
Major U.S. cancer center ousts ‘Asian’ researchers after NIH flags foreign ties - hunterjumper06
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/04/exclusive-major-us-cancer-center-ousts-asian-researchers-after-nih-flags-their-foreign
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IdontRememberIt
I remember when I was young (+40 years ago), many Swiss private banks would
only hire Swiss people. That rule was due to the French IRS equivalent having
their own employees sent to Switzerland and hired by Swiss bank. They were
mole transmitting confidential information about French clients. So these
private banks had to restore trust and security.

Honestly still today, for some critial jobs, I do not understand companies
_not_ hiring local people (whatever nationality) with their friends and whole
family (parents, cousins, etc) in the country. The cost of treason is higher
(if they need to escape the country). It is not bullet proof, but it mitigates
the risk.

But it looks like banks have a short memory (This guy was a sysadmin):
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herv%C3%A9_Falciani](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herv%C3%A9_Falciani)

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sneak
It is racist to assume that someone’s place of birth determines their
allegiances.

~~~
president
By your logic, people from all nations should be able to get top secret
government security clearances. Let me know how that works out.

~~~
haditab
No. By his logic "birth place" shouldn't be the determining factor. FYI, birth
place does not determine nationality.

~~~
Dirlewanger
While that's true, personally I'm ok with birth place being a restriction for
some things e.g. in order to run for President in the US, one needs to be born
in the US, not merely a citizen. Not sure how it is in other Western
countries.

~~~
djakjxnanjak
I don’t think that’s true - John McCain was born in Panama. The rule is they
have to be a citizen at birth.

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delfinom
>The new developments are linked to a sweeping effort launched last year by
NIH to address growing U.S. government fears that foreign nations,
particularly China, are taking unfair advantage of federally funded research.

Instead we let big pharma do it and charge a massive markup to fund their
yachts eh?

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tibbydudeza
Well considering this is the same country who interned 110,000 Americans of
Japanese descent all due to hysteria.

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DamnYuppie
Stop acting like something that happened nearly 80 years ago is relevant
today. Did we go crazy and lock up every Muslim after 9-11? That was a
different time, a great deal of progress has been made since then. Sometimes I
think too much progress as we are unwilling to be tough against those who seek
to do us harm.

~~~
int_19h
The problem is that the same people who sold the 9/11 surveillance state were
(and still are) making the argument that Japanese-American interment was
justified, and would be justified again in the same circumstances. For
example:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Defense_of_Internment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Defense_of_Internment)

There was also some rhetoric explicitly referencing interment (in a positive
way) during the 2016 presidential campaign.

And to remind, the Korematsu decision - which, essentially, made it all legal
- wasn't overturned until last year, either.

So it's not exactly ancient history.

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yumraj
I wonder why the headline says 'Asian' instead of saying Chinese, since all
three researchers were Chinese with ties to China.

As an ethic Indian, I'm kinda offended when all Asians are just lumped
together as I believe it promotes general racism and bias against anyone from
that _continent_.

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codegeek
Funny you say that because in the US, Indians are not considered Asians in
practice even though of course South Asia is, well in Asia. I have seen many
people argue that Asians only mean East Asians and does not include South
Asians. However, the official census lumps all Asians together.

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danso
How are Indians not considered “Asians in practice” when they are considered
as such by the Census, the authoritative organization that sets the
categorization standard?

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umvi
Colloquially, in America, Asians are identified as having slanty eyes and
white skin. Indians have brown skin and are therefore not colloquially
referred to as Asians. Instead, they are referred to simply as "Indian".

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Steko
This is an oversimplification, most Americans will also be quick to categorize
darker skinned Southeast Asians as Asian.

Historically most Asians in the US were from East Asia and later SEA so the
label tends to evoke those groups. Lacking familiarity, it may also be harder
for many Americans to easily discriminate (lol?) between East Indians and
other non-white/non-Asian groups.

Still there are plenty of people that do include Indians as "Asian" in the US,
it's hardly a universal standard to exclude them as a lot of comments here
seem to think.

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ConfusedDog
Why not look into other ethinic's ties with foreign nations that taking
advantage of US funded research? Probably because they are not considered to
be threats, and sharing common good research results is not necessarily a bad
thing. (Military tech is different story.) The fact is US is considering China
as a threat under Trump's throne, so researchers with Chinese heritage is
under much higher scrutiny than other races is the racism happening right now.
It is a much more subtle and dangerous form of Racism, reminded me War World
II Japanese-Americans. What's happening in this article is just a symptom.

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astazangasta
Specifically, white people have been stealing research and claiming it as
theirs for decades. We give them Nobel prizes when they do it really well.

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okasaki
>Four of the five NIH letters to MD Anderson contain very specific allegations
of what NIH terms “serious” rule violations. One letter, for instance, asserts
that a researcher had violated peer-review confidentiality by emailing to a
scientist in China an NIH grant application marked as containing
“proprietary/privileged information.” A different letter alleges that a
researcher had shared “detailed information on as many as 8 NIH applications”
with a daughter. NIH asserts several researchers had “active and well-
supported research programs in China,” or financial ties to foreign firms,
that they did not disclose. Three of the letters specifically mention a
researcher’s potential involvement in China’s Thousand Talents Program, an
effort started in 2008 to establish ties with Chinese or Chinese American
scientists working outside of China by offering funding, salary, and other
research support.

This sounds like really boring stuff that the scientists may not even have
known that they weren't allowed to do.

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michaelhoffman
If you are a funding peer reviewer you _know_ you are not allowed to send
grant applications to anyone unauthorized. It's not boring; a big deal is made
out of this repeatedly and it is a serious lapse.

Of course this is something that is rarely punished because in most cases
there's no way for the authorities to know. Too bad for these folks that they
seemed to be under investigation.

