[Campus Reporm] Yet another university medical research professor has been charged for alleged ties to Chinese efforts to steal American research. Just a week after Harvard University chemistry chairman Charles Lieber was indicted for allegedly lying about his ties to China, specifically a technology university in the heart of coronavirus hub city Wuhan, court records allege that another professor lied about ties to China.
Newly-unearthed court records reveal that Emory University neuroscientist Xiojiang Li was fired in late 2019 after being charged with lying about his own ties to China. Li was part of the same Chinese program as Lieber.
The “Thousand Talents” plan recruits American academics to collaborate with Chinese universities.
A 2019 senate report called the Thousand Talents program an inherent violation of “U.S. standards of research integrity” noting that its practices “place members in compromising legal and ethical positions, and undermine fundamental U.S. scientific norms of transparency, reciprocity, and integrity.”
While Emory fired both Li and his wife, he was the only individual named in the court documents, which alleges that he was simultaneously receiving salaries from both the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Emory University while purporting to only be working for Emory.
Li expressed indignance that the university chose to cut ties with him after his lies were revealed, claiming that he was “shocked” that the school would fire a “tenured professor” in what he called “such an unusual and abrupt fashion.
Both Li and his wife worked at the university for more than two decades, studying Huntington’s disease.
In December, a Harvard medical researcher was caught trying to smuggle vials of cancer cells back to china in a sock.