On May 3, the Strauss Center and Asia Policy Program welcomed Molly Roberts, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of California San Diego, for a talk on “U.S. Science in the Era of U.S./China Tensions.” This was part of our Brumley Speaker Series.
Roberts presented a working paper about the 2018 National Institutes of Health (NIH) investigations of U.S. scientists and connections to foreign resources, and its impacts on scientific production within the life sciences. Using millions of publication records, accounting for the work of over 102,000 scientists from 2015-2020, she and her co-authors found that the NIH investigations for failure to disclose receipt of foreign resources, mainly from China, led to a productivity decline for U.S. scientists who previously collaborated with Chinese scholars. This decrease in quantity and quality of publications was particularly prominent for scientists with Asian names and for those working in fields with greater U.S.-China connectivity. Roberts argued that the NIH investigations had a direct negative impact on NIH funding for the life sciences and an indirect chilling effect on U.S. scientists, which combined to foster a reluctance for U.S. scientists to start new or continue existing collaborations with institutions and scientists in China.
The audience for this virtual talk showed interest in the mechanisms and implications of these findings. Professor Sheena Greitens asked about whether the changes in China’s governance and technology policies may also explain the decline in U.S.-China scientific collaboration. Professor Xiaobo Lu suggested investigating the trade-off between national security and research productivity. Brumley Fellow Siyun Jiang pointed out that fields that required access to fieldwork and archives, such as the social sciences and humanities, may suffer a greater decline in collaborations under geopolitical uncertainty. Roberts addressed these questions and offered additional commentary on the effects of media, innovations in the private sector, and the international flow of talent on the observed decline in publications. She thanked the audience for the discussion and found it helpful to further her development of this ongoing project.
Biography
Margaret (Molly) Roberts research interests lie in the intersection of political methodology and the politics of information, with a specific focus on methods of automated content analysis and the politics of censorship in China. She received a PhD from Harvard in Government (2014), MS in Statistics from Stanford (2009), and BA in International Relations and Economics (2009). Currently, she is working on a variety of projects that span censorship, propaganda, topic models, and other methods of text analysis. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in the American Journal of Political Science, American Political Science Review, Political Analysis, and Science.