“Science,” concludes Whitesides, “has the potential to solve all kinds of problems, but it depends on what a society wants to accomplish. There is unequal distribution of benefits among a population. There is Darfur. And there are still big differences in lifespan. There are people who have clean water and those who don’t. Societies have to figure out how to use resources while ironing out such disparities.”
—G. M. Whitesides
It was just confirmed by Chinese newspaper that the Science magazine is going to publish in its next issue the controversial photo of a South China Tiger claimed to be found in a small forest of Shanxi province, northeaster China. I don’t know how much will be mentioned in that issue about this event but before that I think it’s not too early to talk about it here … or I shoundn’t use the word ‘talk’, because actually I just want to provide some details of the development of the drama after the photo came out.
The controversy
First let’s make sure the two camps of this controversy. The core question of debate is whether the photo is fake or not. Camp that supports the photo (the pro-tiger camp) consists exclusively of people from Shanxi province, from the government, police, and university professor. The other side (the anti-tiger), however, is the rest of the whole nation.
The Photo
There is only one photo to discuss (see here), although the province’s forestry department provided another two photos (which actually looked much the same as the first one) in response to the severe suspicion from all over the nation. Suspicion came from various professional aspects:
Photography. The claimed distance of photo taking, 20 meters, is much longer than the calculated distance (12 meters) from the original photo by theory of geometric optics. The later two photos were taken with flasher, according to the EXIF data, and the pro-tiger said, as a result, in these photos the color on the forehead of the tiger is a bit lighter. But professional photographer said with the camera used, the power of the flash is only about three meters. And if the flash light would reach the tiger, what reflecting light should be the eyes, not the fur of the forehead. In addition, the color temperature of the tiger is much higher (looks bluer) than the surrounding grass. And the light on the tiger is also weird which look like a plane surface, lacking any 3D effect.
Botany. Fu Dezhi, researcher of the Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, identified the species of the surrounding plants (I don’t know how to translate the names of these plants in English), and pointed out that the size of leaves in the photo in comparison of the tiger is abnormally larger than what the corresponding plant could have. The three disclosed photos also show that the site of photography was changed, according to the difference of the surrounding plants.
Zoology. Xie Yan, researcher of the Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, also doubted the realness of the photo with his knowledge. According to the EXIF data, the whole photographic process lasted for about 20 minutes, but the tiger seemed to stay with the same pose, even its month did not change a bit. This contrasts with the behavior of normal tiger. In addition, the tiger in the photo was keeping a relaxing attitude in the whole process. However, when approached by stranger, wild big cat would normally lay down its body and put its heads in the middle of its two hands, keeping the body close to the ground, in order to hide itself to some extent and be prepared to take the next action.
Interestingly, Xie showed strong hesitation before these comments. He once said he wouldn’t verified the photo for the journalist because this may hurt the local economy, people, and officers; they are leading hard lives.
Computational Imaging. I don’t know this field much, but someone used Matlab and did some space inversion calculation, which can verify whether the object in the photo is plane or 3D. The result is, the tiger is plane.
How to fabricate a photo of wild tiger Other. Someone downloaded an image of South China Tiger and printed out in a large paper board, cut the outline and put in a grass. They took some photo of the paper tiger, and the resultant photos replicated the exact effects of the above mentioned points – the light, the color temperature, and the size of the leaves. You can get the idea here even if you can’t read Chinese.
The Shanxi People
The photographer, Zhou Zhenglong, inevitably became the main character of this event. He is a farmer, not a professional photographer. This fact is the favorite excuse of the Shanxi province’s forestry department, for all the ‘imperfections’ of the photo those people have pointed out. This local forestry department, also, is another interesting character. They work very fast. 9 days after the photo came out they confirmed to the journalist the (re)discovery of South China Tiger, and always kept a very strong ascertained attitude to the validity of the photos, although they could not provide additional evidence such as soil, hair, track, etc. they claimed to have. They sent the photo to the province’s police station, which gave positive result after analysis. And a professor from one of the local university talked in TV about the photo and strongly supported the realness of it. In the village near the site of tiger discovery, there is a large advertisement, in which tiger becomes a feature of local tourism. The villagers wish the tiger can boost the local economy. In this tiger event, all the Shanxi people are twisted into one strong rope.
While the suspicion on the local forestry department’s hasty conclusion was still growing, the local government sent people to Beijing and reached the State Forestry Administration, not for the verification of photos, but for the fund, fund for a nature reservation in the district where the tiger was claimed to inhabit, and further fund for the protection of the tigers there. Maybe they didn’t know an area of several hundred square kilometers can have only one or two tigers which cannot breed into a tribe. If they cannot breed into a tribe they are doomed to be extinct.
Science Magazine
Some Chinese scientists don’t support the Science’s determination to publish the photo on the next issue, although Science will no be responsible for the realness of the photo. Fu Dezhi, the botany researcher mentioned above, said that it is very careless for Science to publish such a photo which is still not verified (and very possibly fake), because it would imply that Chinese scientists are incapable to make this issue clear. He has written a letter to the magazine demanding that while publishing the photo, they should also attach a declaration of a group of Chinese scientists about this photo so as to protect the ‘image of Chinese sciences’.
But I think these are nonsense. What’s the image of Chinese sciences? Is it more important than a species at the edge of extinction? The title of the magazine is the best reminder of the Chinese people, this is an issue of Science, not economy, politics, or ethics. I look forward to the next issue of Science, although at the same time I incline to believe the photo is fake, at this moment. In a country with unequal distribution of benefits among a population, it is not strange to have a fake tiger photo. If money would come, a dinosaur photo or a UFO photo should be a piece of cake.
