There is still plenty of room to improve the monitoring and supervision of scientific research funds, says a signed commentary in the Jinan Times. The following is an excerpt.

How large is the black hole of scientific research funds? A recent auditing report from Shandong Province reveals an alarming fact. According to the 2006 auditing report, only 40 percent of scientific research funds were directly used in the research itself. The rest was used for management fees, hiring staff, hospitality allowance and costs that should have been out of researchers'' own pockets, such as home telephone bills, fees for commuter, tuition, insurance and maintenance of home cars.

According to the report, research on the management and application platform based on information systems, funded by the Natural Science Funds of Shandong Province, cost nearly 100,000 yuan at the time of the audit. Only 5.6 percent of the expenditures was on experiment materials while the rest was spent in such items as hospitality, management, office supplies, service charges and telephone bills.

Some researchers told reporters that as long as they can join in a research project, nearly every type of expenditure can get reimbursed through fabricating items, including a pencil for their children.

Supervisory bodies have yet to establish an effective monitoring system to check decentralized funds and their respective research results one by one. Once the fund is allocated, the project head has the final say on its usage. No one examines the results of the project and is held accountable for the fruitless project.