Ohio State University agreed to pay $2.1 million to settle federal allegations that it failed to disclose researchers’ ties to China in grant applications and reports sent to NASA and the National Science Foundation from 2012 to 2023. The settlement puts a price tag on a familiar arrangement: public money flows upward, institutions collect the grants, and the people doing the work get caught in the machinery when disclosure rules turn into enforcement tools.
Benjamin Johnson, chief communications officer at The Ohio State University, said the university itself uncovered and investigated C.K. Shum’s foreign affiliations and reported them to federal authorities. He said, “Ohio State uncovered and investigated C.K. Shum’s inappropriate foreign affiliations and self-reported them to NASA and the National Science Foundation.” Johnson added that the university suspended Shum’s principal investigator privileges, halted spending on the relevant federal awards, initiated disciplinary proceedings, and repaid the federal grant funds in question. He said, “Shum is no longer employed at Ohio State, and the university has cooperated with federal authorities throughout the investigation.”
Who Holds the Levers
The Justice Department said the grant applications required Ohio State to disclose any ties to any foreign government. In its press release, the department said, “The settlement resolves allegations that OSU failed to disclose the collaboration and affiliation with, or funding received from, the PRC by certain OSU employees working on NASA and NSF grants.” That’s the apparatus speaking in the language of compliance. The university had to answer to federal agencies because the money came from them, and the agencies demanded a paper trail that reached into researchers’ outside affiliations.
The department said annual Faculty Activity Reports submitted to Ohio State since 2014 identified affiliations with PRC universities and state-run research organizations, but Ohio State did not disclose this information to NASA or NSF. It also said Ohio State became aware in 2019 that a researcher tied to NASA-funded work was involved in China’s Thousand Talents Program, but waited until 2023 to inform NASA and the National Science Foundation. The federal government describes the program as a Beijing-backed effort to attract people with expertise in or access to overseas technology and intellectual property. The Justice Department also said it found other Ohio State employees connected to the grants who had relationships with Chinese entities or received Chinese funding.
What the University Says It Did
Johnson said Ohio State takes national security seriously and has long been recognized for its efforts to promote research integrity and security. He pointed to dedicated research compliance and secure research offices, mandatory conflict-of-interest and research security disclosure systems, and robust security and foreign influence training programs. Those are the guardrails institutions build after the fact, the kind that arrive once the federal government starts asking questions and the reputational damage has already begun.
The university’s account says it self-reported, suspended privileges, stopped spending, and repaid funds. The federal account says the disclosures should have happened years earlier. Between those two versions sits the ordinary reality of grant-driven research: dependence on state funding, layers of oversight, and the constant threat that one missed disclosure can become a federal case.
Brett Shumate, assistant attorney general of the Justice Department's Civil Division, said, “American universities that benefit from the federal government’s support for scientific research and advancement must fully disclose all foreign funding in their grant applications.” He added, “We will continue to hold accountable any university that fails to comply with disclosure requirements designed to protect research security and federally-funded scientific achievements.”
The FDA’s Own Warning
The Food and Drug Administration said foreign clinical trials can produce high-quality data, but top FDA officials warned that overseas studies also create challenges for data integrity, transparency and oversight. Michael Davis, Karim Mikhail, Michelle Tarver and Angelo de Claro, who lead the agency’s drug, biologics, devices and oncology centers, wrote in a blog that “Multi-regional trials without an American patient at all or with only a small percentage of patients in the United States present a variety of concerns for American patients, for the FDA, and, increasingly, for policymakers in Congress.”
They said, “It is more challenging and costly for the FDA to inspect foreign study sites in the same manner as it inspects domestic sites, including the use of unannounced inspections.” They added, “In addition, the host country may not have the regulatory capacity or authority to provide oversight of clinical trials commensurate with the FDA’s expectations.” The officials said the push for high-quality data from clinical trials is “not a geopolitical statement.” They wrote, “Many foreign research institutions produce clinical data of the highest quality, and the FDA actively welcomes and relies on such data. What the FDA is saying, plainly and with full intent to act on it, is that the standard is the standard.”
That’s the clean bureaucratic version. The mess underneath is simpler: the agencies want the data, the universities want the grants, and everyone gets dragged through disclosure rules when the paperwork stops matching the money.