“Hidden Funding”

Sure, if that’s what you want to call it;

Some 54 scientists have resigned or been fired as a result of an ongoing investigation by the National Institutes of Health into the failure of NIH grantees to disclose financial ties to foreign governments. In 93% of those cases, the hidden funding came from a Chinese institution.
 
The new numbers come from Michael Lauer, NIH’s head of extramural research. Lauer had previously provided some information on the scope of NIH’s investigation, which had targeted 189 scientists at 87 institutions. But his presentation today to a senior advisory panel offered by far the most detailed breakout of an effort NIH launched in August 2018 that has roiled the U.S. biomedical community, and resulted in criminal charges against some prominent researchers, including Charles Lieber, chair of Harvard University’s department of chemistry and chemical biology.
 
“It’s not what we had hoped, and it’s not a fun task,” NIH Director Francis Collins said in characterizing the ongoing investigation. He called the data “sobering.”

I’m confident this could never happen here.

18 Replies to ““Hidden Funding””

  1. Based on my experiences in the post-secondary system, nothing like this surprises me any more.

    If it isn’t financial ties to “foreign governments”, it’s importing cheap research labour from the associated countries. Many come as students, particularly at the graduate level. At the same time, there are those who are research associates or post-doctoral fellows, often being hired later as faculty.

    Academe is a sieve.

  2. “I’m confident this could never happen here.”

    We agree,then. This investigation would never happen here, and the perps would never be caught.

    The situation is undoubtedly even worse in naive little Canader,as our pc government and all agencies have been infiltrated by nice Chinese immigrants who came here for the education and stayed because they admire our wonderful free country.
    I have to stop typing now before I make myself sick.

    1. infiltrated by nice Chinese immigrants who came here for the education

      And they, no doubt, will get government funding for it, quite likely through the grants of their supervisors.

    1. $350 Billion and counting.
      Liberals are flush with your cash.
      Regular Canadians will need mortgages, lots of them, to pay the Liberal bill.
      Doesn’t matter anyway.

      Until Conservatives and brave Canadians (are there any?) do something about Canada’s Crooked Liberal Media, nothing will change ever.
      Get off your knees, Conservatives.

  3. Chinese Communists are just Canadian Liberals in a hurray.
    Of course, Canadians and their embarrassing totalitarian Media will figure it out sometime after the gulag door is closed.
    Canadians are misinformed, uninformed and cowards anyway.

  4. Who has harmed you and/or this country more: the police or the CBC? Given a choice, would you be better off by defunding the police or the CBC?

  5. Scientists …. Heh.
    The thing is that the scientists are subject to greed, prestige and superiority complex, very much like your everyday plebeian.
    Science to most of the scientists is very much secondary. Prestige is number one, money is the program and result.
    There are of course those that do actual scientific work, though if they don’t pay lip to the ideology the money may not be forthcoming.

    1. Exactly.

      That prestige is acquired by either accomplishing something extraordinary (such as solving a major mathematical problem), winning a major prize (e. g., the Nobel or the Fields Medal), or by getting a large grant from a revered source (for example, NSERC here in Canada).

      A lesser degree of prestige is acquired if one gets private funding from a corporation, a foundation, or some well-known moneybags. Those sources are still regarded as respectable.

      However, if one provides one’s own money, that prestige will vanish if one is a social nobody. There’s no cachet or esteem in actually earning one’s own research funding as there might be a hint that one actually had to work or do something vocational for it. So, actually raising one’s research funding through saving and investment makes that money tainted.

      Now, if one was, say, Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk, providing one’s own money is not only permissible, it’s admired and envied, conveying the image of independence and intrepidity, largely because it was done in public view.

      I found out about that when I applied for academic positions. It seemed that in order to be considered for one of those jobs, I needed to have someone else bankrolling me, preferably from the aforementioned sources. I thought that using my own investment portfolio would be an asset because I showed enterprise and initiative and that, in a pinch, I could continue my work using my own resources.

      Nope. I guess I didn’t show that I was capable of being a professional freeloader, which many academic researchers actually are and, thereby, wasn’t a “team player”.

  6. I for one am shocked and appalled by these findings.

    We know from all of the discussions and investigations attendant upon how the availability of government and other funding affects the climate research and modelling community that scientists are different than other humans. They are motivated by the quest for knowledge, the paramountcy of truth and the good of all. They do not respond to funding at all.

    But those bio med scientists. They are different.

    1. They are motivated by the quest for knowledge, the paramountcy of truth and the good of all.

      Baloney. My Ph. D. supervisor was an example of saying just that but, in reality, being reluctant to do any work unless someone else was paying for it. It didn’t matter what he was investigating, so long as he was being paid. Then again, he had tenure.

  7. “’I’m confident this could never happen here. ”

    A similar investigation?

    You’re absolutely right!

  8. “could never happen here”

    Like they say, ‘Evil thrives in the dark’.

    And there is nobody more evil and darker than the Liberal Communist party of Canada, which has had leaders from Quebec for some 40 of the last 50 years, because they thrive on corruption.

  9. I think in Canada the search would be on to find out which Politician, which University, which Research facility, which Scientists were NOT Bought n Paid for by the Chinese Communist Party.

    TRAITORS in our midst…by the Dozen.

    Chinada indeed.

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