NIH scientists forced to retire or were fired

[jim mcnamara]

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/202...lost-their-jobs-result-nih-probe-foreign-ties

One requirement for funding research and vetting researchers is to verify that there is no conflict of interest. Made up examples could be:

A. Research on the effects of dietary sucrose on blood sugar, when funded by the the lobby group - the National Sugar Producers Association.
B. Research on RNA virus testing methodologies funded by NIH - but staff with loyalty to a competing company or government.

In the past this kind of thing has happened. NIH just found the same kind of problem with research scientists. 54 were let go or resigned.

The article also mentions the problem of leading edge technology being leaked (stolen) to foreign governments through staff members who were on the payroll of foreign agencies. Apparently 93% of those let go because of conflict of interest were Chinese nationals. The US Congress is looking at legislation to stem the flow of technology and data.

[opinion]
This is a little like the problems in the recruiting of the Manhattan Project research staff. Some people were German or Russian sympathizers, for example. The US was and is a country with a lot of first generation immigrants, so this should not be a nasty surprise to the NIH folks. It is seems it was.
[/opinion]

 

[hutchphd]

I suggest the electric chair. And always include their spouses as according to the Rosenberg precedent.
I truly believe this is driven less by "national security" interests than it is by bottom line interests in our rapidly burgeoning oligarchy.

 

[Vanadium 50]

Some have been arrested for fraud - Qing Wang and Charles Lieber, for example.

The objection is that they have taken money to perform research that was already being paid for by someone else, in most cases China's Thousand Talents Program. And that they said they weren't.

Before someone says "Hey this is a victimless crime", the NIH grant success rate is about 20%. Had NIH known the truth, other people would have been funded.

 

[Vanadium 50]

One requirement for funding research and vetting researchers is to verify that there is no conflict of interest

Well, this is more misappropriation of funds and not so much conflict of interest. It's actually perfectly fine to have a conflict of interest, so long as it's declared.

 

[Ygggdrasil]

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/202...lost-their-jobs-result-nih-probe-foreign-ties

One requirement for funding research and vetting researchers is to verify that there is no conflict of interest. Made up examples could be:

A. Research on the effects of dietary sucrose on blood sugar, when funded by the the lobby group - the National Sugar Producers Association.
B. Research on RNA virus testing methodologies funded by NIH - but staff with loyalty to a competing company or government.

In the past this kind of thing has happened. NIH just found the same kind of problem with research scientists. 54 were let go or resigned.

The article also mentions the problem of leading edge technology being leaked (stolen) to foreign governments through staff members who were on the payroll of foreign agencies. Apparently 93% of those let go because of conflict of interest were Chinese nationals. The US Congress is looking at legislation to stem the flow of technology and data.

[opinion]
This is a little like the problems in the recruiting of the Manhattan Project research staff. Some people were German or Russian sympathizers, for example. The US was and is a country with a lot of first generation immigrants, so this should not be a nasty surprise to the NIH folks. It is seems it was.
[/opinion]

The article does not mention the problem of technology being leaked or stolen by foreign governments, and if it did it would have been a fairly strange claim given that point of the vast majority of NIH-funded research is to generate knowledge and share that knowledge with the broader scientific community. The NIH even enforces directives that all manuscripts describing research funded by the NIH need to be made freely available to the public at least 6 months after publication in a scientific journal. There are certainly projects that deal with sensitive information, where participation in these projects is restricted to US citizens, but these types of projects are rare. Most researchers aren't working on Manhattan project-level stuff.

Yes, there are problems of industrial espionage relating to the Chinese government stealing information from US companies, but let's not conflate those problems with issues related to failure to disclose funding.

It's also worth to note that while the current administration is focusing on researchers' ties to China, there is a long history of researchers being fired over failures to disclose other sources of funding, such as funding/COI from industry (e.g. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/08/health/jose-baselga-cancer-memorial-sloan-kettering.html as a somewhat recent, high profile example).