
Scientists have lost their jobs after NIH probe into foreign ties - elsewhen
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/06/fifty-four-scientists-have-lost-their-jobs-result-nih-probe-foreign-ties
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basilgohar
As an American that has received his fair share of indoctrination and with no
deep love for a lot of China's domestic as well as foreign policy, I am
curious about a few things, sincerely:

1\. Are these as egregious as we are led to believe? 2\. Are these really a
sign of deep foreign influence? 3\. Can it be that these are actually just
minor oversights of a large number of individuals without needing to jump to
the worst conclusion of these scientists being spies (as one other comment has
already asserted)?

I am not trying to water down what may be a serious case of foreign influence,
but if this is something common and/or easy to fall into, it's possible this
is an overreaction and may cause harm to the research community. The article
is worded in a way that doesn't clarify if the focus was only on Chinese
influence or if this was broadly designed to capture any foreign influence.

I ask these questions to broaden the discussion because oftentimes research
and academic centers can have overly broad requests on disclosure which can be
very invasive and, truth be told, if everyone answered fully and clearly, a
lot of people would probably be excluded, and that begs the question if these
are essential or not in my humble opinion.

To be clear, I am very much for limiting foreign influence on domestic policy,
whether it's via research or otherwise, but I think it bears practicing
greater skepticism when something may just be a proxy for "action" rather than
sincere positive results.

~~~
sdenton4
Yeah, from the article:

"Lauer also presented data on the nature of the violations that NIH has
uncovered. Some 70% (133) of the researchers had failed to disclose to NIH the
receipt of a foreign grant, and 54% had failed to disclose participation in a
foreign talent program. In contrast, Lauer said, only 9% hid ties to a foreign
company, and only 4% had an undisclosed foreign patent. Some 5% of cases
involved a violation of NIH’s peer-review system."

So sounds like ~90% of the 189 violations maybe just not checking a box. It's
not clear to me what the violations were for the 54 people who were fired.

From where I sit, science espionage from China certainly sounds plausible (And
should be dealt with), but ginning up negligible issues to get rid of the
wrong kind of people is a completely plausible move from the current
administration.

~~~
the-dude
Enforcement might deter ( is this proper English? ).

~~~
edanm
It seems technically valid (maybe?) but it's pretty hard to parse. You should
at least add another word or two to indicate what it would deter.

~~~
neltnerb
Slightly ambiguous because I think the GP actually meant something like
"enforcement may decline (to penalize or press charges)" which is definitely
true and likely the case if 90% of these are paperwork errors.

There are definitely paperwork errors I can imagine, but it's difficult to
imagine it being as simple a mistake as not checking the box that says "you
have a job". More likely would be a grant office not being fully aware of a
professors' funding sources or miscategorizing their funding in such a way
that the grant office person helping with the paperwork marked it wrong and
the professor didn't check carefully.

That I would consider to be an "honest mistake" that gets corrected by moving
money around and a strongly worried letter.

Other stories I've heard go as far as two married professors who took their
grant money and used it instead to move to an island resort for three months
or something like that and didn't actually do the project at all. That was
definitely a crime, but largely only because it involved the federal
government. If they'd gotten a grant from a private company and didn't do what
they promised it would likely be a civil lawsuit unless it rose to the level
of actual illegal fraud.

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jryb
Most everyone here is missing the point. The real problem is that NIH funding
is limited and competitive, and the NIH needs to prioritize funding labs that
don't already have enough money. I'm not discounting that some people involved
in this process may be motivated by completely different reasons, but having a
complete picture of existing funding sources when distributing grants makes
sense regardless of the geopolitical context.

~~~
xenocyon
> NIH needs to prioritize funding labs that don't already have enough money

So then why the focus on _foreign_ grants? From the article:

> [Of the scientists who were fired/resigned] Some 70% (133) of the
> researchers had failed to disclose to NIH the receipt of a foreign grant,
> and 54% had failed to disclose participation in a foreign talent program. In
> contrast, Lauer said, only 9% hid ties to a foreign company, and only 4% had
> an undisclosed foreign patent. Some 5% of cases involved a violation of
> NIH’s peer-review system.

~~~
jryb
Well, there certainly may be other motivations at play, but it's also easier
to keep foreign grants secret. The NIH, NSF, and American Cancer Society all
make their awards public and searchable (I assume it's true for any
organization with serious money or federal funding but those are the only ones
I have come across). That said I also don't know if the federal funding
agencies actually check outside of their own organization whether someone
failed to mention a grant on an application.

------
av_engr
This is kind of off-topic since the issue was these scientists lying about
their ties to a foreign government. I wanted to address how people think
there's no IP theft here.

Although results and information about the research are often published to the
public, experimental setup and some technical details are usually not included
in the publication. Just because a paper on the research will eventually be
available to the public doesn't mean the technology can be easily replicated.
The concern here is that the real hard work that comes from months of trial
and error is being stolen to competing nations that would take advantage of
the theft to claim the author of such technology. Not to mention the tech is
funded by American taxpayer dollars and developed by scientists who spent
years and months on it. There's a recent incident on a Chinese Scientist lying
about his affiliation with the Chinese Military and have been sending
proprietary lab information to China.

See: [https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2020/06/11/alleged-
chinese...](https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2020/06/11/alleged-chinese-spy-
arrested-at-lax-arrested-for-stealing-research-from-uc-san-francisco/)

------
bosswipe
I don't understand. What is the danger that this poses? Is it that the
American government is funding science that only benefits China somehow? How?

~~~
yummypaint
I dont see any problem either from a public health perspective. I suspect what
they are trying to go after is chinese institutions scooping US researchers
through IP theft. I have heard this is a particular problem in medical
research because everything is so commercially oriented. By comparison, i
don't believe NNSA grants prevent researchers from receiving funding from
elsewhere, and those grants are focused on nuclear technologies.

~~~
komali2
But NIH is all published - how can you IP steal? Maybe you get it a year ahead
of time I guess?

~~~
unishark
If you scoop another researcher then you get the publication. Then the first
thing you can do is ruin someone's year by publishing the fruits of their hard
work before they do. They are screwed and you take the novel direction over.

But for real IP, in the US if you publish something you get a year to patent
it. In many other places you have to patent it before you publish. So if you
get their info before they have published it yet you can file the patent
first.

~~~
pkaye
> But for real IP, in the US if you publish something you get a year to patent
> it. In many other places you have to patent it before you publish. So if you
> get their info before they have published it yet you can file the patent
> first.

The US used to be first-to-invent but now its also first-to-file like in the
EU countries.

~~~
unishark
It certainly seems like a risky situation to get into. I'm sure lawyers would
probably always advise you to file first anyway. For one thing you aren't a
lawyer so the way you wrote up your publication may only cover an extremely
narrow aspect of your invention.

But once you publish the invention, others should not be able to patent the
idea anymore as there is prior art (your publication) and patents are required
to be novel. This leaves you as the only person who can patent it.

------
Overtonwindow
I can see that this could be a case of accidentally not checking a box, but at
the same time, lack of knowledge or a mistake is not an excuse for breaking
the law. I do firmly believe that China has infiltrated our research
institutions and actively funneling that back to China. We should do more to
guard against that, and if this is the necessary first step, then maybe its
enforcement will lead to better oversight in the future by the institutions.
It's really the institutions that must shoulder some of the blame for not also
conducting their due diligence.

------
peteradio
For those who are wondering what harm this could cause to western countries, I
think it's an interesting point: Researcher's spiking interesting results in
public but funneling them home.

------
choxi
Supposing they were spying, what’s the edge that China gets since NIH research
gets published publicly anyway?

~~~
ipv6ipv4
They can influence the direction and conclusions of the research. Undermining
the science altogether. Leading to bad policy and harming the NIH’s and
science’s public reputation as a whole.

Not unlike what Coca-Cola has been doing to nutrition science.[]

[] [https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/how-coca-cola-disguised-
its...](https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/how-coca-cola-disguised-its-
influence-science-about-sugar-and-health)

~~~
coliveira
The same argument can be used to say that researchers shouldn't receive money
from USA, because this will influence the direction of their research
conclusions and undermine the science altogether. If you don't know, a major
contributor to science in the US is the DoD, and we know that the DoD has a
mandate to act against perceived "enemies" of the American government.

~~~
freyr
You're knowingly misrepresenting the issue, over and over again:

The issue isn't that these scientists received money from a foreign
government. It's that they failed to report it.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Because they thought they'd be fired for having links to foreign countries? Or
because they're spies?

------
komali2
It a shame this is happening. Surprisingly the new Space Force show on Netflix
is remarkably topical. There's an episode where a political disagreement is
encountered between America and the PRC. The chief scientist at space force
(whose character is basically "science good, military bad") argues that a
simple conversation with the PRC science team should clear things up, because
"science is a fraternity that knows no borders." It goes FUBAR when the PRC
science team turn out to be just as political as their bureaucratic
counterparts.

Ideally science would be a borderless fraternity/sorority... I wonder how
bureaucrats and politicians manage to override scientist's own values as such
to indoctrinate them with patriotism?

~~~
stareatgoats
Scientists are vulnerable to nationalist sentiments same as anyone else.

“Of course the people don’t want war. But (...) all you have to do is tell
them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of
patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.”

— Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials

------
goodcjw2
S __t happens when politics meddles with sciences.

~~~
dominotw
> politics meddles with sciences.

referring to chinese ip-stealing?

~~~
Angeo34
Probably he meant US stealing IP from Europe , especially Germany.

------
Magodo
An external perspective from a non-American; I think curbing any kind of
foreign influence is a good thing based on China related news in my own
country. Also I think a large part of criticism of these actions are generated
by people thinking such actions are racist and hence just wrong and no matter
what, unjustifiable. That kind of weak thinking is just not acceptable when
China has been openly hostile on so many fronts...

~~~
coliveira
I don't see this kind of hostility. China is a commercial competitor. The US
is trying to transform commercial competition into a racist war. I think this
is despicable.

~~~
cle
Many in the US see China as much more than a commercial competitor, but as an
ideological and existential threat.

~~~
evidencebased
Many in the US are brainwashed by the American media empire.

------
coliveira
So basically we see the reemergence of the communist scare, a sick and
demented policy that criminalized professionals who were perceived to be
"collaborating" with an "enemy" foreign country. This makes me disgusted.

~~~
toofy
There do seem to be some strong indicators there might be a push in that
direction. The rising levels of fear mongering directed at others has me a tad
concerned.

At the very least, I think people should be aware this may be happening.

~~~
coliveira
And this is specially sickening when it is directed at scientists, an area
where it always necessary to collaborate across the world. To be very clear,
if the Chinese are investing billions of dollars in research I want to
collaborate with them, it has nothing to do with my nationality.

------
afrojack123
Its good to see that American tax dollars are no longer being used to help a
country trying to undermine America.

------
MintelIE
It'd be interesting to see what research these spies were stealing or
influencing.

~~~
basilgohar
I think it's early to assume that these were spies. I am sure that is one of
the narratives about this, though.

------
coliveira
"Lauer also presented data on the nature of the violations that NIH has
uncovered. Some 70% (133) of the researchers had failed to disclose to NIH the
receipt of a foreign grant, and 54% had failed to disclose participation in a
foreign talent program. In contrast, Lauer said, only 9% hid ties to a foreign
company, and only 4% had an undisclosed foreign patent."

Based on this, many foreign researchers that cooperates with the United
Stated, and there are several thousands of them, should be severely punished
in his/her country of origin. Most researchers in foreign countries cooperate
with American research organizations that transfer technology to US the
industry. Just for an example, my home country exchanges information about the
Amazon with American institutions, and much of that information is passed on
to pharmaceutical companies operating around the world. This is a despicable
action that targets China in a way that is racist and hypocrite.

~~~
Magodo
My comment might be reported as flame bait but I have to say this. Imagine the
Secret Of the Universe™, is discovered. I'm just saying I'd much rather live
in a world where such a secret is entrusted into American hands rather than
Chinese ones. My point being, do not be careless in applying ideals and
ideologies to peoples (or governments in this case) that do not deserve them

~~~
evidencebased
"My point being, do not be careless in applying ideals and ideologies to
peoples (or governments in this case) that do not deserve them"

You're literally doing that but for the US. The families of countless people
killed by the US in its illegal wars over just the past several decades would
disagree with you, if they haven't been wiped out themselves. Same goes for
the countless people that starved to death from US sanctions because their
government refused to bow to the US empire.

------
BeetleB
The real question is whether they are going after similar offenses when the
source of funding in is some other country...?

There was a controversy not long ago about Saudi funding. Some very mediocre
Saudi universities were entering the top rankings for research because they
paid a lot of well known professors to have affiliate positions at those
universities. This suddenly caused a crazy boost in rankings.

Now I doubt those researchers failed to disclose their affiliation/funding
(the whole point of the scheme was for them to openly be affiliated). But if
they had, would the US government go after them?

> Even more surprising, though, was that a little-known university in Saudi
> Arabia, King Abdulaziz University, or KAU, ranked seventh in the world in
> mathematics — despite the fact that it didn’t have a doctorate program in
> math until two years ago.

[https://www.dailycal.org/2014/12/05/citations-
sale/](https://www.dailycal.org/2014/12/05/citations-sale/)

[http://blogs.nature.com/houseofwisdom/2012/01/are-saudi-
univ...](http://blogs.nature.com/houseofwisdom/2012/01/are-saudi-universities-
buying-their-way-into-top-charts.html)

~~~
dmix
Well, from the first sentence it says 7% were from other countries:

> In 93% of those cases, the hidden funding came from a Chinese institution.

54 * 0.07 = 3.78 non-Chinese scientists

(I'm guessing the 93% has been rounded)

Edit: nevermind the number 54 was total termination, the 93% was 175/189 of
"Scientists NIH contacted institution" where Chinese
[https://acd.od.nih.gov/documents/presentations/06122020Forei...](https://acd.od.nih.gov/documents/presentations/06122020ForeignInfluences.pdf)

