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The National Science Foundation revealed 16-20 cases of researchers failing to disclose foreign ties. Most of them were related to China. Photo: Shutterstock

Vast majority of US research institute disclosure violations related to China

  • Since 2018, the National Science Foundation found all but two of 16 to 20 disclosure violations were related to China
  • The revelation comes as the US has cracked down on perceived foreign interference in the sciences

The US National Science Foundation revealed on Wednesday that most cases where researchers violated American rules on foreign disclosures since 2018 were related to China.

Rebecca Keiser, the foundation’s first chief of research strategy and policy, told Nature magazine that 16 to 20 disclosure violations were discovered, and all but two of the cases were related to China.

The violations meant the agency reassigned, suspended or terminated grants and forced institutions to return funds or bar researchers from future funding.

The NSF is an independent research foundation of the US government.

Most of the cases involved researchers who had spent several months outside of the US. Photo: Shutterstock

Most of the cases involved grant recipients who had spent several months of the year outside the US, according to the report, published on Tuesday. The majority of the scientists in the China-related cases were US citizens who were not of ethnic Chinese descent.

“We’re only starting to understand these issues,” Keiser was quoted as saying. She added that “We in the government should do even more to communicate” the disclosure policies and possible consequences. Keiser told Nature that some of the researchers lost their jobs because they did not disclose foreign involvement in their projects, but the NSF did not know how often that happened.

Seven universities also reached out to the NSF about potential foreign disclosure violations from their faculty members, the report said.

Requests to Keiser and the NSF for comment were not immediately returned after regular office hours.

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The National Institutes of Health also reported in June that 93 per cent of the 189 researchers contacted over grant or institutional rule violations had received unspecified support from China.

There has been heightened scrutiny of Chinese influence and interference in the US in recent years, and increased worries that Beijing has sought to capitalise on US researchers, including through the Chinese government’s Thousand Talents recruitment plan to attract US scientists with grants.

The Trump administration has cracked down on foreign interference in science, including plans revealed in May to expel graduate students and researchers with ties to the People’s Liberation Army. Critics of the crackdown have warned of overreach, a cooling of valuable scientific collaboration and the unfair targeting of Chinese-Americans.

Many of the NSF’s disclosure violation cases involved “very well-known academics” who were offered funding because of their prominent accomplishments, Keiser told the magazine, but declined to share details due to privacy issues.

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High profile cases include the June indictment of Charles Lieber, a former chair at Harvard University’s chemistry and chemical biology department who gave false statements regarding his involvement with the Thousand Talents programme to bring leading researchers to China.
In May, Li Xiao-jiang, a former Emory University professor and participant in Thousand Talents, pled guilty to filing a false tax return that did not report foreign income from working overseas at Chinese universities.

The Van Andel Research Institute in Michigan agreed last December to pay US$5.5 million to the US Department of Justice over allegations of not disclosing Chinese grants for two of its researchers.

Keiser told Nature that the NSF’s Office of Inspector General, an oversight office for the foundation and its grants, had requested more staff and funding because its workload increased by 20 to 30 per cent over the past two years, in large part because of foreign interference investigations.

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