Gao Fu: Public understanding of science a vaccination against 'inforus'

"Do we still need scientific journals in the 21st century? This question haunted me throughout COVID-19," said Gao Fu, the editor-in-chief of the "Chinese Science Bulletin (in Chinese)" and "Science Bulletin." He made the keynote speech at a parallel panel featuring international scientific journals of the 2025 Zhongguancun Forum held in Beijing.

He recounted a stark example: "When the U.S. CDC suddenly removed avian flu data from public platforms, citing a Trump-administration executive order, it exposed how easily science can be silenced. Meanwhile, preprint platforms flooded with claims like 'SARS-CoV-2 contains HIV-like sequences' just because someone spotted 3-5 similar amino acids."

"This isn't science; it's the infodemic in action," Gao said.

Gao's solution? Strengthen peer-reviewed journals as "truth filters" against what he calls "inforus" – a term he coined for misinformation that behaves like a mutating virus.

As the former director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, he introduced the term in 2022 to conceptualize misinformation as a virus-like agent causing "infodemics," or the mis/disinformation epidemic, emphasizing its infectious spread and societal harm while advocating for structured scientific study and global countermeasures.

"When you are talking about global health, when you are talking about public health, whenever you have this outbreak or any event like the pandemic, you got to remember you are in a position to try to prevent two viruses, biological virus and 'inforus,'" Gao said in an interview with CGTN.

To counter "infodemics" and prevent the spread of "inforus," Gao said the best way is to read science books. "The public understanding of science is a kind of vaccination," he explained. 

Toward that end, Gao wrote two to three books each year for the past six years to try to bridge the expert-public gap.

However, Gao noted that humans' evolutionary predisposition to share sensational information makes rumors hard to contain and thus requires global cooperation.

"Let's work together to embrace the real globalization, the real international dependency, to catch up with the real information," he said.

The role of scientific journals

"Scientific journal is not for the public," Gao said. "Scientific journal is for the professionals to share their ideas, their scientific findings, their thoughts or even their hypothesis."

Therefore, Gao emphasized the importance of data sharing and policy collaboration in all aspects of advancing global public health initiatives.

Gao has founded three international journals, "Protein & Cell," "China CDC Weekly," and "hLife." They are seen as symbols of China's shift from a mere contributor to a producer of scientific discourse.

"Now I think we are in the right position. Now, we need our scientific journals. This is why I launched three journals, and Chinese scientific journals are booming," said Gao.

As of 2024, Beijing hosted 292 English-language sci-tech journals, accounting for 54 percent of the national total, according to Yu Yingjie, the secretary of the Education Work Committee under the Beijing Municipal CPC Committee, as he delivered an opening remark to the panel. 

According to the "Statistical Report on China's Scientific Papers" released by the Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (ISTIC), China maintained its global leadership in 2024 across the most influential journal papers, high-quality international journal papers, and citations.

"China already publishes more (journals) than the U.S., the country that publishes most of the world," Anders Karlsson, vice president of academic relations of Elsevier in the Asia Pacific.

"We value very much the partnership with China," Karlsson told CGTN.