The conclusion finally confirmed two important accusations listed in Huixiang Chen’s suicide notethat:
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The review process for his ISCA-2019 paperwas broken, and most of the reviewers of the paper are “friends” of his advisor Dr. Tao Li. The review process became organized and colluded academic fraud:
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After recognizing that there are severe problems in his ISCA-2019 paper, Huixiang Chen was coerced by his advisor Dr. Tao Li to proceed with a submission despite that Huixiang Chen repeatedly expressed concerns about the correctness of the results reported in work, which led to a strong conscience condemnation and caused the suicide.
Finally, the paper with academic misconduct got retracted by ACM as Huixiang’s last wish. The ACM imposed a penalty of a 15-year ban on participation in any ACM Conference or Publication to the offenders. As alleged by the President of ACM, certain of these penalties are the most severe ACM has ever imposed. The President of ACM also wrote a letter to Huixiang’s family to let them know the investigation result and their decision.
The saddest conclusion of the investigation is this one: