U.S. Science in the Era of U.S.-China Tensions

May 3, 2022  |  12:15-1:15 PM
Zoom Webinar

On Tuesday, May 3, the Strauss Center for International Security and Law and the Asia Policy Program are pleased to virtually welcome Molly Roberts, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of California San Diego, for a talk on “U.S. Science in the Era of U.S.-China Tensions.” This is part of the Strauss Center’s Brumley Speaker Series.

Roberts will speak about her upcoming joint paper “The Impact of U.S.-China Tensions on U.S. Science,” published in collaboration with Ruixue Jia, Ye Wang, and Eddie Yang. The paper studies how recent investigations of foreign influence in research have affected productivity of U.S. scientists working in the life sciences. Using data from PubMed and Dimensions between 2010-2020, Roberts and her co-authors compared publications of scientists who collaborated exclusively with Chinese scientists with those working with scientists from other countries outside of China and the United States. The authors identified a decline in both the productivity and quality of publications by U.S. scientists whose work involved collaboration with scientists in China. In her talk with the Strauss Center, Roberts will discuss their research and its implications in the era of tensions between the United States and China.

 Registration required. Please note that you must have a registered Zoom account to be able to register and log in. 

BIOGRAPHY

Margaret (Molly) Roberts research interests lie in the intersection of political methodology and the politics of information, with a specific focus on methods of automated content analysis and the politics of censorship in China. She received a PhD from Harvard in Government (2014), MS in Statistics from Stanford (2009), and BA in International Relations and Economics (2009). Currently, she is working on a variety of projects that span censorship, propaganda, topic models, and other methods of text analysis. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in the American Journal of Political Science, American Political Science Review, Political Analysis, and Science.