The Impact of U.S.-China Tensions on U.S. Science

While there has been much discussion about recent investigations of foreign influence in research, very little work has quantified how these investigations have affected the productivity of U.S. scientists. We uncover evidence of adverse effects on U.S. scientists with collaborators in China using publication data from PubMed and Dimensions during 2010–2021. By studying the publication records of over 113,000 scientists during 2015–2021, we find that the investigations coincide with a decline in the productivity of scientists with previous collaborations with scientists in China in comparison to scientists with international collaborators outside of China, especially when the impact of publications (proxied by citations) is considered. The decline is particularly salient for fields with more pre-investigation NIH funding and U.S.-China collaborations. Our findings suggest that scientific research may be very sensitive to political tensions, and we further explore these mechanisms with qualitative interviews with scientists.