Jeffrey MervisLast week, Ohio State University (OSU) immunologist Song Guo Zheng became the latest addition to a growing roster of U.S.
academic scientists accused of helping China illegally harvest the fruits of federally funded research. Like Zheng, who has been charged by the U.S.
Department of Justice (DOJ) with grant fraud, almost all the cases involve scientists funded by the $42 billion National Institutes of Health (NIH), which in the past 2 years has aggressively investigated grantees it believes have failed to disclose support from foreign governments.In contrast, scientists with grants from the $8 billion National Science Foundation (NSF), the nation’s second largest funder of academic research, have rarely made the news.