8 ms·

Chinese Scientist Accused of Smuggling Samples, Amid Crackdown on Research Theft

81 points by jonas21 7y ago

jxramos 7y ago
I'd be interested for someone to start or point out a list of IP thefts in some timeline table in Wikipedia much like the list of soviet defectors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Soviet_and_Eastern_Bloc_defectors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Soviet_and_Eastern_Blo...
- sandworm101 7y ago
  Defection is easy to define. You once worked for the CIA, now you are working for the KGB. IP "theft" is more nebulous. There is lots of debate as to what is protected intellectual property, what is open source, what is common knowledge, and even which IP law governs the situation. Does every leaked copy of a Hollywood movie qualify as a theft? Some of those movies are worth hundreds of millions and their leak can cost millions in reduced ticket sales. That's a form of both copyright and trade secret theft. Or are we only talking about patented material, which is public? It's very hard to determine what should and shouldn't be on that list.
- knzhou 7y ago
  The line between IP theft and literally just learning things gets very blurred in the sciences. Under some people's vague standards, I commit IP theft every time I take notes in a lecture, or apply knowledge I've learned elsewhere. Am I not supposed to use calculus outside of the United States if I learned it while living here?
  - haecceity 7y ago
    Clearly it depends if you're Chinese or not.
  - sandworm101 7y ago
    >> Am I not supposed to use calculus outside of the United States if I learned it while living here? Exactly. Math has in the past been classified as an export-controlled 'munition'. No matter where you learned it, a US citizen could be arrested for talking about it outside of the US. People were printing it on t-shirts and in books as a form of free speech protest. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_Wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_Wars "the encryption technology (techniques as well as equipment and, after computers became important, crypto software) was included as a Category XIII item into the United States Munitions List." And see the Free Speech Flag: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Speech_Flag https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Speech_Flag
  - goatinaboat 7y ago
    Am I not supposed to use calculus outside of the United States if I learned it while living here? The concept of “where” you do or have a thing is well enshrined in law. Here for example knives that are perfectly legal to possess in your kitchen become illegal if you were to walk down the street holding one. It’s exactly the same with some forms of IP, these are often called “dual use” in legal terminology.
avocado4 7y ago
https://www.bostonherald.com/2019/12/30/peoples-republic-of-china-may-be-behind-theft-of-bio-samples-by-harvard-sponsored-chinese-student-feds-say/ https://www.bostonherald.com/2019/12/30/peoples-republic-of-... > The feds say they believe the Chinese government may be behind the theft of biological research specimens from a Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center lab involving a Harvard University-sponsored Chinese student.
neuro_image3 7y ago
There is some irony in the fact that American academic institutions started out recruiting Chinese (and other foreign) Phd students and post-docs in order to expand the labor pool and push down wages. Looks like the chickens have come home to roost.
- neuro_image3 7y ago
  Intrigued as to why I'm being downvoted.
  - yanilkr 7y ago
    Aim of Academic institutions conducting research is for the benefit of humanity. Their principles are to hire the highly qualified people irrespective of their nationality or religion. It’s a merit based hiring. There is no secret conspiracy here to bring down wages of researchers. Some people just do it for the likes.
  - dang 7y ago
    Probably because the comment consists of an inflammatory claim and a flamewar trope. We're trying for a different kind of conversation here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
yanilkr 7y ago
Can someone with proper background explain what’s important about these cancer cells? How difficult would it be to replicate them?
- knzhou 7y ago
  How this usually works is that samples are relevant to specific experiments. For example, maybe you're testing how some particular genetic modification affects how cancer cells behave in response to some drug, or whatever. These vials of cells would be what you get halfway through such an experiment, after you've treated the cells but before you've had a chance to analyze them. Postdocs and studentships often end midway through projects like this. The raw value of the materials is low, and it might take a postdoc days to weeks to reproduce them, depending on complexity. There is also an extremely high chance that the cells are completely worthless, i.e. that the treatment was botched or inconclusive. If the student hadn't taken the vials, the project might well have been abandoned, due to lack of manpower. With that background, the morality of "smuggling" these cells is a bit of a gray area. On one hand, they're just incomplete work that the student wants to finish elsewhere. Keeping them is just like me keeping my notebooks when I move, even if I haven't finished solving the equations therein. On the other hand, if the project is finished elsewhere, credit won't properly flow to the affiliation where the work was started. In theoretical physics, we really don't care about this (I just finished a project where 2 members changed affiliation midway through), but in biology there's the cost of facilities, and the local expertise that gets you the raw materials. So there is an issue here, but I certainly don't think it's worth the hysteria that will unfold in this comments section. I think the real issue is that a lot of people on this site are disgusted at the idea of Chinese people learning science. But to us scientists, the spread of knowledge is a virtue. After all, the end goal of this student would have been to publish in a journal -- which people from any country can access.
  - shasheene 7y ago
    As part of the exact employment contract, a researcher's work may be patented by the institute they work for (with the researcher being remunerated for this). Biomedical patents are not trivial software patents. Billions of dollars of investment goes into developing a single new therapy. The molecular structure of medicine can often be easily replicated once discovered, so patents are a key part of commercializing new medicine and techniques. (See the CRISPR-Cas9 patent debacle.) Taking the right to patent some work away from the institute it was developed at means theft of the licensing fees derived from the patent, and an impact on an institute's ability to keep funding R&D.
shasheene 7y ago
The risks of working with Chinese state-owned enterprises are well known. The risks of working with private companies (large and small) in China are are also great with CCP "party cells" officially embedded into at least half of private companies. Less discussed is the China's highly-successful "patriotic education" campaign implemented in response to the 1989 pro-democracy protests (the Tiananmen Square massacre). All school children since the mid-1990s have been indoctrinated from birth with a Chinese Communist Party's highly-exaggerated historical narrative called the "century of humiliation". This world view says the US and the European colonial powers held China down between 1839 to 1949, and that only the CCP's leadership China will regain its rightful place as global leader. Its false and highly-exaggerated for a number of reasons (China at its historical peak was never more than a regional power, never a global leader, and the CCP has done more to hold China's development back than western colonialism and the war with Imperial Japan). Since the patriotic education system came into force in the 1990s, generations of schoolchildren indoctrinated. These students, now adults, have entered the workforce with the ideology continuing to be reinforced by state-propaganda and censorship. This "century of humiliation" mindset is part of what helps justify the China's strategy of large scale technology theft (theft is a core component of the Made In China 2025 industrial strategy). Interestingly enough, the CCP promotes its ethno-nationalist ideology far beyond its borders via the United Front Work Department to try and influence everyone, but especially overseas Chinese diaspora communities. It doesn't matter whether someone was born in China, or live as part of an overseas diaspora community, or have Chinese ancestral heritage but have lived for generations in another country, the Chinese Communist Party sees every single ethnically Chinese people in the world as owing allegiance to it, and wants to leverage these people to achieve its goals. Defeating the CCP's ethno-nationalist agenda and highly-exaggerated historical narratives will be difficult, but understanding it is the key to fighting back against the widespread theft of advanced technology from developed countries to China. EDIT: Why the downvotes? The "patriotic education" campaign, "century of humiliation" narrative, United Front Work Department and state-led technological theft are all core methods in the CCP's strategy (leading situations like the one in the featured article). If you think this comment is reasonable and meets the guidelines, please view it via the permalink and then 'vouch' it.
- ivalm 7y ago
roberson87 7y ago
I don't understand why there isn't a blanket ban on all Chinese citizens from working at any research laboratories. Let them come here to study but they should be expelled soon after completing their studies and paid their tuition. These Chinese scientists are and will only ever loyal to the CCP. I really can't comprehend why we are actively strengthening our biggest economic competitor who play by NO RULES and are a truly evil regime.
- Proven 7y ago
  > blanket ban on all Chinese citizens from working at any research laboratories. ... all mainland China's citizens working at any government-funded research labs, yes. > I really can't comprehend why we are actively strengthening our biggest economic competitor who play by NO RULES and are a truly evil regime. I have never been able to figure that out either. If all foreign governments played by rules, maybe it'd make some sense (because the institution or company retains the IP), but mainland China's government never has. > These Chinese scientists are and will only ever loyal to the CCP. It's not that bad - not all are and many dislike the CCP. The problem is the CCP can order about and blackmail all who have anything or anyone in mainland China.

81 points by jonas21 7y ago

I'd be interested for someone to start or point out a list of IP thefts in some timeline table in Wikipedia much like the list of soviet defectors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Soviet_and_Eastern_Bloc_defectors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Soviet_and_Eastern_Blo...

sandworm101 7y ago
Defection is easy to define. You once worked for the CIA, now you are working for the KGB. IP "theft" is more nebulous. There is lots of debate as to what is protected intellectual property, what is open source, what is common knowledge, and even which IP law governs the situation. Does every leaked copy of a Hollywood movie qualify as a theft? Some of those movies are worth hundreds of millions and their leak can cost millions in reduced ticket sales. That's a form of both copyright and trade secret theft. Or are we only talking about patented material, which is public? It's very hard to determine what should and shouldn't be on that list.
knzhou 7y ago
The line between IP theft and literally just learning things gets very blurred in the sciences. Under some people's vague standards, I commit IP theft every time I take notes in a lecture, or apply knowledge I've learned elsewhere. Am I not supposed to use calculus outside of the United States if I learned it while living here?
- haecceity 7y ago
  Clearly it depends if you're Chinese or not.
- sandworm101 7y ago
  >> Am I not supposed to use calculus outside of the United States if I learned it while living here? Exactly. Math has in the past been classified as an export-controlled 'munition'. No matter where you learned it, a US citizen could be arrested for talking about it outside of the US. People were printing it on t-shirts and in books as a form of free speech protest. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_Wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_Wars "the encryption technology (techniques as well as equipment and, after computers became important, crypto software) was included as a Category XIII item into the United States Munitions List." And see the Free Speech Flag: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Speech_Flag https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Speech_Flag
- goatinaboat 7y ago
  Am I not supposed to use calculus outside of the United States if I learned it while living here? The concept of “where” you do or have a thing is well enshrined in law. Here for example knives that are perfectly legal to possess in your kitchen become illegal if you were to walk down the street holding one. It’s exactly the same with some forms of IP, these are often called “dual use” in legal terminology.

avocado4 7y ago

https://www.bostonherald.com/2019/12/30/peoples-republic-of-china-may-be-behind-theft-of-bio-samples-by-harvard-sponsored-chinese-student-feds-say/ https://www.bostonherald.com/2019/12/30/peoples-republic-of-... > The feds say they believe the Chinese government may be behind the theft of biological research specimens from a Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center lab involving a Harvard University-sponsored Chinese student.

neuro_image3 7y ago

There is some irony in the fact that American academic institutions started out recruiting Chinese (and other foreign) Phd students and post-docs in order to expand the labor pool and push down wages. Looks like the chickens have come home to roost.

neuro_image3 7y ago
Intrigued as to why I'm being downvoted.
- yanilkr 7y ago
  Aim of Academic institutions conducting research is for the benefit of humanity. Their principles are to hire the highly qualified people irrespective of their nationality or religion. It’s a merit based hiring. There is no secret conspiracy here to bring down wages of researchers. Some people just do it for the likes.
- dang 7y ago
  Probably because the comment consists of an inflammatory claim and a flamewar trope. We're trying for a different kind of conversation here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

yanilkr 7y ago

Can someone with proper background explain what’s important about these cancer cells? How difficult would it be to replicate them?

knzhou 7y ago
How this usually works is that samples are relevant to specific experiments. For example, maybe you're testing how some particular genetic modification affects how cancer cells behave in response to some drug, or whatever. These vials of cells would be what you get halfway through such an experiment, after you've treated the cells but before you've had a chance to analyze them. Postdocs and studentships often end midway through projects like this. The raw value of the materials is low, and it might take a postdoc days to weeks to reproduce them, depending on complexity. There is also an extremely high chance that the cells are completely worthless, i.e. that the treatment was botched or inconclusive. If the student hadn't taken the vials, the project might well have been abandoned, due to lack of manpower. With that background, the morality of "smuggling" these cells is a bit of a gray area. On one hand, they're just incomplete work that the student wants to finish elsewhere. Keeping them is just like me keeping my notebooks when I move, even if I haven't finished solving the equations therein. On the other hand, if the project is finished elsewhere, credit won't properly flow to the affiliation where the work was started. In theoretical physics, we really don't care about this (I just finished a project where 2 members changed affiliation midway through), but in biology there's the cost of facilities, and the local expertise that gets you the raw materials. So there is an issue here, but I certainly don't think it's worth the hysteria that will unfold in this comments section. I think the real issue is that a lot of people on this site are disgusted at the idea of Chinese people learning science. But to us scientists, the spread of knowledge is a virtue. After all, the end goal of this student would have been to publish in a journal -- which people from any country can access.
- shasheene 7y ago
  As part of the exact employment contract, a researcher's work may be patented by the institute they work for (with the researcher being remunerated for this). Biomedical patents are not trivial software patents. Billions of dollars of investment goes into developing a single new therapy. The molecular structure of medicine can often be easily replicated once discovered, so patents are a key part of commercializing new medicine and techniques. (See the CRISPR-Cas9 patent debacle.) Taking the right to patent some work away from the institute it was developed at means theft of the licensing fees derived from the patent, and an impact on an institute's ability to keep funding R&D.

shasheene 7y ago

The risks of working with Chinese state-owned enterprises are well known. The risks of working with private companies (large and small) in China are are also great with CCP "party cells" officially embedded into at least half of private companies. Less discussed is the China's highly-successful "patriotic education" campaign implemented in response to the 1989 pro-democracy protests (the Tiananmen Square massacre). All school children since the mid-1990s have been indoctrinated from birth with a Chinese Communist Party's highly-exaggerated historical narrative called the "century of humiliation". This world view says the US and the European colonial powers held China down between 1839 to 1949, and that only the CCP's leadership China will regain its rightful place as global leader. Its false and highly-exaggerated for a number of reasons (China at its historical peak was never more than a regional power, never a global leader, and the CCP has done more to hold China's development back than western colonialism and the war with Imperial Japan). Since the patriotic education system came into force in the 1990s, generations of schoolchildren indoctrinated. These students, now adults, have entered the workforce with the ideology continuing to be reinforced by state-propaganda and censorship. This "century of humiliation" mindset is part of what helps justify the China's strategy of large scale technology theft (theft is a core component of the Made In China 2025 industrial strategy). Interestingly enough, the CCP promotes its ethno-nationalist ideology far beyond its borders via the United Front Work Department to try and influence everyone, but especially overseas Chinese diaspora communities. It doesn't matter whether someone was born in China, or live as part of an overseas diaspora community, or have Chinese ancestral heritage but have lived for generations in another country, the Chinese Communist Party sees every single ethnically Chinese people in the world as owing allegiance to it, and wants to leverage these people to achieve its goals. Defeating the CCP's ethno-nationalist agenda and highly-exaggerated historical narratives will be difficult, but understanding it is the key to fighting back against the widespread theft of advanced technology from developed countries to China. EDIT: Why the downvotes? The "patriotic education" campaign, "century of humiliation" narrative, United Front Work Department and state-led technological theft are all core methods in the CCP's strategy (leading situations like the one in the featured article). If you think this comment is reasonable and meets the guidelines, please view it via the permalink and then 'vouch' it.

ivalm 7y ago

roberson87 7y ago

I don't understand why there isn't a blanket ban on all Chinese citizens from working at any research laboratories. Let them come here to study but they should be expelled soon after completing their studies and paid their tuition. These Chinese scientists are and will only ever loyal to the CCP. I really can't comprehend why we are actively strengthening our biggest economic competitor who play by NO RULES and are a truly evil regime.

Proven 7y ago
> blanket ban on all Chinese citizens from working at any research laboratories. ... all mainland China's citizens working at any government-funded research labs, yes. > I really can't comprehend why we are actively strengthening our biggest economic competitor who play by NO RULES and are a truly evil regime. I have never been able to figure that out either. If all foreign governments played by rules, maybe it'd make some sense (because the institution or company retains the IP), but mainland China's government never has. > These Chinese scientists are and will only ever loyal to the CCP. It's not that bad - not all are and many dislike the CCP. The problem is the CCP can order about and blackmail all who have anything or anyone in mainland China.