6 ms·

Stolen laptop contains cancer research data

74 points by lotusleaf1987 16y ago

ggordan 16y ago
I would have thought the value of a possible cure for prostate cancer would be far more than $1000.
- lylejohnson 16y ago
  Was thinking the same thing. Maybe they're hoping the thief doesn't read Hacker News (or CNET) and learn that little tidbit.
oscardelben 16y ago
People need to learn the basics of working with a computer. I can't imagine working for years on an important project without any backup system whatsoever. Getting your computer stolen is only one of the tens of the possible scenarios of things that could happen.
- lylejohnson 16y ago
  > I can't imagine working for years on an important project without any backup system whatsoever. I've "worked with computers" since I was a teenager, but for a long time I didn't make backups even though I knew it was something I should have been doing. It wasn't until I actually had a hard drive crash on me that I got backup religion.
  - Splines 16y ago
    I'm in the same boat (still am). I hardly ever back up my data. My employer though, uses source control rigorously and makes deployment and usage of those tools dead easy. We also have folder redirection possible if you wanted to make your "My Documents" folder available (and backed up automatically) on the network. There's SharePoint too, but sometimes it's a PITA. My hypothesis is this: Given OU Medicine's student computer requirements [1], I'm betting that these researchers just didn't have the patience or knowledge in integrating a Mac into their Windows-centric network. [1] http://www.oumedicine.com/body.cfm?id=954 http://www.oumedicine.com/body.cfm?id=954
    - nfg 16y ago
      > I'm in the same boat (still am). I hardly ever back up my data. How much data are we talking about here? <10 Gigabytes? Solutions like Dropbox are just so simple for data in that range that you'd be crazy not to use them.
      - Splines 16y ago
        The only irreplaceable data I have is photos/videos of the family. It's getting to be about 10 GB - I've got two hard drives in my PC that I'm planning to mirror the data across. At the very least it'll save me from hard drive failure. Theft/acts of god are something I haven't planned for. I have thought about burning a bunch of DVDs (of just the photos) and storing them somewhere else (work/relatives/bank). I use dropbox to sync passwords and some docs from work/home. I'd like to use dropbox (or something like carbonite) to back up the rest, but frankly I'm too cheap/lazy to go through with it.
        jokermatt999 16y ago
        10 GB is also small and cheap enough to buy a USB drive for and back it up on. It's what, $10 for a 16 gig thumbdrive or so? Afaik, they also have less concern about bit-rot than DVDs or CDs, not to mention the ease of use.
- todayiamme 16y ago
  When you are up against human nature, no amount of learning can help you. Of course, she knew about backing up, but who has the time to do it? After all, who wants to figure it out, install stuff, port stuff or even choose a service! Who has the time... Such things really aren't a result of ignorance, but laziness. Yet again are we any different?
michael_dorfman 16y ago
The more interesting question, to me at least, is whether or not the U of Oklahoma will be taking some kind of disciplinary action against her.
- maukdaddy 16y ago
  That would be absurd.
  - michael_dorfman 16y ago
    Why? They are, after all, her employers-- and they've got quite a bit of time and money invested in her research. I have to assume that they have some kind of standards for the care of data, and I certainly hope that keeping exactly one copy of the dataset, without backups, on a laptop which frequently travels out of the lab, is in serious contravention of a number of their policies.
    - maukdaddy 16y ago
      You're making way too many assumptions. You can't fire someone because a laptop is stolen or lost. The University should have provided a means of centralized backup for data.
      - michael_dorfman 16y ago
        I am making assumptions. So are you, of course. I am assuming that the University did provide a means of centralized backup, and she failed to avail herself of it. This is based on the assumption that it is more likely that one researcher screwed up, than that the entire University is woefully incompetent. Also, note that you assumed that I meant "firing" when I said "disciplinary action." I was thinking more along the lines of a note in her file, and a stern talking-to.
- gilesc 16y ago
  If she ends up losing the data permanently, that will severely hamper her ability to apply for future grants (which usually require preliminary data), and lose funding. This offense is definitely self-punishing.
siglesias 16y ago
Time Machine. It works.
- gvb 16y ago
  Flux capacitor + 1.21 gigawatts? Delorians are getting hard to find, though.
  - younata 16y ago
    You technically don't need a delorean, any car with stainless steel shell will work just as fine (paraphrased from Doc).
- _stephan 16y ago
  Spideroak.com works too. It automatically backups your data to the cloud (securely encrypted!). It synchronizes your data across multiple machines (and multiple OS) and you can access all past versions of your files. It's free if you don't need more than one or two GB. It's the ideal backup tool for researchers that don't generate tons of data and want a simple backup solution.
  - rarrrrrr 16y ago
    ..and, by the way, there's an automatic 50% discount for anyone with a .edu (or similar) email address. :)
- rarrrrrr 16y ago
  I was really unimpressed with Apple's Time Machine. Did you know it only goes backwards?! Lame. (Humor aside, it's actually quite well engineered.)
apl 16y ago
That's grossly negligent behavior on her behalf. Family pictures, unpublished novel and a gigabyte of emails? Fine. But research data that only exists on one consumer-level machine? Work that was financed by her employer and various other organizations? Holy shit.
- dabeeeenster 16y ago
  Surely it's grossly negligent behaviour on her employer's behalf?
  - Xurinos 16y ago
    I voted you up, but I wanted to note that I (we?) have no idea how her department is run, and the negligence could rest as well in her hands as it could in her employer's hands. Another post here said "Blame the IT department for not establishing rigid policies." These sentiments are good, but... What if the IT department clearly outlined policies for how to store and secure the data? What if the researcher is one of those "This is how I have always done it, and I am ignoring you" types? Given the kinds of data claimed to be on the laptop, it sounds like a personal laptop, not a locked-down IT-given laptop. What if that was the researcher's choice, the intentional ignoring of IT policies in the name of convenience or whatever? Either way, the article's message is good: back up your important data. Whoever is to blame, the core message obviously bears repeating.
    - redacted 16y ago
      I work in the physics department of a top university. The majority of work people in the department do involves a computer at some stage, from computational physics (likely involving supercomputers and months of compute time) at one end of the spectrum to using Excel as a data store at the other. We do not have an IT department (we have one or two post-doctoral researchers who keep a couple of servers running for undergraduates). We do not have IT policies, outside of university-wide intellectual property rules. There are only personal laptops (in the sense that even though my machine was bought for me, I have full control of it and there is no oversight of how the machine is used). To the best of my knowledge, this is true of the rest of the university (possibly even worse in other departments).
tpinto 16y ago
so years of work to find the cure for cancer is on a white macbook and the guy didn't backup it? yeah right.
- arethuza 16y ago
  If you've ever worked in an academic environment you wouldn't find this story hard to believe.
tmcw 16y ago
So _this_ is why cancer hasn't been cured yet. Gotcha.
lotusleaf1987 16y ago
I find it hard to believe that someone with the possible cure to cancer wouldn't bother backing it up. If this is legitimate, I think it's beyond irresponsible. Also, why such a minimal reward?
- stevenbedrick 16y ago
  Probably because it was coming out of her own pocket, and researchers generally don't make that much (especially if she was a post-doc). I'm pretty sure that the NIH won't let you charge "stolen laptop reward" to your grant, and your university sure as heck isn't going to shell out for something like that.
- brown9-2 16y ago
  Perhaps the "cancer cure data" claim is a huge exaggeration by Mrs Shin to help get her laptop back. You'd expect someone to value that at more than USD 1000.
adammichaelc 16y ago
Mozy, anyone?
lkrubner 16y ago
The reward is only $1,000. While their research may have offered some interesting insights into cancer, they clearly didn't have an absolute cure (for prostate cancer, which is mentioned in the article). If they had a real cure, then around this moment Merk would step in and offer a $10,000,000 reward for the return of the laptop, in exchange for the right to commercialize the technology. I've several friends who have pursued biology in universities. They could claim that their laptops have data offering possible cures for diabetes, high blood pressure and AIDS. This is the kind of thing they will talk about when we meet for lunch. I realize, of course, that they are not on the verge of a genuine cure. But occasionally their research offers an important new insight. I sense that these researchers, in the story, had info at that level. Otherwise, the reward would be more than $1,000. I do think the university should do more to help researchers manage their data.
- stevoski 16y ago
  The idea that a "cure" for any type of cancer would only be on one laptop is absurd. It may work in a movie plot, but in real life, no way. At best it would have info on how to possibly, vaguely minimise the suffering in some situations. Cancer is not something that one brilliant researcher can "cure" alone.
  - kylec 16y ago
    Besides, a researcher smart enough to cure cancer is smart enough to back up their computer.
    - stevenbedrick 16y ago
      How much time have you spent around cancer researchers? I can assure you that many of the most brilliant scientists I know are all almost entirely computer-illiterate. If I had a dollar for every lab computer I've seen whose desktop is full of a few dozen Excel files ("data1.xls", "data2.xls", "new data.xls", "jim new data.xls"...), I would never need to apply for another grant as long as I live.
- jerf 16y ago
njharman 16y ago
Not really, but kind of... the person doing Cancer Research (or other work that is socially/culturally critical to the world) who did not back up their data should be held criminally responsible. Not so interested in the punishment as the (possibly non-existant) deterrent effect such laws/prosecution would have. It's fucking ridiculous that in 2011 people are still not backing up their data.
- nopassrecover 16y ago
  No idea why the parent got downvoted twice (i upvoted to counter one of them). If (and I sincerely doubt it to be the actual case, but the story suggests it is) the researcher is doing paid research and not backing it up at all, those involved in process design (or the researcher themself if there was adequate and clear process guidelines) should be held responsible for some kind of recklessness bordering on fraud. After all, they cannot prove that they have actually done any research right now and someone could similarly take millions and just "lose a laptop". It is comparable to not keeping proper financial records which is typically criminal.
edw519 16y ago
Sorry guys, but most of the comments in this thread remind me of why we IT people have so much bad PR to overcome. We're blaming the user for our mistake. That's like blaming the cow for leaving the pasture because one of us forgot to lock the gate. The simple fact is that this user should have never been able to be in a position for this to happen. Where were the IT security policies and procedures? Why was mission critical data on someone's c: drive? When (if ever) was the last audit? We curse enterprise IT departments because they are so slow at getting things done, but they are really, really good at putting in place the things that would never allow this to happen. I have customers with strict policies regarding the protection of mission critical data, and I bet that none of it is as important as what was routinely put onto this laptop and paraded around town. Public companies are responsible to their shareholders and the SEC. Private companies are responsible to their investors and creditors. Why weren't the same protections put in place to the trustees and taxpayers in this case? Every nanosecond this researcher has to worry about performing routine IT overhead is a nanosecond not spent on critical research. The technological solutions to problems like this have been around for years. Why weren't they in place? It's about time for IT to stop blaming the user and fix the problem.
- sophacles 16y ago
  I'm sick of this attitude of "Always be super nice and make sure you over mother your users" crap. You know what: If my car engine seizes because I haven't changed the oil, no one tells the car makers or the mechanics they didn't do thier job right. If I leave the oven on all night and get CO poisoning, no one blames the oven maker for it. If someone doesn't buy renter's insurance we don't blame the apartment owner for them losing their net-worth. PCs have been almost ubiquitous for 20 years now. For my entire freaking life I have been hearing about how "you need to back up your data". We have consistently made better and better backup tools, like mozy, or backblaze. Yet somehow it is our fault some idiot decided "It won't happen to me!". At some point, we just have to have the users be a tiny little baby step of a bit responsible for their stuff too. Just like accounting makes people responsible for their inventory and expense reports. Just like HR makes people responsible for their own insurance stuff. Sure they help, but crap - people need to be a little grown up in their lives and actions. Just because this person did not bother to find out about backups from her IT does not make it ITs problem. Hell, you don't even know if there was or wasn't the ability for backups in place. Most university IT shops have lots and lots of capacity and backup options in place -- and they are documented, they just don't force users to do it. You know why? Sanctimonious asshats come from the other direction then, complaining not about how IT must mother the employees, but instead must back off the draconian rules to make users feel more welcome. tl; dr -- Users should be held to some standard of responsibility and IT is damned when they do and when they don't.
ditojim 16y ago
sounds like ouhsc.edu needs to go google!
harrybr 16y ago
If you buy a car, it comes with seat belts. Safety is not optional - it's built in. If you buy a computer, safety of your data is seen as a luxury add-on, like leather seats. It's crazy when you think about it.
- smallblacksun 16y ago
  Both Windows and OSX come with built in backup software, but no one can force the user to use them.
- rogeriopvl 16y ago
  But you still need to put the seat belt on! If you don't, your safety is compromised. So it's really up to the driver...
- redacted 16y ago
  It was a Mac, which most likely came with Time Machine - all she had to do was connect a USB drive (as far as I remember, OS X even asks if you want to use the drive for backups) and she would have had automatic versioned backups. To be honest, I think most people need backing data up scared into them (e.g., I nearly lost a college project due a HD failure, and now I have multiple redundant backups).
frank06 16y ago
Did they set up DynDNS by any chance? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4oB28ksiIo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4oB28ksiIo
ajays 16y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if the owner _deliberately_ didn't create backups. I used to work in academia. Some of the academics I knew were extremely paranoid about anybody (including SysAdmins) accessing their research. They would go to great lengths to to keep their work away from the "prying eyes of the university" (a phrase someone used once). This meant not allowing any access to their personal desktops, laptops, etc. Admins worked around the personal desktop issue by refusing to help them with the inevitable problems unless they got access. But laptops were a different story.
gilesc 16y ago
I'm a student at OUHSC, and her husband, Dr. Janknecht, is one of my professors. Although failing to make a backup is obviously stupid, he is an extremely competent researcher (I don't know her). Clearly, calling the data "a cure" is a bit of hype, but that exaggeration might help in convincing the thief to bring the laptop back. About computer knowledge in biological research, though -- the state of things is generally abysmal. The average biology Ph.D. can use Excel to find means, SDs, and do t-tests, and that's about it. Even my boss, who specializes in bioinformatics, still uses VB6+MSAccess shudder. Most probably don't know that hard drives CAN fail. Yet, researchers are fiercely independent and would definitely resist any heavy-handed mandates from campus IT forcing specific OSes or regular backups.
radioactive21 16y ago
I work for a University and I laugh so hard every time I hear this. For the people that say this should be an IT policy issue let me explain to you how academic people work. Professors and researchers are KINGS and QUEENS. You CANNOT tell them what to do, nor can you force ANYTHING on them. The only exception are the engineering professors for obvious reasons they have their shit together. Other faculty are just plain morons and think they can do everything on their own. Professors and researchers get to buy and chose their own laptops, and they can do whatever they want. Unless they fall under the administration side, IT cannot tell them what to put on or do with the laptop. Just to get off my chess I'll tell you one of many stories. A faculty member brought in his school paid laptop, and he obviously used it for personal reasons. This is his main work laptop with all his data (again we can't force them to follow our policy since they are not administration), so he has no backups or any antivirus scans. His laptop had over 5000 viruses when I ran a virus scan. This is no joke, I have the screen shot somewhere. I refuse to clean and told him I will rebuild it. Which I did and put all this files back. I explain to him exactly what I did in an email, what he would lose (software etc) and he was okay with it, remember I have this in email. Only when he agreed did I go ahead with the rebuild. He comes back and writes an email to the department chair that I had broke his laptop and had to rebuild it. Then I lost his software which he paid for and wants the school to pay for it back. I almost kicked him in he face even if it got me fired. Luckily my boss stepped in and took care of it.
- nkassis 16y ago
  Just wanted to point out, in those situation keeping written records of communications like you did can save your ass.
mikerhoads 16y ago
This is actually the plot of Johnny Mnemonic. I can't believe anything about that movie's plot turned out to be realistic.
moondowner 16y ago
It should be: "Stolen laptop may contain cancer cure data"
calebgilbert 16y ago
Doh! Now where did that cure for cancer I had lying around here go...
dholowiski 16y ago
This kind of thing makes me wonder... how long until backups are mandatory. I mean, in Windows 10 or OS 11 (aka: IOS 5), will it just come with 10 or 20gb of online storage that's automatically backed up, without the user's input (and is difficult to disable)? We already have crazy easy backup solutions like mozy, carbonite, backblaze etc but the majority of people don't use them. What happens when the OS makers force you to back up? And yes... it is totally the IT people's fault for not forcing backups on their users. Sorry but as an IT guy (I am one) it's your responsibility to make sure your users don't get into this kind of a situation!
sliverstorm 16y ago
Step 1: Dropbox.
jacquesm 16y ago
(1) whatever happened to backups? (2) the hardware could have failed just as easy as the laptop got stolen who would get the blame then? (3) I don't buy the premise that there is 'cancer cure data' on this laptop to begin with until after it has been recovered they come out with a cure for cancer within measurable time. (4) If the data is on the laptop it got on to the laptop somehow, either by doing experiments and recording the data or by copying it from some other medium, data does not exist in a vacuum as it's 'only copy'. (5) $1,000 reward? really? that must be some crappy cure. (6) What if the researcher 'lost' their laptop on purpose? That's a stretch, but with a claim this big I'd really like them to get to work on re-creating their miraculous results rather than cry over spilled milk, after all, recreating the results can't be nearly as much work as it was to do it all the first time. Assuming the experiments were real there should be a whole pile of knowledge that only needs to be verified rather than created from scratch so this is just a matter of time. (7) I had a laptop with the design for a small and safe nuclear fusion reactor, unfortunately it got stolen... What sickens me most about this whole thing is that the 'cure for cancer' gets trotted out again giving a whole pile of people hope that there is such a thing.

74 points by lotusleaf1987 16y ago

ggordan 16y ago

I would have thought the value of a possible cure for prostate cancer would be far more than $1000.

lylejohnson 16y ago
Was thinking the same thing. Maybe they're hoping the thief doesn't read Hacker News (or CNET) and learn that little tidbit.

oscardelben 16y ago

People need to learn the basics of working with a computer. I can't imagine working for years on an important project without any backup system whatsoever. Getting your computer stolen is only one of the tens of the possible scenarios of things that could happen.

lylejohnson 16y ago
> I can't imagine working for years on an important project without any backup system whatsoever. I've "worked with computers" since I was a teenager, but for a long time I didn't make backups even though I knew it was something I should have been doing. It wasn't until I actually had a hard drive crash on me that I got backup religion.
- Splines 16y ago
  I'm in the same boat (still am). I hardly ever back up my data. My employer though, uses source control rigorously and makes deployment and usage of those tools dead easy. We also have folder redirection possible if you wanted to make your "My Documents" folder available (and backed up automatically) on the network. There's SharePoint too, but sometimes it's a PITA. My hypothesis is this: Given OU Medicine's student computer requirements [1], I'm betting that these researchers just didn't have the patience or knowledge in integrating a Mac into their Windows-centric network. [1] http://www.oumedicine.com/body.cfm?id=954 http://www.oumedicine.com/body.cfm?id=954
  - nfg 16y ago
    > I'm in the same boat (still am). I hardly ever back up my data. How much data are we talking about here? <10 Gigabytes? Solutions like Dropbox are just so simple for data in that range that you'd be crazy not to use them.
    - Splines 16y ago
      The only irreplaceable data I have is photos/videos of the family. It's getting to be about 10 GB - I've got two hard drives in my PC that I'm planning to mirror the data across. At the very least it'll save me from hard drive failure. Theft/acts of god are something I haven't planned for. I have thought about burning a bunch of DVDs (of just the photos) and storing them somewhere else (work/relatives/bank). I use dropbox to sync passwords and some docs from work/home. I'd like to use dropbox (or something like carbonite) to back up the rest, but frankly I'm too cheap/lazy to go through with it.
      - jokermatt999 16y ago
        10 GB is also small and cheap enough to buy a USB drive for and back it up on. It's what, $10 for a 16 gig thumbdrive or so? Afaik, they also have less concern about bit-rot than DVDs or CDs, not to mention the ease of use.
todayiamme 16y ago
When you are up against human nature, no amount of learning can help you. Of course, she knew about backing up, but who has the time to do it? After all, who wants to figure it out, install stuff, port stuff or even choose a service! Who has the time... Such things really aren't a result of ignorance, but laziness. Yet again are we any different?

michael_dorfman 16y ago

The more interesting question, to me at least, is whether or not the U of Oklahoma will be taking some kind of disciplinary action against her.

maukdaddy 16y ago
That would be absurd.
- michael_dorfman 16y ago
  Why? They are, after all, her employers-- and they've got quite a bit of time and money invested in her research. I have to assume that they have some kind of standards for the care of data, and I certainly hope that keeping exactly one copy of the dataset, without backups, on a laptop which frequently travels out of the lab, is in serious contravention of a number of their policies.
  - maukdaddy 16y ago
    You're making way too many assumptions. You can't fire someone because a laptop is stolen or lost. The University should have provided a means of centralized backup for data.
    - michael_dorfman 16y ago
      I am making assumptions. So are you, of course. I am assuming that the University did provide a means of centralized backup, and she failed to avail herself of it. This is based on the assumption that it is more likely that one researcher screwed up, than that the entire University is woefully incompetent. Also, note that you assumed that I meant "firing" when I said "disciplinary action." I was thinking more along the lines of a note in her file, and a stern talking-to.
gilesc 16y ago
If she ends up losing the data permanently, that will severely hamper her ability to apply for future grants (which usually require preliminary data), and lose funding. This offense is definitely self-punishing.

siglesias 16y ago

Time Machine. It works.

gvb 16y ago
Flux capacitor + 1.21 gigawatts? Delorians are getting hard to find, though.
- younata 16y ago
  You technically don't need a delorean, any car with stainless steel shell will work just as fine (paraphrased from Doc).
_stephan 16y ago
Spideroak.com works too. It automatically backups your data to the cloud (securely encrypted!). It synchronizes your data across multiple machines (and multiple OS) and you can access all past versions of your files. It's free if you don't need more than one or two GB. It's the ideal backup tool for researchers that don't generate tons of data and want a simple backup solution.
- rarrrrrr 16y ago
  ..and, by the way, there's an automatic 50% discount for anyone with a .edu (or similar) email address. :)
rarrrrrr 16y ago
I was really unimpressed with Apple's Time Machine. Did you know it only goes backwards?! Lame. (Humor aside, it's actually quite well engineered.)

apl 16y ago

That's grossly negligent behavior on her behalf. Family pictures, unpublished novel and a gigabyte of emails? Fine. But research data that only exists on one consumer-level machine? Work that was financed by her employer and various other organizations? Holy shit.

dabeeeenster 16y ago
Surely it's grossly negligent behaviour on her employer's behalf?
- Xurinos 16y ago
  I voted you up, but I wanted to note that I (we?) have no idea how her department is run, and the negligence could rest as well in her hands as it could in her employer's hands. Another post here said "Blame the IT department for not establishing rigid policies." These sentiments are good, but... What if the IT department clearly outlined policies for how to store and secure the data? What if the researcher is one of those "This is how I have always done it, and I am ignoring you" types? Given the kinds of data claimed to be on the laptop, it sounds like a personal laptop, not a locked-down IT-given laptop. What if that was the researcher's choice, the intentional ignoring of IT policies in the name of convenience or whatever? Either way, the article's message is good: back up your important data. Whoever is to blame, the core message obviously bears repeating.
  - redacted 16y ago
    I work in the physics department of a top university. The majority of work people in the department do involves a computer at some stage, from computational physics (likely involving supercomputers and months of compute time) at one end of the spectrum to using Excel as a data store at the other. We do not have an IT department (we have one or two post-doctoral researchers who keep a couple of servers running for undergraduates). We do not have IT policies, outside of university-wide intellectual property rules. There are only personal laptops (in the sense that even though my machine was bought for me, I have full control of it and there is no oversight of how the machine is used). To the best of my knowledge, this is true of the rest of the university (possibly even worse in other departments).

tpinto 16y ago

so years of work to find the cure for cancer is on a white macbook and the guy didn't backup it? yeah right.

arethuza 16y ago
If you've ever worked in an academic environment you wouldn't find this story hard to believe.

tmcw 16y ago

So _this_ is why cancer hasn't been cured yet. Gotcha.

lotusleaf1987 16y ago

I find it hard to believe that someone with the possible cure to cancer wouldn't bother backing it up. If this is legitimate, I think it's beyond irresponsible. Also, why such a minimal reward?

stevenbedrick 16y ago
Probably because it was coming out of her own pocket, and researchers generally don't make that much (especially if she was a post-doc). I'm pretty sure that the NIH won't let you charge "stolen laptop reward" to your grant, and your university sure as heck isn't going to shell out for something like that.
brown9-2 16y ago
Perhaps the "cancer cure data" claim is a huge exaggeration by Mrs Shin to help get her laptop back. You'd expect someone to value that at more than USD 1000.

adammichaelc 16y ago

Mozy, anyone?

lkrubner 16y ago

The reward is only $1,000. While their research may have offered some interesting insights into cancer, they clearly didn't have an absolute cure (for prostate cancer, which is mentioned in the article). If they had a real cure, then around this moment Merk would step in and offer a $10,000,000 reward for the return of the laptop, in exchange for the right to commercialize the technology. I've several friends who have pursued biology in universities. They could claim that their laptops have data offering possible cures for diabetes, high blood pressure and AIDS. This is the kind of thing they will talk about when we meet for lunch. I realize, of course, that they are not on the verge of a genuine cure. But occasionally their research offers an important new insight. I sense that these researchers, in the story, had info at that level. Otherwise, the reward would be more than $1,000. I do think the university should do more to help researchers manage their data.

stevoski 16y ago
The idea that a "cure" for any type of cancer would only be on one laptop is absurd. It may work in a movie plot, but in real life, no way. At best it would have info on how to possibly, vaguely minimise the suffering in some situations. Cancer is not something that one brilliant researcher can "cure" alone.
- kylec 16y ago
  Besides, a researcher smart enough to cure cancer is smart enough to back up their computer.
  - stevenbedrick 16y ago
    How much time have you spent around cancer researchers? I can assure you that many of the most brilliant scientists I know are all almost entirely computer-illiterate. If I had a dollar for every lab computer I've seen whose desktop is full of a few dozen Excel files ("data1.xls", "data2.xls", "new data.xls", "jim new data.xls"...), I would never need to apply for another grant as long as I live.
jerf 16y ago

njharman 16y ago

Not really, but kind of... the person doing Cancer Research (or other work that is socially/culturally critical to the world) who did not back up their data should be held criminally responsible. Not so interested in the punishment as the (possibly non-existant) deterrent effect such laws/prosecution would have. It's fucking ridiculous that in 2011 people are still not backing up their data.

nopassrecover 16y ago
No idea why the parent got downvoted twice (i upvoted to counter one of them). If (and I sincerely doubt it to be the actual case, but the story suggests it is) the researcher is doing paid research and not backing it up at all, those involved in process design (or the researcher themself if there was adequate and clear process guidelines) should be held responsible for some kind of recklessness bordering on fraud. After all, they cannot prove that they have actually done any research right now and someone could similarly take millions and just "lose a laptop". It is comparable to not keeping proper financial records which is typically criminal.

edw519 16y ago

Sorry guys, but most of the comments in this thread remind me of why we IT people have so much bad PR to overcome. We're blaming the user for our mistake. That's like blaming the cow for leaving the pasture because one of us forgot to lock the gate. The simple fact is that this user should have never been able to be in a position for this to happen. Where were the IT security policies and procedures? Why was mission critical data on someone's c: drive? When (if ever) was the last audit? We curse enterprise IT departments because they are so slow at getting things done, but they are really, really good at putting in place the things that would never allow this to happen. I have customers with strict policies regarding the protection of mission critical data, and I bet that none of it is as important as what was routinely put onto this laptop and paraded around town. Public companies are responsible to their shareholders and the SEC. Private companies are responsible to their investors and creditors. Why weren't the same protections put in place to the trustees and taxpayers in this case? Every nanosecond this researcher has to worry about performing routine IT overhead is a nanosecond not spent on critical research. The technological solutions to problems like this have been around for years. Why weren't they in place? It's about time for IT to stop blaming the user and fix the problem.

sophacles 16y ago
I'm sick of this attitude of "Always be super nice and make sure you over mother your users" crap. You know what: If my car engine seizes because I haven't changed the oil, no one tells the car makers or the mechanics they didn't do thier job right. If I leave the oven on all night and get CO poisoning, no one blames the oven maker for it. If someone doesn't buy renter's insurance we don't blame the apartment owner for them losing their net-worth. PCs have been almost ubiquitous for 20 years now. For my entire freaking life I have been hearing about how "you need to back up your data". We have consistently made better and better backup tools, like mozy, or backblaze. Yet somehow it is our fault some idiot decided "It won't happen to me!". At some point, we just have to have the users be a tiny little baby step of a bit responsible for their stuff too. Just like accounting makes people responsible for their inventory and expense reports. Just like HR makes people responsible for their own insurance stuff. Sure they help, but crap - people need to be a little grown up in their lives and actions. Just because this person did not bother to find out about backups from her IT does not make it ITs problem. Hell, you don't even know if there was or wasn't the ability for backups in place. Most university IT shops have lots and lots of capacity and backup options in place -- and they are documented, they just don't force users to do it. You know why? Sanctimonious asshats come from the other direction then, complaining not about how IT must mother the employees, but instead must back off the draconian rules to make users feel more welcome. tl; dr -- Users should be held to some standard of responsibility and IT is damned when they do and when they don't.

ditojim 16y ago

sounds like ouhsc.edu needs to go google!

harrybr 16y ago

If you buy a car, it comes with seat belts. Safety is not optional - it's built in. If you buy a computer, safety of your data is seen as a luxury add-on, like leather seats. It's crazy when you think about it.

smallblacksun 16y ago
Both Windows and OSX come with built in backup software, but no one can force the user to use them.
rogeriopvl 16y ago
But you still need to put the seat belt on! If you don't, your safety is compromised. So it's really up to the driver...
redacted 16y ago
It was a Mac, which most likely came with Time Machine - all she had to do was connect a USB drive (as far as I remember, OS X even asks if you want to use the drive for backups) and she would have had automatic versioned backups. To be honest, I think most people need backing data up scared into them (e.g., I nearly lost a college project due a HD failure, and now I have multiple redundant backups).

frank06 16y ago

Did they set up DynDNS by any chance? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4oB28ksiIo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4oB28ksiIo

ajays 16y ago

I wouldn't be surprised if the owner _deliberately_ didn't create backups. I used to work in academia. Some of the academics I knew were extremely paranoid about anybody (including SysAdmins) accessing their research. They would go to great lengths to to keep their work away from the "prying eyes of the university" (a phrase someone used once). This meant not allowing any access to their personal desktops, laptops, etc. Admins worked around the personal desktop issue by refusing to help them with the inevitable problems unless they got access. But laptops were a different story.

gilesc 16y ago

I'm a student at OUHSC, and her husband, Dr. Janknecht, is one of my professors. Although failing to make a backup is obviously stupid, he is an extremely competent researcher (I don't know her). Clearly, calling the data "a cure" is a bit of hype, but that exaggeration might help in convincing the thief to bring the laptop back. About computer knowledge in biological research, though -- the state of things is generally abysmal. The average biology Ph.D. can use Excel to find means, SDs, and do t-tests, and that's about it. Even my boss, who specializes in bioinformatics, still uses VB6+MSAccess shudder. Most probably don't know that hard drives CAN fail. Yet, researchers are fiercely independent and would definitely resist any heavy-handed mandates from campus IT forcing specific OSes or regular backups.

radioactive21 16y ago

I work for a University and I laugh so hard every time I hear this. For the people that say this should be an IT policy issue let me explain to you how academic people work. Professors and researchers are KINGS and QUEENS. You CANNOT tell them what to do, nor can you force ANYTHING on them. The only exception are the engineering professors for obvious reasons they have their shit together. Other faculty are just plain morons and think they can do everything on their own. Professors and researchers get to buy and chose their own laptops, and they can do whatever they want. Unless they fall under the administration side, IT cannot tell them what to put on or do with the laptop. Just to get off my chess I'll tell you one of many stories. A faculty member brought in his school paid laptop, and he obviously used it for personal reasons. This is his main work laptop with all his data (again we can't force them to follow our policy since they are not administration), so he has no backups or any antivirus scans. His laptop had over 5000 viruses when I ran a virus scan. This is no joke, I have the screen shot somewhere. I refuse to clean and told him I will rebuild it. Which I did and put all this files back. I explain to him exactly what I did in an email, what he would lose (software etc) and he was okay with it, remember I have this in email. Only when he agreed did I go ahead with the rebuild. He comes back and writes an email to the department chair that I had broke his laptop and had to rebuild it. Then I lost his software which he paid for and wants the school to pay for it back. I almost kicked him in he face even if it got me fired. Luckily my boss stepped in and took care of it.

nkassis 16y ago
Just wanted to point out, in those situation keeping written records of communications like you did can save your ass.

mikerhoads 16y ago

This is actually the plot of Johnny Mnemonic. I can't believe anything about that movie's plot turned out to be realistic.

moondowner 16y ago

It should be: "Stolen laptop may contain cancer cure data"

calebgilbert 16y ago

Doh! Now where did that cure for cancer I had lying around here go...

dholowiski 16y ago

This kind of thing makes me wonder... how long until backups are mandatory. I mean, in Windows 10 or OS 11 (aka: IOS 5), will it just come with 10 or 20gb of online storage that's automatically backed up, without the user's input (and is difficult to disable)? We already have crazy easy backup solutions like mozy, carbonite, backblaze etc but the majority of people don't use them. What happens when the OS makers force you to back up? And yes... it is totally the IT people's fault for not forcing backups on their users. Sorry but as an IT guy (I am one) it's your responsibility to make sure your users don't get into this kind of a situation!

sliverstorm 16y ago

Step 1: Dropbox.

jacquesm 16y ago

(1) whatever happened to backups? (2) the hardware could have failed just as easy as the laptop got stolen who would get the blame then? (3) I don't buy the premise that there is 'cancer cure data' on this laptop to begin with until after it has been recovered they come out with a cure for cancer within measurable time. (4) If the data is on the laptop it got on to the laptop somehow, either by doing experiments and recording the data or by copying it from some other medium, data does not exist in a vacuum as it's 'only copy'. (5) $1,000 reward? really? that must be some crappy cure. (6) What if the researcher 'lost' their laptop on purpose? That's a stretch, but with a claim this big I'd really like them to get to work on re-creating their miraculous results rather than cry over spilled milk, after all, recreating the results can't be nearly as much work as it was to do it all the first time. Assuming the experiments were real there should be a whole pile of knowledge that only needs to be verified rather than created from scratch so this is just a matter of time. (7) I had a laptop with the design for a small and safe nuclear fusion reactor, unfortunately it got stolen... What sickens me most about this whole thing is that the 'cure for cancer' gets trotted out again giving a whole pile of people hope that there is such a thing.