NIH, FBI Accuse Scientists In US of Sending IP To China, Running Shadow Labs (arstechnica.com) 115
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas has forced out three senior researchers with ties to China. The move comes amid nationwide investigations by federal officials into whether researchers are pilfering intellectual property from U.S. research institutions and running "shadow laboratories" abroad, according to a joint report by Science magazine and the Houston Chronicle. The National Institutes of Health began sending letters to the elite cancer center last August regarding the conduct of five researchers there. The letters discussed "serious violations" of NIH policies, including leaking confidential NIH grant proposals under peer review to individuals in China, failing to disclose financial ties in China, and other conflicts of interest. MD Anderson moved to terminate three of those researchers, two of whom resigned during the termination process. The center cleared the fourth and is still investigation the fifth. MD Anderson isn't the only institution dealing with this issue. The NIH sent similar letters to at least three other institutions, according to reporting by Science and the Houston Chronicle. Some advocates expressed concern over what they considered racial profiling while other researchers worried that such efforts to protect intellectual property would actually backfire.
"These are the top talents foreign countries have been trying to recruit unsuccessfully," said Steven Pei, a University of Houston professor critical of the actions by MD Anderson. "We are now pushing them out of the Texas Medical Center, out of Houston, out of Texas, and out of the U.S. It seems we're helping foreign countries to accomplish what they could not do by themselves. We are hurting the American competitiveness."
"These are the top talents foreign countries have been trying to recruit unsuccessfully," said Steven Pei, a University of Houston professor critical of the actions by MD Anderson. "We are now pushing them out of the Texas Medical Center, out of Houston, out of Texas, and out of the U.S. It seems we're helping foreign countries to accomplish what they could not do by themselves. We are hurting the American competitiveness."
Re:Well (Score:5, Interesting)
As America clamps down on academic freedom, the obvious response is to turn the Chinese "shadow lab" into the primary lab. More and more biomedical research is shifting to China, not only for academic freedom and lower costs, but for less bureaucracy, fewer petty restrictions on stem cells, etc.
My daughter is a microbiology student at the Univ of California, and she was offered several internships based on her ability to fluently speak Mandarin Chinese.
America is forfeiting the future.
Academic freedom versus money versus what? (Score:2)
If I ever had a mod point to give, I'd have given that comment one, probably an interesting. However I think the AC with the stupid subject subverted the actual discussion. You [ShanghaiBill] could have redirected the discussion more usefully than that.
Having said that much, I'm not sure where else to go with it. No ontology in mind yet.
However I can report some personal data. My swansong was a minor course at a prestigious school. Mix of mostly domestic seniors and mostly international graduate students. L
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We need to decide if we're priortizing science or money.
The capitalists have already figured out that you maximize money by sharing knowledge, not hoarding it.
TFA is about the US government trying to stop them from doing so.
There is no "tradeoff". This is just plain old-fashioned stupidity, similar to the "cryptography is a munition" [wikipedia.org] fiasco of the 1990s.
Re:Well (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not necessarily about hoarding knowledge or money. Papers are published when the research is in a usable state and then anyone can build on that, regardless of where they are.
The problem is that most of the 'hard work' (basic science) in the world is done and funded primarily by the US government by an order of magnitude ($40B for NIH alone). Then outside countries (China and India in particular) aggressively recruit or even outright buy/bribe the PI or their students into handing over interesting research which then they'll develop out and strike up both the credit and the profits while the US continues funding failed research projects.
You can't keep investing in something if you never get to benefit from the profits. That's how communism/socialism works, but that's an unsustainable model long term. Someone at some point needs to see the fruits of their labor.
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The way it's supposed to work is that research that the government, i.e. you as a US citizen, paid for is published and freely available for anyone to turn into a viable product.
It actually has to be published eventually because all research that isn't peer reviewed, published and reproducible is basically worthless outside of academic circles.
Of course that means anyone in the world can use that knowledge to build products, and it works both ways - US companies can use foreign research too.
The US tries to
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That only makes sense if the government funded the ENTIRE process rather than just some of it. Without the contribution of private companies, there would be no final product for government to steal on your behalf.
Private companies contribute the larger share of the final total R&D investment.
The products of the basic research also are not a sure thing. A lot of this stuff fails to deliver as expected. So those that bear the costs of the final stage of the R&D pipeline (private companies) bear consid
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>Science works best when you remove the berriers
Yep. Those berriers keep coming around the lab bothering me with their berries.
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More and more biomedical research is shifting to China, not only for academic freedom and lower costs, but for less bureaucracy, fewer petty restrictions on stem cells, etc.
Included in that "etc" is not having to fully inform or even get study patients' consent.
My daughter is a microbiology student at the Univ of California, and she was offered several internships based on her ability to fluently speak Mandarin Chinese.
Plenty of political science and CS majors get the same deals when they can fluently speak Russian.
America is forfeiting the future.
Just like they did by not competing with Unit 731.
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By not employing spies in our research institutes? How's that a loss?
Everyone should know academia in China is a bad joke. It's all fake.
That "less bureaucracy" means that Chinese universities are racially homogeneous. The bureaucracy that Obama put into place is enforces our racial laws. Without it, we'd be back in the old days of discrimination and sexual assault.
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Gosh, they could be curing hundreds of millions of people, before we do! What a horror!
They don't want to cure hundreds of millions only the ones that are real Chinese and tow the party line the rest are there to serve the few as in all good Communist /left leaning "democracies" . Remember All men are equal some are more equal than others in their ideal society
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> Most people on this planet care more about their community, than about themselves.
That's funny. Because we are talking about China where they quite literally had to back off if communism because they weren't able to FEED THEMSELVES. They discovered that harnessing individual greed was far better than suppressing it or trying to pretend that it doesn't exist.
Now they are in a position to replace the United States as a world power.
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Close, but not accurate. Problem is that many of these people who get money from the government don't care how and why that money is given to them for research. All they know is that money is there, and their part of the job is to get top talent for the job.
So this is simply a "it's not my job to deal with these problems" argument.
senior reseahers developing new content? (Score:2, Insightful)
How can they be pilfering it if they are the ones that produced all the ground breaking research to begin with?
My guess is that somehow corporate interest are using tax payer dollars via post secondary to benefit from research and pissed they aren't the only ones who get to pilfer.....
If Chinese are here and transferring some of that knowledge, I don't see why it is any different.
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How can they be pilfering it if they are the ones that produced all the ground breaking research to begin with?
So when you review a grant for federal agency, you do so under a confidentiality agreement. Breaching it is a federal offense. (Not sure it is is technically a crime.)
Right now, if I review for a federal agency and send the proposals I am asked to review to anyone else, I am breaking the agreement.
Probably it is espionage.
Now maybe grant proposals shouldn't be confidential, but that is a separate question.
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Grant proposals should be confidential. I review all kinds of stuff professionally. Good ideas! That said, the number of well-proposed good ideas involving a new application of technology to an interesting problem well exceeds my budget. We fund some, and not others, based on my organizations' priorities. Plenty of good ideas go unfunded through no fault of their own. Unfunded ideas don't die, they just go elsewhere (to other agencies, foundations, etc.).
Those 'ideas' are 40+ page research proposals w
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Our diversity makes us stronger (Score:5, Funny)
LOL
sharing is bad (Score:2, Interesting)
Sure glad to hear that improving humanities health plays second fiddle to profitability. Of course these researchers are all financed by private money, not donations from people who couldn't give a flying fuck about profitability, and governments who have taken the money from all taxpayers. Yes, let's hide research, sharing is bad. This shadowing sounds like a great idea, that way we could see if the primary source is fudging their results/data. We need to encourage this kind of behavior.
We should be working together (Score:2)
Racial profiling? (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's get this straight, nobody suspects Koreans or Japanese of stealing IP secrets for China. Your race isn't a factor but your nationality absolutely is. Why is this ok? Simple, it's understood that China is an authoritarian state and can and will entice willing targets with money or coerce unwilling targets by threatening their family still in China.
These kind of IP stealing operations by China are pervasive for the simple reason that they are cost-effective. There is a nice podcast of Darknet Diaries [darknetdiaries.com] that details the exposure of such an operation.
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This is also the main reason you shouldn't trust anything said about the Chinese government from those who are still directly or indirectly under the control of China. Certainly, if I were from China and going to a US university, I'd probably only do so with either (1) the objective to steal as much possible information for Ch
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Ah, yes. It's racist to point out that the Chinese government has on many occasions retaliated whenever anyone has spoken out against China, whoever they may be--as a side poster noted, he/she self-censors to still be able to visit China again because China can and may deny a tourist visa. I can't believe that a Chinese born person who comes to the US isn't aware of this. If that's the case, it seems perfectly reasonable to think others
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These kind of IP stealing operations by China are pervasive for the simple reason that they are cost-effective.
We should respond by cancelling an amount of their US treasury securities equal to three times the value of what was stolen each time they are caught. Stealing must be punished, whether by individuals or nations.
Re: Racial profiling? (Score:1)
If that principle was taken to the logical extreme the US treasury would be emptied by penalties. ...
To say nothing of the EU
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Actually if you read TFA these researchers were not accused of stealing IP at all. They were accused of sharing some grant application documents they should not have shared, and of having some financial ties that where not in and of themselves a problem but which were not disclosed.
The documents in question may give hints as to where research money is being targeted I guess, but the details of the grants become public if they are successful so that's pretty weak.
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Sure, and I'm not trying to excuse the things they did, they were against the rules. What I'm saying is that it's bizarre how Ars and now a bunch of asshats on Slashdot are trying to make it about China stealing IP.
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But it actually can be theft of IP if they are applying for grants to develop novel process methods,and those methods are described in the grant application and review, which I can almost guarantee some of these were if the NIH was this up in arms over it.
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For the record, this isn't just for "foreign intelligence acquisition". Threatening family of individual targeted by others for any reason is considered a legitimate tool in China and is practised routinely even on in low level bureaucracy and private enterprise.
This is simply the case of what is routine in one culture sounding shocking in another.
"resigned during the termination process" (Score:2)
What bugs me about this (Score:2, Insightful)
What bugs me is the fact they are likely doing Cancer research considering it's MD Anderson.
CANCER. Not the next Nuclear or cyber-weapon. It's F*****G CANCER.
Disease doesn't care if you're American, Chinese, Russian, etc. and Cancer is one of the big ones that kills an awful lot of people every year. Cancer Research isn't something that we should be protecting under IP laws unless, of course, your true goal isn't to cure cancer but rather, to ensure you're the only one with a patent able treatment that w
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(sacrificing mod points to reply)
The business of research requires IP laws to ensure billions of dollars are spent by corporations on research. Without protection, they have no reason to risk building entire campuses, outfitting a dozens of labs, hiring hundreds of researchers, and creating studies in hopes that one, just one, will produce a treatment.
If an unscrupulous thief can make off with research worth billions, pretty serious measures need to be implemented at the national and international scale o
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(sacrificing mod points to reply)
The business of research requires IP laws to ensure billions of dollars are spent by corporations on research. Without protection, they have no reason to risk building entire campuses, outfitting a dozens of labs, hiring hundreds of researchers, and creating studies in hopes that one, just one, will produce a treatment.
If an unscrupulous thief can make off with research worth billions, pretty serious measures need to be implemented at the national and international scale or the cure you're hoping for won't happen.
So why are the communist Chinese bothering to do it? Didn't think that out terribly well, did you?
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These would be the same "communists" that you buy all of your cheap junk from.
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Actually lots of diseases do care what your ethnicity is. You won't see many people of Northern European descent with Sickle Cell Anemia for example. If you are of Ashkenazi Jewish descent you are more likely to get breast cancer than if you are not (both male and female).
I could go on, but a quick Google search will show you that cancer rates are most definitely effected by ethnicity, and that's before a whole host of other diseases both genetic and none genetic.
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Not unsuccessful in recruiting our talent. (Score:3, Insightful)
Obviously if the talent is conducting espionage for China, China was not "trying to recruit [the talent] unsuccessfully."
We're also obviously "helping foreign countries to accomplish what they could not do by themselves." In terms of cancer research, that's actually probably OK; if my dad is dying of prostate cancer I really don't care if the cure is discovered on American soil by a state-funded university or in a Chinese "shadow lab" funded by the Chinese government, as long as the cure is made available to American patients when they need it.
China has for many years offered American businesses an exchange: get cheap labor and manufacturing in China, in exchange for helping China improve its state of the art to American levels. Where we run into problems is when China can't get this state of the art stuff because cheap farm laborers can't produce it reliably with sufficient quality to satisfy their business partners; Chinese factories are notorious for cutting every corner they can get away with and that "it's not cheating if I don't get caught" attitude is pervasive throughout their culture.
I've never met a Chinese person who didn't suffer a fit of paranoia when I didn't try to cheat them on a contract, because they assumed I WAS cheating them and they just couldn't figure out how. That's just how business is done for them. And when they can't meet their goals through legitimate means they see nothing wrong with lying, cheating and stealing to meet those goals.
I'm not saying there AREN'T honest Chinese business people out there; I'm just saying what I've observed to be true about the ones I know personally whom I've done business with. Two examples are a college professor who abused his position to cause literally millions of dollars of damages to students over the course of his career by failing students who wouldn't bribe him (unacceptable in American culture, but very normal in China), and a landlord who insisted on performing shoddy, dangerous repairs because he was too cheap to fix things properly and who almost got my room mate's dog killed as a result.
grant proposals (Score:2)
This is not a case where these researchers were stealing the secrets of cancer research from their academic institution. They were, however, stealing copies of confidential grant proposals written by US companies. I'm an industry scientist, and this is part of the problem with the way the government handles grants.
This issue is very complex. I've been part of scientific political organizations and lobbied congress to have friendlier visa policies for students and postdocs studying in the US. Those are the
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Ok, even with the problems the US has, are you seriously wanting to have China be the new world leader?
Russia?
I mean....you'd rather have these bastions of fair play, peace and openness as world top dog over the US?
Information wants to be free! (Score:2)
No surprises really (Score:1)
Should hardly be a surprise when the US taxpayer educates and employs Chinese nationals. The phrase "We are hurting the American competitiveness." is often used in defense of outsourcing. In outsourcing its an excuse to increase unemployment while reducing the tax base to enrich foreign nationals at the expense of citizens. With this it is as if we have to accept espionage to maintain competitiveness.
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Foreign nationals are just part of the scenery. Despite how much certain people like to whine about how much money we "waste" on health care, all of that money means that we can poach the best talent from the entire rest of the planet.
If you're any good, your head gets hunted and you will get offers you will find difficult to refuse.
Who cares who finds it? (Score:2)
If the cure for cancer is found by the Chinese, Japanese, Russians, it doesn't matter. As long as it is found. Screw the US for trying to hoard it for themselves (i.e. for the profit).
-Miser
If you can't beat 'em.... (Score:2)
...steal 'em.
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The Greys want to hide it and are more powerful than us puny humans. Give it up and keep quiet, we're overpowered.
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I'll bite. Your stats are probably bogus, but for the sake of argument let's assume they are accurate. Now, what should be done about it?
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Now, what should be done about it?
Blood lead levels are strongly correlated with crime. Prison inmates have three times the average level. On average, black children in America have twice the blood lead levels of white children. Black pre-natal infants receive less folic acid and other micro-nutrients that are critical for brain development. Black mothers are more likely to smoke and drink while pregnant, and less likely to breastfeed.
Fixing these problems may not eliminate the racial disparity in crime, but they are obvious areas for imp
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Crime corelates with poverty.
Correlation is not causation. Crime certainly causes societies to spiral into poverty, but there is thin evidence for the reverse.
Doing a "Marshal Plan" to drag our gettos out of poverty would make a good (long term) investment
During the 1960s, 70s and 80s, we spent many billions on anti-poverty programs with little to show for it. It was the reduction in environmental lead that caused the dramatic fall in crime starting in the mid-1990s. During that time, we were actually reducing anti-poverty spending [wikipedia.org], kicking people off welfare, and compelling them to get jobs.
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During the 1960s, 70s and 80s, we spent many billions on anti-poverty programs with little to show for it. It was the reduction in environmental lead that caused the dramatic fall in crime starting in the mid-1990s. During that time, we were actually reducing anti-poverty spending [wikipedia.org],
assuming that both changes need several decades before having some visible effects, that neither supports or negates any effect of those two measures in either direction.
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Crime corelates with poverty.
And "diversity is our strength". Repeating something over and over again doesn't make it true.
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Regulate them?