54 Scientists Lose Jobs Amid NIH Probe Into Foreign Ties

An ongoing inquiry by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) into grantees’ failures to disclose foreign ties has resulted in the firings and resignations of 54 scientists.

The NIH investigation has probed 189 scientists for undisclosed foreign ties, with 93 percent of the hidden funding coming from China. Some 77 grantees have been removed from the NIH system as a result of the probe.

The numbers were revealed on June 12 in a presentation by Michael Lauer, the NIH deputy director for extramural research. The NIH’s effort dates back to August 2018, when the organization warned universities across the nation that some foreign entities are systematically targeting NIH researchers to divert intellectual property and obtain confidential information.

The NIH effort is part of a larger U.S. government campaign to counter the Chinese Communist Party’s infiltration of American academia. The Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI have made arrests and reached settlements in several cases involving researchers as part of its broader China Initiative launched in November 2018.

At the time of the investigation, some 143 scientists in 27 states held active grants worth $164 million. More than 80 percent were Asian, reflecting the CCP’s targeting of Chinese researchers.

The CCP aggressively recruits foreign researchers as part of its Thousand Talents program, which is seen by the U.S. government as a cover for obtaining American intellectual property.

The NIH inquiry has directly resulted in prosecutions by the DOJ. After the NIH flagged an Emory University professor’s failure to disclose foreign work on grant applications, the DOJ indicted Xiao-Jiang Li, 63, of Atlanta, Georgia. Li was sentenced in May to one year probation and ordered to pay $35,000 to the IRS for the income from China he concealed on his tax returns.

These are American scientists and academics who are working at labs that develop new technology and new medical discoveries. As employees, they are duty-bound to keep information in house, the discoveries belong to the employer.

Foreign students here on an educational visa who get access to US government and university labs because they are grad students are also under the obligation to not disclose the work and discoveries they have access to.

Papers and reports are released on new discoveries but not all the details on the process and details that would allow others to steal intellectual property.

The Americans and foreign grad students who sell secrets to Red China should go to jail. Students from mainland China should be kept away from research that has military or important industrial/technical value. They can be coopted by pressure from the CCP. Let them study liberal arts, humanities and business/accounting.

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