[okasaki]

>Four of the five NIH letters to MD Anderson contain very specific allegations of what NIH terms “serious” rule violations. One letter, for instance, asserts that a researcher had violated peer-review confidentiality by emailing to a scientist in China an NIH grant application marked as containing “proprietary/privileged information.” A different letter alleges that a researcher had shared “detailed information on as many as 8 NIH applications” with a daughter. NIH asserts several researchers had “active and well-supported research programs in China,” or financial ties to foreign firms, that they did not disclose. Three of the letters specifically mention a researcher’s potential involvement in China’s Thousand Talents Program, an effort started in 2008 to establish ties with Chinese or Chinese American scientists working outside of China by offering funding, salary, and other research support.

This sounds like really boring stuff that the scientists may not even have known that they weren't allowed to do.

[michaelhoffman]

If you are a funding peer reviewer you know you are not allowed to send grant applications to anyone unauthorized. It's not boring; a big deal is made out of this repeatedly and it is a serious lapse.

Of course this is something that is rarely punished because in most cases there's no way for the authorities to know. Too bad for these folks that they seemed to be under investigation.

[mturmon]

For a peer reviewer of a proposal to send it to anyone else is both unethical and against the basic black-letter rules. Anyone doing peer reviews of proposals will be asked to ensure confidentiality of proposals under review. (https://grants.nih.gov/policy/research_integrity/confidentia...)

The level of paranoia around proposals is much higher than, say, peer reviews for conferences or journal papers, where sometimes a paper might be given to a grad student to take a look at.

[duxup]

It sounds like they have pretty clear rules that you're not allowed to do that.