National Science Board: U.S. Is Losing Technology Lead over China

A prior National Science Board report on young scientists’ wages showed surprisingly low wages, despite the variety of well-paid alternative jobs for clever people, for example, on Wall Street.

In 2017, biological scientists were being paid just $55,000 five years after earning their PhDs, according to the board’s report about scientists’ wages.

Scientists with physical science degrees were earning just $64,000, while math and software PhDs were earning just $108,000, five years after graduation, the wage report said.

Salaries were even lower for young would-be scientists who stay in universities’ “postdoc” slots — just $48,000 for postdocs in life sciences and $49,000 for postdocs in the physical sciences. These postdoc jobs are the on-ramp to a career in academic science: “A postdoc position is generally expected to be competitive for obtaining a faculty position … [they] often perform cutting-edge research and receive valuable training,” the labor market report says.

Unemployment is also high for Americans who train to be scientists. In 2017, one-in-fourteen science and engineering PhDs were “working involuntarily out of field,” according to the wage report

But the low salaries allow many top U.S. university researchers to minimize payroll costs in their competitive laboratories. The reduced supply of Americans willing to accept such low wages and to risk unemployment is supplemented by the government-delivered supply of foreign scientists, including Chinese PhDs who are willing to work as postdocs.

Even though the board’s report lamented America’s relative decline against China, the report treated U.S. science sector’s cooperation with, and reliance on, foreigners as a plus, saying:

Foreign-born workers—ranging from long-term U.S. residents with strong roots in the United States to more recent immigrants—account for 30% of workers in S&E occupations … More than one-half of doctorate holders in engineering and in computer science and mathematics occupations are foreign born … In 2017, temporary visa holders earned one-third (34%) of S&E doctoral degrees … Three Asian countries—China, India, and South Korea—are the largest source countries and accounted for just over half (54%) of all international recipients of U.S. S&E research doctoral degrees since 2000

The board’s report also focused on recruiting more non-Asian minorities into science. The reports’ first paragraph about Americans’ science workforce said:

The U.S. S&E workforce continues to grow overall. The number of women and underrepresented minorities (URMs) — blacks, Hispanics, and American Indians or Alaska Natives — has grown. However, these groups remain underrepresented in the S&E workforce relative to their overall presence in the workforce and the population.

The Washington Post’s report echoed the board’s themes:

“Amid the global bidding war for talent, we need to avoid complacency,” [Julia Phillips, chair of the National Science Board’s science policy committee.] said.

…

“The science and engineering enterprise in the United States ideally should reflect our population in race, ethnicity and gender,” Phillips said. “It’s clear that we have a long way to go.”

Amid the leaders’ focus on foreign graduates and minority recruitment, the salaries paid to American scientists are low because the NSF has helped to inflate the supply of imported scientists, according to Eric Weinstein, the managing director at Thiel Capital, an investment firm based in Hollywood. The firm was created by Peter Thiel. In May, Weinstein tweeted:

Furthermore I will again spread my own researched conspiracy theory: the H-1b & the Immigration Act of 1990 were created from a conspiracy inside the @theNASciences & @nsf complex to target and betray our own STEM professionals on behalf of STEM employers: https://t.co/lYuY17MXy6

— Eric Weinstein (@EricRWeinstein) May 3, 2019

In November, Breitbart News asked the NSF about Weinstein’s claims. “We do not have a response to the paper you linked at this time,” the NSF press office replied.

The MyVisaJobs.com website reports that the government-run National Institutes of Health asked for roughly 500 H-1B visas for foreign researchers from 2017 to 2019. Universities sought 2,660 H-IB visas to import physical-science researchers and 13,000 H-1B visas to import foreign life-scientists during the same 2017 to 2019 period.

The National Science Board report also downplayed the competitive risk caused by the sector’s reliance on foreigners, despite the growing scale of technology theft by foreign actors, including U.S.-based Chinese scientists. For example, the Associated Press reported January 7:

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A Chinese scientist accused of participating in a conspiracy to steal trade secrets from pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline has been returned to the United States to stand trial in Philadelphia.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported Tuesday that 50-year-old biochemist Gongda Xue had fought extradition from Switzerland.

He is alleged to have received cancer research his sister stole from a research facility in the Philadelphia suburbs.

In November, the Senate issued a bipartisan report showing how science leaders in the agencies and universities remained passive while the Chinese government stole U.S. technology and diverted U.S. taxpayer funding to Chinese research.

“This report follows an eight-month investigation into how the American taxpayer has, in effect, unwittingly funded research that has contributed to China’s global rise over the past 20 years,” GOP Sen. Rob Portman said November 19. He continued:

Our investigation focused on China’s most prominent program called the Thousand Talents Plan. Launched in 2008, China designed the Thousand Talents Plan to recruit 2,000 high-quality overseas experts. By 2017, China dramatically exceeds its recruitment goal, recruiting more than 7,000 “high-end professionals.” Our report also details how the Chinese Communist Party controls and administers these talent recruitment programs.

Science agencies “are increasingly becoming aware of non-disclosure issues connected to relatively new factors such as foreign talent recruitment programs,” the National Science Foundation told Breitbart in November. “NSF has also issued a policy stating that members of its workforce may not participate in foreign government talent recruitment programs.”

The NSF’s budget of $8.3 billion funds many U.S. non-medical research projects. The NSF is overseen by the National Science Board.

Careless US estb. lets China hire thousands of scientists in the US, incl. many employed by US taxpayers, to steal tech by the boatload, admits (far too late) bipartisan Senate report.
No gov't or Ivy League managers are fired.
No visa program is frozen.https://t.co/cEunR3gpBn

— Neil Munro (@NeilMunroDC) November 23, 2019

Story cited here.

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