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Illustrated portrait of Joe Tsien by Ryan Melgar

A Scientist Without a Country

Once hailed as a visionary, Joe Tsien fell under federal investigation. He says he’s a victim of bias, but his story doesn’t add up.

An Investigation
By Daniel Golden and Jeff Kao January 20, 2022

This article was co-published with ProPublica.

On September 9, 1999, David Letterman entertained millions of television viewers by riffing on a scientific breakthrough that had made an obscure Princeton assistant professor famous overnight. The late-night host’s top-10 list of “Term Paper Topics Written by Genius Mice” — including “A Sociological Study of Why Cats Suck” and “Outsmarting the Mousetrap: Just Take the Cheese Off Really, Really Fast” — saluted Joe Z. Tsien’s achievement in genetically engineering a mouse to learn faster and adapt better to changing conditions.

As the years passed, Tsien’s fame faded. Then, like hundreds of other scientists at U.S. universities, he found himself in the crosshairs of a federal crackdown on China’s theft of American research and expertise.

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A version of this article appeared in the February 4, 2022, issue.
We welcome your thoughts and questions about this article. Please email the editors or submit a letter for publication.
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Investigation Political Influence & Activism International Scholarship & Research
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About the Author
Daniel Golden
Daniel Golden is a senior editor at ProPublica. He is the author of Spy Schools: How the CIA, FBI, and Foreign Intelligence Secretly Exploit America’s Universities (Henry Holt, 2017) and The Price of Admission: How America’s Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges — and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates (Crown, 2006).
About the Author
Jeff Kao
Jeff Kao is a computational journalist at ProPublica who uses data science to cover technology.
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