Biochemist turned science writer who runs the website 新语丝 and campaigns against academic fraud and pseudoscience, known as 打假. His 2012 claim that 韩寒 used ghostwriters set off a long public feud.
Media call him an 打假斗士, 'anti-fraud fighter'. In 2010 two men attacked him with a hammer in Beijing; police found they had been hired by 肖传国, a urologist who blamed Fang's exposés for his failed bid to join the Chinese Academy of Sciences.