Research Security: Scientists Arrested as Government Increases Efforts to Protect US Security Interests

Concerns about and oversight of foreign influence on research and espionage have been rising since 2018. In an August 2018 letter to more than 10,000 research institutions, NIH urged grant applicants and awardees to properly disclose all forms of support and financial interests and launched investigations into NIH-funded investigators who failed to properly disclose foreign financial support. Following this, an April 2019 editorial in BioScience alerted readers that investigations into foreign ties of researchers will likely spread to other agencies and need to be taken seriously. Lawmakers have also made enquiries about the processes and policies in place at agencies to detect and deter foreign threats to research. Legislation intended to address such threats has been introduced in Congress. In January, the chair of Harvard University’s Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Dr. Charles M. Lieber, was arrested and criminally charged with making false statements to the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) about his financial relationship with the Chinese government. He is accused of concealing from Harvard, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and DoD the financial contributions he received from Chinese funders. Dr. Lieber allegedly lied about his participation in a Chinese government-sponsored program, called the Thousand Talents Plan, that seeks to draw foreign-educated scientists to China. Foreign government talent recruitment programs, such as the Thousand ...
Source: Public Policy Reports - Category: Biology Authors: Source Type: news