by Robert M. Traxler
Fifty-four scientists have been booted from government employment for failing to disclose troubling financial arrangements with foreign governments. In the overwhelming majority of cases, more than 93%, the cash came from China, a fact reported briefly a few weeks ago.
Harvard Professor Charles Lieber was the tip of the science-for-hire iceberg; however, NPR wrote that he is a victim of racial profiling and his arrest was anti-science. Dr. Lieber is a dreaded rich old white man the left holds in disdain; normally anyway, unless they help out the Chinese communists, then they are victims. Folks, you can’t make this stuff up.
The left-wing news sources reported that University Professor (the highest rank in the Harvard system) and chair of the Harvard Chemistry and Microbiology Department, Dr. Lieber was arrested for lying to the Department of Defense. He was arrested while taking his full Harvard salary, some $250,000 to $300,000 per year plus benefits, on top of the $50,000 per month and $1.7 to 2 million in “research funds” he made when working at the Wuhan University in China. Also, toss in a few hundred thousand to purchase an apartment in Wuhan, and it is real money.
The good doctor was paid by Harvard the whole time he was being paid by China, good work if you can get it. Dr. Lieber failed to disclose this fact. Isn’t Wuhan the home of the Chinese People’s Army biological warfare center? Yes, yes, it is. Isn’t Wuhan the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic? It is, all a coincidence I am sure.
Less than a year ago, a congressional investigation found that the National Institute of Health (NIH) is among the government agencies that have long permitted communists working in the U.S. to steal billions in taxpayer-funded scientific research. Others include the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Department of Energy’s (DOE) national laboratories; so much for science being above question. For years we all have been deeply affected by Chinese infiltrators stealing valuable research, according to a U.S. Senate report that describes the probe’s findings. Investigators from the Justice Department determined that billions of dollars in scientific research funded by American taxpayers has been stolen by China, right under our noses.
The U.S. government had no viable plan to stop the ongoing theft of the highly valued intellectual property. In the meantime, the publicly funded work is helping the communist nation meet its goal of becoming a world leader in science and technology, and you are paying for it.
“This report exposes how American taxpayer-funded research has contributed to China’s global rise over the last more than 12 years,” the report points out. “During that time, China openly recruited U.S.-based researchers, scientists, and experts in the public and private sector to provide China with knowledge and intellectual capital in exchange for monetary gain and other benefits.”
The Chinese government placed operatives in American colleges and universities working under the 54 scientists who were canned and awaiting possible indictments.
This is a monumental scandal one that would and should lead the news, but has it? No, because it exposes two holy grails of the left, the Chinese and American science, which is not to be questioned, or you are a science denier on par with the Holocaust deniers.
The COVID-19 pandemic should have exposed the shortcomings of science; couple it with the number of former science deities, some 54 and counting caught up in this criminal activity and maybe those who tell us we cannot question science need to get their head out of a dark place and ask a few questions.
And yes, I am talking about the “settled science” modeling global climate change. How did the early COVID-19 models predicting in excess of 2.2 million dead by now work for us?
