Re:Senior NASA scientist pleads guilty om China ties
by ChuckMcM on Thursday January 14, 2021 @01:26PM
(#25780073)
I suppose they can be both. I have a ResearchGate account and they reached out to me to suggest Chinese scientists that were looking for co-authors on papers and collaboration on research.
If I were an academic and/or worked at an institution that evaluated me by papers published for "impact" it would be a credible enticement.
It has always been the case that working across borders was considered a good way to establish non-diplomatic ties between countries.
That said, if you work for the government you have rules about disclosing such work and it seems that he may have perjured himself on some of his disclosure forms. That is always a bad choice. If true, that he felt compelled to lie about his association would indicate that he also felt if he didn't lie the US Government would ask him to stop working with these folks.
That combination of things sounds like a very common rationalization that people have used forever that goes something like "I know that 'technically' this is against the rules, but what I'm doing doesn't violate the spirit of the rule and it is giving me a large benefit. Since I have decided it wouldn't be a violation, lying about it is harmless and saves a lot of paperwork explaining to people who don't understand what we're doing on why it only seems like it would violate the rule but doesn't really."
It may be survivor bias but it seems that every time someone has used this sort of logic to explain to me why they were not following some "bureaucratic rule" I knew that once it came out that they were not following the rule, they would face worse consequences.
If I were an academic and/or worked at an institution that evaluated me by papers published for "impact" it would be a credible enticement.
It has always been the case that working across borders was considered a good way to establish non-diplomatic ties between countries.
That said, if you work for the government you have rules about disclosing such work and it seems that he may have perjured himself on some of his disclosure forms. That is always a bad choice. If true, that he felt compelled to lie about his association would indicate that he also felt if he didn't lie the US Government would ask him to stop working with these folks.
That combination of things sounds like a very common rationalization that people have used forever that goes something like "I know that 'technically' this is against the rules, but what I'm doing doesn't violate the spirit of the rule and it is giving me a large benefit. Since I have decided it wouldn't be a violation, lying about it is harmless and saves a lot of paperwork explaining to people who don't understand what we're doing on why it only seems like it would violate the rule but doesn't really."
It may be survivor bias but it seems that every time someone has used this sort of logic to explain to me why they were not following some "bureaucratic rule" I knew that once it came out that they were not following the rule, they would face worse consequences.