5 ms·

Of course the guy should have disclosed everything to his funding sources, but from a scientist's viewpoint, the shock and outrage is confusing. Prominent scien

by knzhou 7y ago

Of course the guy should have disclosed everything to his funding sources, but from a scientist's viewpoint, the shock and outrage is confusing. Prominent scientists travel between institutions all the time, managing multiple groups -- it is common to see, on a senior professor's CV, appointments at 5 different institutes in 3 different countries (say, America, India, and Germany). That's a fundamental part of doing science. I benefit from it, and I pay it back by making all the notes and papers I produce freely available. If the moral principle here is that countries shouldn't try to draw scientific talent from other countries, well, the United States is by far the greatest perpetrator of brain drain in the world. A lot of countries have been sucked dry by it, including China itself in the past! If people are actually this worried about scientific knowledge crossing national borders, it won't stop with Prof. Lieber. They'll continue by banning textbook exports, taking down lecture videos, and raiding the Wikipedia servers. While they're at it, they can put up a Great Firewall of their own. That's the only direction I see this going.

mturmon 7y ago
Note: > criminally charged with making "false, fictitious and fraudulent statements"... > In interviews with Defense Department investigators in 2018 and 2019, Lieber said that while he had heard of the Thousand Talents Plan, he had never been asked to be part of it... The charge is not promiscuous collaboration, it's lying about it when asked. If he indeed lied to DoD investigators following up on a possible conflict of interest, that would be a huge problem, on top of (we could guess) an original failure to disclose.
- knzhou 7y ago
  As I said, he should have been clear with his funding sources. But that's not where the outrage in this thread is coming from -- everybody here is pissed off at the very idea of scientific collaboration crossing national borders. There are comparisons being drawn between doing science and waging war. This is saddening.
  - mturmon 7y ago
    On balance, your comment did gloss over the "taking money from two sources" issue, which is the point of the arrest. If you wanted to have a conversation about maintaining scientific collaboration in the midst of great power competition, this seems like the wrong case to build off of. Finally, I do agree that conversations about China on HN often do go south due to US nationalism.
    - knzhou 7y ago
      No, my point is that it is extremely common to take money from two sources, or even more! Nobody batted an eye at this, and in fact even today nobody bats an eye, unless one of the sources is in China. In that case it becomes "luring talent" and "IP theft", with all the trappings of selectively applied moral principle. Real IP theft would look like, say, abducting thousands of German scientists at gunpoint [0], not giving scientists grants to set up labs. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip
      - mturmon 7y ago
        OK, I realize in using the shorthand "take money from two sources", I have clouded the issue. Sorry about that. As always, the actual issue is the failure to disclose the possible CoI -- as in the present case. It sucks, BTW. Turns out the guy was the PhD advisor of my neighbor up the street.
        knzhou 7y ago
        I don't disagree with this, but what I don't understand is the nationalist outrage. Suppose a professor slacked off on their job by taking a long vacation in France. That would be wrong and deserving of punishment -- but it wouldn't have set off panic over him "selling out" the country. Yet that is what is happening.
        bdcravens 7y ago
- koheripbal 7y ago
  The underlying assumption here is that he was conducting research funded by the DoD and replicating it at his lab in China. So.... espionage.
avocado4 7y ago
The guy downright lied about a huge financial incentive. There's no excuse or valid "America bad" angle to spin this. > It says the deal called for Lieber to be paid up to $50,000 a month, in addition to $150,000 per year "for living and personal expenses." "Lieber was also awarded more than $1.5 million by WUT and the Chinese government to establish a research lab and conduct research at WUT," the document states. For a large part of the time frame in question, Lieber was also the principal investigator on at least six U.S. Defense Department research grants, with a cumulative value of more than $8 million, according to the affidavit. It also says he was the principal investigator on more than $10 million in grants funded by the National Institutes of Health. "These grants require the disclosure of significant foreign financial conflicts of interest, including financial support from foreign governments or foreign entities," the U.S. Attorney's Office in Massachusetts said in a statement announcing the charges against Lieber. In interviews with Defense Department investigators in 2018 and 2019, Lieber said that while he had heard of the Thousand Talents Plan, he had never been asked to be part of it, according to the affidavit. Lieber's email correspondence suggests he signed a three-year agreement and employment contract with WUT in 2012. "Lieber was obligated to work for WUT 'not less than nine months a year' by 'declaring international cooperation projects, cultivating young teachers and Ph.D. students, organizing international conference[s], applying for patents and publishing articles in the name of' WUT," the U.S. Attorney's Office said.
- knzhou 7y ago
  Again, as I said, not being clear about everything to your funding sources is definitely bad. But the specific outrage doesn't make sense. What does it mean to have a "conflict of interest" and a "financial incentive" when you're doing basic science? Science isn't like working for a corporation or the military. The end goal is to publish your results for the entire world to see.
  - greglindahl 7y ago
    Pretty much every scientist who fills out those forms can explain to you what a conflict of interest is. If you work in science, and don't get it, I suggest that you talk to your university ethics office.
cowsandmilk 7y ago
I would be unsurprised if he was given several opportunities to come clean. He was arrested for lying over and over again. I’ve applied for and won government grants from both the NIH and DOD. There are clear places to list these conflicts in the application. There are additional times you are asked after you win a grant. And he is accused of then lying to a DOD investigator and investigators from the NIH. He isn’t accused of any crimes for having a joint appointment. He is accused of lying about the fact that he had a joint appointment.
- angry_octet 7y ago
  He knew he would lose US grants and access to labs if he was employed by the Chinese. But he wanted their money, so he lied to the US Govt systematically, and then directly when asked about it. Obviously this behaviour is absolutely mad, and until you meet one of these huge ego guys is seems unlikely, but so many of them have a huge sense of their own importance. One hopes that other prominent researchers will understand the lesson.
  - bdcravens 7y ago
    Hope it was worth it for him. His career as he knew it is over for all intents and purposes.
    - angry_octet 7y ago
      He could become the von Braun of China...
jariel 7y ago
"If the moral principle here is that countries shouldn't try to draw scientific talent from other countries" I think even the most nationalist and hawkish members of the elite/gov/administration fully understand the value of research and that it's international. The US missile and nuclear program were built by foreign, often formerly 'baddy' scientist after all. At the same time, anything of strategic importance in China is tied to the state and therefore tied to all their other shifty activities. The 'Red Scare' of the Cold War was based on very legitimate concerns, unfortunately, there were people who shouldn't have been dragged into the net caught up in it - and so this is the issue: how to act, where to draw the line, legal and moral legitimacy etc.. China speaks with one voice, the West speaks with a thousand voices (heads of state, research, government, military, NGO etc.) and they're playing a very aggressive game of 'divide and conquer' which warrants a ton of scrutiny. Our job is to figure out how to counter the threat and to make tough decisions ... whilst minimizing damage, goodwill, and keeping an eye on some future where we all get along. Unfortunately, I feel this tension may last a long time.
- knzhou 7y ago
  Isn't it a strange coincidence that all of America's enemies (the Axis, the USSR, now China) "spoke with one voice"? This is just the well-known outgroup homogeneity bias [0]. Everyone lives in a bubble. You don't hear about other groups' internal divisions, but that doesn't mean they don't exist. It's a subtle bias, but an insidious one. It has led to people reading my comments and thinking "His tone doesn't match up with the hysteria of the news article... so he must be a Communist party shill!" I wouldn't fare well in a second red scare; this is not a future to which I want to go. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-group_homogeneity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-group_homogeneity
  - jariel 7y ago
    ? The 'Axis' definitely not 'speak with one voice' - nor did anyone ever use this term to apply to them. The term wasn't generally applied to the USSR either, although it's 'truthy' as their Politburo had immense central control over not just the USSR but Satelite states like Poland and E. Germany would could be given de-facto direct orders on many issues. But Xi Jinping is firmly in control: the depth and scope of information control, 7/24/375 monitoring of every citizen, absolute control over the political organs, military, finance, currency, finance - I think it's very rational to say there is 'one voice' in China. Xi Jinping may very well easily be the most powerful person in history. He has very long term ambitions for China, and his tactics are evidence of a pretty hardcore Realpolitik. Though most of it is non-threatening, much of it is, and there's obviously going to be a response.
hluska 7y ago
When questioned, Lieber said he had never even heard of the “One Thousand Talent” program, yet he was earning a significant amount of money from that program. Moreover, the money he was paid was deposited into a Chinese bank account and given to him in cash. He knew that he was lying about his associations and went to incredible depths to cover up this lie. No reasonable person would consider that collaboration. What’s with your pro-China bias?
- knzhou 7y ago
  Because this wouldn't be national news if it were any country but China, and if things continue the way they're going, at best I'll get deported without cause. I know that I can't change any minds on a forum like this, where any comment that isn't fully critical is "biased", but I can't go without at least trying.
Brave-Steak 7y ago
> America, India, and Germany These countries aren't geopolitical threats to each other in any sense. China is. That's basically it.

by knzhou 7y ago

mturmon 7y ago

Note: > criminally charged with making "false, fictitious and fraudulent statements"... > In interviews with Defense Department investigators in 2018 and 2019, Lieber said that while he had heard of the Thousand Talents Plan, he had never been asked to be part of it... The charge is not promiscuous collaboration, it's lying about it when asked. If he indeed lied to DoD investigators following up on a possible conflict of interest, that would be a huge problem, on top of (we could guess) an original failure to disclose.

knzhou 7y ago
As I said, he should have been clear with his funding sources. But that's not where the outrage in this thread is coming from -- everybody here is pissed off at the very idea of scientific collaboration crossing national borders. There are comparisons being drawn between doing science and waging war. This is saddening.
- mturmon 7y ago
  On balance, your comment did gloss over the "taking money from two sources" issue, which is the point of the arrest. If you wanted to have a conversation about maintaining scientific collaboration in the midst of great power competition, this seems like the wrong case to build off of. Finally, I do agree that conversations about China on HN often do go south due to US nationalism.
  - knzhou 7y ago
    No, my point is that it is extremely common to take money from two sources, or even more! Nobody batted an eye at this, and in fact even today nobody bats an eye, unless one of the sources is in China. In that case it becomes "luring talent" and "IP theft", with all the trappings of selectively applied moral principle. Real IP theft would look like, say, abducting thousands of German scientists at gunpoint [0], not giving scientists grants to set up labs. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip
    - mturmon 7y ago
      OK, I realize in using the shorthand "take money from two sources", I have clouded the issue. Sorry about that. As always, the actual issue is the failure to disclose the possible CoI -- as in the present case. It sucks, BTW. Turns out the guy was the PhD advisor of my neighbor up the street.
      - knzhou 7y ago
        I don't disagree with this, but what I don't understand is the nationalist outrage. Suppose a professor slacked off on their job by taking a long vacation in France. That would be wrong and deserving of punishment -- but it wouldn't have set off panic over him "selling out" the country. Yet that is what is happening.
        bdcravens 7y ago
koheripbal 7y ago
The underlying assumption here is that he was conducting research funded by the DoD and replicating it at his lab in China. So.... espionage.

avocado4 7y ago

The guy downright lied about a huge financial incentive. There's no excuse or valid "America bad" angle to spin this. > It says the deal called for Lieber to be paid up to $50,000 a month, in addition to $150,000 per year "for living and personal expenses." "Lieber was also awarded more than $1.5 million by WUT and the Chinese government to establish a research lab and conduct research at WUT," the document states. For a large part of the time frame in question, Lieber was also the principal investigator on at least six U.S. Defense Department research grants, with a cumulative value of more than $8 million, according to the affidavit. It also says he was the principal investigator on more than $10 million in grants funded by the National Institutes of Health. "These grants require the disclosure of significant foreign financial conflicts of interest, including financial support from foreign governments or foreign entities," the U.S. Attorney's Office in Massachusetts said in a statement announcing the charges against Lieber. In interviews with Defense Department investigators in 2018 and 2019, Lieber said that while he had heard of the Thousand Talents Plan, he had never been asked to be part of it, according to the affidavit. Lieber's email correspondence suggests he signed a three-year agreement and employment contract with WUT in 2012. "Lieber was obligated to work for WUT 'not less than nine months a year' by 'declaring international cooperation projects, cultivating young teachers and Ph.D. students, organizing international conference[s], applying for patents and publishing articles in the name of' WUT," the U.S. Attorney's Office said.

knzhou 7y ago
Again, as I said, not being clear about everything to your funding sources is definitely bad. But the specific outrage doesn't make sense. What does it mean to have a "conflict of interest" and a "financial incentive" when you're doing basic science? Science isn't like working for a corporation or the military. The end goal is to publish your results for the entire world to see.
- greglindahl 7y ago
  Pretty much every scientist who fills out those forms can explain to you what a conflict of interest is. If you work in science, and don't get it, I suggest that you talk to your university ethics office.

cowsandmilk 7y ago

I would be unsurprised if he was given several opportunities to come clean. He was arrested for lying over and over again. I’ve applied for and won government grants from both the NIH and DOD. There are clear places to list these conflicts in the application. There are additional times you are asked after you win a grant. And he is accused of then lying to a DOD investigator and investigators from the NIH. He isn’t accused of any crimes for having a joint appointment. He is accused of lying about the fact that he had a joint appointment.

angry_octet 7y ago
He knew he would lose US grants and access to labs if he was employed by the Chinese. But he wanted their money, so he lied to the US Govt systematically, and then directly when asked about it. Obviously this behaviour is absolutely mad, and until you meet one of these huge ego guys is seems unlikely, but so many of them have a huge sense of their own importance. One hopes that other prominent researchers will understand the lesson.
- bdcravens 7y ago
  Hope it was worth it for him. His career as he knew it is over for all intents and purposes.
  - angry_octet 7y ago
    He could become the von Braun of China...

jariel 7y ago

"If the moral principle here is that countries shouldn't try to draw scientific talent from other countries" I think even the most nationalist and hawkish members of the elite/gov/administration fully understand the value of research and that it's international. The US missile and nuclear program were built by foreign, often formerly 'baddy' scientist after all. At the same time, anything of strategic importance in China is tied to the state and therefore tied to all their other shifty activities. The 'Red Scare' of the Cold War was based on very legitimate concerns, unfortunately, there were people who shouldn't have been dragged into the net caught up in it - and so this is the issue: how to act, where to draw the line, legal and moral legitimacy etc.. China speaks with one voice, the West speaks with a thousand voices (heads of state, research, government, military, NGO etc.) and they're playing a very aggressive game of 'divide and conquer' which warrants a ton of scrutiny. Our job is to figure out how to counter the threat and to make tough decisions ... whilst minimizing damage, goodwill, and keeping an eye on some future where we all get along. Unfortunately, I feel this tension may last a long time.

knzhou 7y ago
Isn't it a strange coincidence that all of America's enemies (the Axis, the USSR, now China) "spoke with one voice"? This is just the well-known outgroup homogeneity bias [0]. Everyone lives in a bubble. You don't hear about other groups' internal divisions, but that doesn't mean they don't exist. It's a subtle bias, but an insidious one. It has led to people reading my comments and thinking "His tone doesn't match up with the hysteria of the news article... so he must be a Communist party shill!" I wouldn't fare well in a second red scare; this is not a future to which I want to go. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-group_homogeneity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-group_homogeneity
- jariel 7y ago
  ? The 'Axis' definitely not 'speak with one voice' - nor did anyone ever use this term to apply to them. The term wasn't generally applied to the USSR either, although it's 'truthy' as their Politburo had immense central control over not just the USSR but Satelite states like Poland and E. Germany would could be given de-facto direct orders on many issues. But Xi Jinping is firmly in control: the depth and scope of information control, 7/24/375 monitoring of every citizen, absolute control over the political organs, military, finance, currency, finance - I think it's very rational to say there is 'one voice' in China. Xi Jinping may very well easily be the most powerful person in history. He has very long term ambitions for China, and his tactics are evidence of a pretty hardcore Realpolitik. Though most of it is non-threatening, much of it is, and there's obviously going to be a response.

hluska 7y ago

When questioned, Lieber said he had never even heard of the “One Thousand Talent” program, yet he was earning a significant amount of money from that program. Moreover, the money he was paid was deposited into a Chinese bank account and given to him in cash. He knew that he was lying about his associations and went to incredible depths to cover up this lie. No reasonable person would consider that collaboration. What’s with your pro-China bias?

knzhou 7y ago
Because this wouldn't be national news if it were any country but China, and if things continue the way they're going, at best I'll get deported without cause. I know that I can't change any minds on a forum like this, where any comment that isn't fully critical is "biased", but I can't go without at least trying.

Brave-Steak 7y ago

> America, India, and Germany These countries aren't geopolitical threats to each other in any sense. China is. That's basically it.