Writing about science is not usually this risky. On Sunday, barely two months after a science-and-technology editor at Caijing magazine was attacked by club-wielding assailants, another prominent Chinese science writer was mugged by a pair of thugs wielding chemical spray and an iron hammer.

Fang Shimin is a writer and blogger known by his pen-name “Fang Zhouzi,” or his nickname the “Science Cop,” for his self-directed efforts to police the underworld of Chinese science. Over the years, he has investigated and exposed the kind of fraud, plagiarism, and academic malfeasance that endangers China’s ambition to produce credible world-class innovation. Most recently, he was in the news for reporting that the former head of Microsoft China, Tang Jun, held a Ph.D. from a diploma mill called Pacific Western University.

Fang was heading home over the weekend, when a man approached him and sprayed him in the face with what he later guessed was an anesthetic intended to daze him. “Another man pursued me and tried to hit me in the head with a hammer,” he wrote in a blog post, as translated by ESWN. “I kept sprinting ahead. This man chased me but could not catch up to me. He threw the hammer at my head but missed.” The hammer-thrower eventually hit Fang in the hip, though the writer escaped and is recovering with minor injuries.

This is not the first time that Fang has been threatened. Earlier this year he described a backstage encounter after a television debate in which he had been arguing against the credibility of earthquake forecasting, a practice that enjoys support from parts of the Chinese science establishment. Fang wrote that after the show wrapped up, another guest, Ren Zhenqiu of the Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences, accused Fang and a fellow skeptic of taking U.S. money to stifle Chinese innovation, as Sam Geall reported in Foreign Policy.

Fang Shimin said that the official called him a “big Chinese traitor” and threw a punch at him. (As it happened, the fellow skeptic on hand in this case was Fang Xuanchang, the same science journalist who was beaten in June.)

Fang Shimin reportedly received his Ph.D. in biochemistry at Michigan State University in 1995, then had a brief successful research career at University of Rochester and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. He made some money on a patent, before dedicating himself to writing and investigating scientific fraud. In several cases, he has been sued for libel by those he has accused of misdeeds.

As for the attack, Fang’s lawyer, Peng Jian, was quoted in the Christian Science Monitor saying he thought the attack was linked to his reporting on a private hospital in Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan Province, which specializes in a controversial operation on the nervous system to control urinary incontinence. As it happens, that was the same subject that Fang Xuanchang wrote about shortly before he was stalked and attacked on his way home. (That case remains unsolved.)

At the very moment that China is dedicating itself to spurring innovation, protecting those who call for world-class science standards would be a welcome innovation of its own. Catching the attackers in these cases is a natural way to start.