Ting, a Michigan-born Chinese American physicist who received Nobel prize in 1976 for the discovery of subatomic particles with Burton Richter, said that while science is competitive, scientists cannot loose their integrity to fraud and fabrication.

    "There is only first place for natural scientist, no second place. Nobody knows who was the second to discover the theory of relativity," Ting said at the forum on science frontiers and China's opportunities in the 21st century.

    China has been touched by a recent science scandal. On May 12, Shanghai Jiaotong University announced that the Hanxin computer chip was faked and the state-funded research was conducted fraudulently.

    In March, the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) published 20 cases of plagiarism and fraud discovered in applications for funding from the foundation.

    The ongoing seventh national conference of the China Association of Science and Technology (CAST) has drafted a professional code of conduct designed to prevent scientific fraud and fabrication.

    Ting also said that new discoveries are made because of intellectual curiosity not for economic ambition. Basic research is often regarded as useless because it is far from daily life and it often takes 20 to 40 years for a new discovery to come to market.

    "Technological development is firmly rooted in basic research, "Ting said, adding that government policies play a very important role in supporting basic research. Enditem