracy," she should have turned them over to FBI for a thorough investigation already.

Broken Accusation: Internet Harrassment and Terrorism

The Accusation
A "smear campaign". This is Fu Ping's first response to the wide spread criticism on the factual accuracy of his memoir. In an interview with International Herald and Tribute in February, 2013, she told Didi Kirsten Tatlow that,

They smear my name, they try to get my daughter’s name on the Internet, they sent people to Shanghai to surround my family and to Nanjing to harass my neighbors.

A few weeks later, she raised the bar and claimed "this is Internet Terrorism."

The Debunking
None of the above accusations are true.

First of all, Fu Ping included her daughter's name in the "Acknowledgement" part of her book. It was also included in some of the earlier profiles on her success. For example, an article from her alma mater or an interview with WNYC.

The mystery of the Shanghai Villa where her family grew up has already been documented. Indeed, curious and diligent people have walked the streets in Shanghai tried to locate it but none have succeeded so far. It is therefore impossible to "surround" it.

Furthermore, members of Fu Ping's own family, including her mother, are all living abroad in USA. Her relatives in Shanghai have so far stayed outside of public controversy. Nobody has stepped up to validate her story. As a consequence, they are enjoying their privacy and could not have been "surrounded" by outsiders.

The only possibility is about her (former) neighbors in Nanjing. A couple of them did step up to provide information that refuted her story of her childhood. Unfortunately, most of these could not be substantiated either, for the lack of evidence and their choice of staying anonymous. However, there has been no complains about being harassed either.

University of Illinois has no Record of Fu Ping's Director Position or Mosaic Involvement

In responding to an FOIA request, University of Illinois recently disclosed that they have no records that Fu Ping was ever a Director of Visualization at NCSA and that she initiated the Mosaic browser development. The former was included in the school's own award citation on Fu Ping. The latter was, of course, well known because of Fu Ping's numerous interviews on the subject.

Previously, the school has released employment records of Fu Ping at NCSA, which showed that she was only a programmer there when Mosaic was developed and a manager later.

From: University of Illinois FOIA Sent: Wednesday, August 07, 2013 3:01 PM
To: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Cc: University of Illinois FOIA Subject: FOIA Response (13-357)
 August 7, 2013 [REDACTED] Re: FOIA 13-357  Dear Mr. xxxx: I am responding to your letter received in our office on July 31 under the Freedom of Information Act in which you request: "a copy of the following records (documentation in published, unpublished, machine-readable, and audiovisual forms, including correspondence such as printed letters as well as emails): 1.     Records, if any, that Ping Fu was a Director of Visualization of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications;2.     Records, if any, that Ping Fu initiated the NCSA Mosaic software project;3.     Records, if any, that Ping Fu managed the MCSA Mosaic software project;
4.     Records, if any, that Ping Fu’s work product led to Netscape; and5.     Records, if any, that Ping Fu’s work product led to Internet Explorer. The records, if any, responsive to this FOIA request should be located in Ping Fu’s research and project files at NCSA. These include research and project proposals, funding applications, financial and budget records, research data, reports, and correspondence."
 A search was conducted and no records pertaining to your request could be located.  You have a right, under the law, to seek a review of this response by the Public Access Counselor (PAC) in the Office of the Attorney General. The PAC may be reached by phone at 217-782-1396, by email to publicaccess@atg.state.il.us, or by postal mail at the Public Access Bureau, 500 S. 2nd Street, Springfield, Illinois 62706. You also have the right to seek judicial review under section 11 of this Act.  If you have questions for our office, please contact 217-333-6400. Sincerely,   Thomas P. HardyExecutive Director
and Chief Records Officer   cc:  filelegal counsel  

Document: University of Illinois' 2012 Award for Fu Ping

Fu Ping was a recipient of the Distinguished Achievement Award from the Department of Computer Science of University of Illinois in 2012. The biographic sketch on her included the following paragraph on their award web site:

Before starting Geomagic in 1997, Fu was the director of visualization at NCSA, the University of Illinois supercomputing center, where she supervised work on Mosaic, the world’s first practical web browser. Her team also developed new geometry algorithms that enabled the morphing special effects for the robot villain in the movie Terminator 2.

Upon a recent inquiry, however, the school indicated that they could not find any records pertaining Fu Ping being a director at NCSA or her involvement in the Mosaic project.

Previously, the school has released employment records of Fu Ping at NCSA, which showed that she was only a programmer there when Mosaic was developed and a manager later.