To his supporters and colleagues, Song Guo Zheng, MD, PhD, was the most productive worker they’ve seen in 50 years, publishing nearly 300 papers, a man who lived modestly and was “at the forefront” of research into autoimmune disorders to which he “devoted his professional life.” Yes, he made mistakes when he failed to report all of the support and positions he held in China, but he did not benefit personally.
To NIH and other government officials, the former chair of Ohio State University’s (OSU) Division of Rheumatology and Immunology in the Department of Internal Medicine was a liar, a criminal and a forger whose actions, influenced by ties to China, led to a “tragic” loss of nearly $4 million in federal research dollars and may have tainted the studies they funded.
Zheng, 58, who pleaded guilty in November to making false statements, has been in prison since his arrest on May 22, 2020.[1] This May, Algenon Marbley, chief judge for the Southern District of Ohio, sentenced him to 37 months in prison.[2] To date, his is the harshest sentence for this type of crime.
In addition, relying heavily on a statement submitted by Michael Lauer, NIH deputy director for extramural research, Marbley ordered Zheng to repay $3,429,705.22 in grant funds. Zheng also must pay OSU more than $400,000 to cover its costs in responding to the government’s investigation of his actions. He will also be deported to China at the conclusion of his sentence.
According to Steven Nolder, Zhen’s appellate attorney who is challenging the 37 months, Zheng is “suffering mightily in [prison] as he was taken from a county jail in Ohio, sent to the transfer center in Oklahoma, then moved to a U.S. penitentiary in Pennsylvania, and just a couple of days ago was shipped back to Oklahoma.”
Prisoners call what Zheng has been subjected to “diesel therapy,” Nolder said; the goal is to “move the prisoner to make them uncomfortable…no other reason to willy-nilly move the prisoner.”
China Ties Fortified During Job Insecurity
Zheng could hardly have imagined such would be his fate when he came to the United States more than two decades ago.
His first position here was in 2000, when he joined the University of Southern California (USC) as a postdoctoral fellow in the Division of Rheumatology and Immunology in the Keck School of Medicine, following what Zheng’s attorney Daniel Collins called a “long academic and research career in China.” After three years, he was appointed an assistant professor and later associate professor, a position he held until 2012.
According to the scenario Collins, with Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP, presented in court documents, Zheng’s ties with China were strengthened when he was unable to obtain a tenured post at USC. He applied for positions at U.S. institutions as well as in China, and “Sun Yat-sen University (SYSU) recruited Dr. Zheng, and sponsored his application in November 2012 to participate in the Hundred Talent Plan.”
During this period, “universities encouraged collaboration with scientists around the globe,” Collins wrote in court documents, “and Dr. Zheng never hid the fact that the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NNSFC) recognized Dr. Zheng with an ‘Outstanding Young Investigator Award’ from 2008 to 2011.”
Penn State Passed ‘Tip’ to NIH
Prior to being hired by OSU in early 2019, Zheng had worked at Penn State University, and it was there that his case began. In an interview with RRC, Lauer said Penn State officials told NIH they had received information about Zheng in January or February of 2019.
“What Penn State told us was that…they had received an anonymous tip that he had an appointment at Sun Yat-sen University and that Dr. Zheng had denied having such an appointment, and they were just letting us know they were looking into it,” Lauer said.
Lauer subsequently wrote to OSU on April 27, 2020, asking officials to undertake their own inquiry. The results of that investigation filled a 47-page letter back to Lauer and included numerous patents apparently in Zheng’s name in China and publications that did not always reference his affiliations with Chinese institutions and programs.[3]
RRC has learned that NIH is now tracking more than 500 cases of potential inappropriate foreign interference or connections to foreign nations.[4]
Arrest Took Place at Airport
The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced in July 2020 that Zheng had been indicted following his arrest that May.[5] Zheng reportedly left OSU without notice and was arrested at the airport in Alaska “as he prepared to board another charter flight to China. When he was arrested, he was carrying three large bags, one small suitcase and a briefcase containing two laptops, three cellular telephones, several USB drives, several silver bars, expired Chinese passports for his family, deeds for property in China and other items,” DOJ said.
Zheng had attempted to return to China to visit his ailing father and did not even know at the time that he was under federal investigation, according to Collins.
As noted earlier, Zheng pleaded guilty to making false statements. He “regrets the statements that he made in these [NIH award] applications to participate in these plans. He was aware of the general nature of these plans, and was trying to gain employment at the time he made the statements in 2012 and early 2013,” Collins wrote in court filings.
The government maintained that, when confronted by OSU, Zheng “minimized his involvement on several NNSFC research grants bearing his name, and falsely denied his association with SYSU” in China’s Thousand Talents Program, and gave OSU “forged versions of the Chinese grants in question.”
Prosecutors argued for a 46-month prison term, stating that Zheng hid his “equity interests or positions…and up to fifteen patents in China,” causing NIH “to award a total of $3,429,705.22 to fund five research projects” over seven years.
Collins, urging a lesser sentence of probation and no restitution, said Zheng “acknowledged responsibility for his failure to disclose, but he performed the work as promised, submitted this work for peer review, and published its results.” He also said the government made erroneous conclusions based on interviews with Zheng’s lab staff without the aid of interpreters.
Additionally, Collins maintained that Zheng “never received those funds directly. The funds went to the university, who used a substantial portion for its own administrative and facilities costs.”
Zheng’s Research Needs to be ‘Recreated’
But Judge Marbley agreed with Lauer whose Jan. 29 statement to the court also revealed the widespread and extended impact of Zheng’s actions.
Lauer said Zheng’s “lack of candor in his application calls into question the validity of his entire research” and that NIH “is unable to rely on any of the research produced by Zheng. NIH is undertaking a detailed review of all of Zheng’s NIH-funded work to identify potential falsification, fabrication and plagiarism.”
Any instances of such research misconduct would then be subject to review by the HHS Office of Research Integrity and, if confirmed, subject Zheng to further sanctions and possible retractions of his publications.
“Second, Zheng’s unreported conflicts of interest, in themselves, call the scientific integrity and objectivity of his research into question,” Lauer wrote. He added that NIH, “through OSU,” is completing a “retrospective review of his research” out of concerns for “objectivity.” He said “an objective third-party” will have to recreate Zheng’s research.
Lauer confirmed to RRC that these two inquiries are underway and said there were no findings yet. RRC asked Lauer if he thought Zheng’s jail term and restitution were fair. “That’s not for me to make a judgment on,” he said. “I think what it does point out is lying on grant applications is serious.”
Noting that he had addressed this in his court statement, Lauer repeated that had NIH officials “known about [Zheng’s] various activities, we would not have funded those grants.”
Said Lauer: “There is some researcher out there who submitted an outstanding [application], that got an outstanding score, who didn’t get funded because of this person, and that’s a tragedy. There was real harm, and that honest researcher who didn’t get funded and whose work could not go forward very well may have made a major discovery that we have now lost because of this dishonesty.”
Institutions Have a Responsibility
RRC asked Lauer who, besides Zheng, was responsible for this situation, and how institutions can know when they’re not receiving full disclosure from investigators.
“The grant goes to the institution, so ultimately, of course, the institution is responsible for the truth, completeness and accuracy of what comes in on grant applications,” Lauer said.
“Not in any way to diminish the importance of personal responsibility, it’s also been recognized that some institutions are doing better jobs than others of creating a culture of integrity, and that culture of integrity cuts across all kinds of behaviors…not only strict scientific honesty, but also running a laboratory with a safe and civil environment, behaving in a non-discriminatory way, making sure that grant applications and disclosures are as complete as can be, and making sure that financial conflict of interest disclosures and plans are thorough and accurate,” Lauer said.
In tandem, NIH officials “are responsible for following up on problems when they come to our attention, and also doing our part of working with institutions and other stakeholders to assure the highest levels of accountability and integrity in our research enterprise. And if we don’t do that, whatever credibility we have is going to be lost,” Lauer said. Training is important, but there are other factors, such as mentorship and supervision, he said.
Zheng ‘Deprived’ of Early Release
RRC was unable to contact Zheng or his wife, who was described in court documents as his lab manager while he was at Penn State.
“She’s not in a position to speak as she’s very upset and is voluntarily leaving the United States in a few weeks,” Zheng attorney Nolder told RRC.
Zheng is the only researcher to receive a lengthy sentence among nine convicted or who pleaded guilty to crimes related to Chinese connections or grant fraud; others received a few months of prison, probation or home confinement, which has been made available to some prisoners because of COVID-19.
“Our claim on direct appeal is that Dr. Zheng’s lawyer was ineffective by failing to argue for a downward variance based on how the Bureau of Prisons will execute his sentence compared with a like-kind inmate who’s imprisoned for the same crime, having the same background, but who doesn’t face deportation,” Nolder told RRC. He filed the appeal brief on Aug. 17.
Without a change, Zheng “will serve his sentence in a prison with a higher security level, will serve a greater percentage of that sentence in custody, and will be deprived of early release opportunities such as halfway house placement”—all of which argue for a term shorter than 37 months, he said.
The government has four weeks to file its response.
Contact Nolder at snolder9@gmail.com.