Have science, can't travel

Last July, a British biologist strolled into the US embassy in London to get his temporary (J-1) visa stamped so he could return to his California lab. He wasn't worried, even after he learned he needed to undergo a background check. The last time he left London for the United States, a mere 15 months earlier, a background check delayed him for six months. He was told any later checks would be much quicker, so he had confidently returned to London for a wedding and scientific conference. The second round should take a few weeks, he was told. So he waited. And waited. The weeks turned into months; his experiments went stale, his colleagues struggled to work around his absence, and another team scooped him by publishing its findings on one of his projects.