Chinese researchers' exclusion from NASA meet deplored

Excluding Chinese researchers from attending a conference of NASA, based on a law passed in early 2011, is "deplorable and wrong", said organisers of the meeting while urging the US Congress to relax " these unnecessary restrictions".

The meeting, scheduled to take place at NASA's Ames Research Centre in California in November, will be attended by researchers including those on both US and international teams who work on NASA's exoplanet-hunting Kepler space telescope programme, Xinhua reported.

But Chinese researchers, including those who worked at US universities and other institutions, were denied the opportunity to attend the meeting.

NASA officials reportedly said the rejection was done in accordance with a law passed in 2011 that prohibits government funds from being used to host Chinese nationals at NASA facilities.

The meeting organisers, the Scientific Organizing Committee ( SOC) of the Second Kepler Science Conference (KSC2), said in a statement they learned about the law in late September while drafting the final agenda, and that six Chinese researchers were denied the registration for the meeting.

"We find the consequences of this law deplorable and strongly object to banning our Chinese colleagues, or colleagues from any nation," the organisers said.

"The policies that led to this exclusion have had a negative impact on open scientific inquiry.

"We feel very strongly that it is wrong to exclude scientists, on the basis of nationality, from a meeting that welcomes free and open exchange of scientific ideas."