About a week ago, we published an episode on this program on Facts Matter detailing how two

Chinese nationals, a boyfriend and a girlfriend, were both doing research at the University of Michigan,

but they were caught by the FBI trying to smuggle into the United States a dangerous fungus,

a type of deadly fungus that can target crops. And we ended that particular episode by considering out loud how many possible other Chinese

researchers are here in the U.S. also doing the same thing.

And wouldn't you believe it?

Within just a single week, another Chinese researcher, also at the University of Michigan,

also at the Detroit Metropolitan Airport, was also caught

by the feds trying to smuggle in biological material, although this time it was not a fungus.

Instead it was a type of roundworm.

And perhaps the best part of all of it was that this woman, probably more by coincidence

than anything, came from one of the most famous cities in the entire world,

Wuhan, China. Now to start with, let me introduce to you the woman at the center of this new case.

Her name is Ms. Han Cheng-Schwen. She is a citizen of China, and she's currently pursuing her PhD

at the Huang University of Science and Technology located in

Wuhan, China. And as I'm sure you're wondering, even though it's irrelevant to the story,

you're wondering how far her school is from the virology lab where COVID was being studied.

Well, I looked it up and it's a 21-minute drive, roughly 10 kilometers,

whatever those are. Now, her doctoral thesis, the research that she was working on to get her PhD,

was described by her in her visa application as follows. Quote, Han studies fundamental questions

in neuroscience and physiology. Specifically, her research aims to understand how

animals detect sensory cues such as touch, light, chemicals, and temperature, and how the neural

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