This seems to be an instance of "intellectual property theft", which makes me wonder, isn't the research from these universities published on academic journals anyway? Are they being accused to be "stealing" from the journals or what?
I would assume that some of the data being stolen is from current, on-going, potentially high confidentiality research projects - otherwise this wouldn't be making headlines.
The article is also saying that as part of doing medical research at the NIH, you cannot accept financial contributions from the "Thousand Talents" program in China. It seems like the article is more about researchers breaking important conflict-of-interest policies and it just happens that those researchers are mostly chinese and the stolen data is being exported to China.
It's good to see the US Government and the N.I.H taking better precautions on data and research security - China has had a track record for sneakily exporting scientific/medical/_everything_ information from other countries for years now and I think the USA along with other countries are wising up to it now.
As to the allegations of racism - unfortunately due to human nature and the sensitivity of the issue, there of course will be some racial bias against the Chinese. I hope the majority will be able to sense this and reconsider their thoughts before they come actions.
This bothers me much less than other examples of china's ip theft. The research still gets done. Patients still reap the benefits, researchers publish as usual. Having the data stolen can only increase the probability of applications being developed. This is the whole point of publishing research anyway. The rent seekers who run pharma companies may lose money, but i just cant make myself care.
I agree that the net effect for the world might be nearly equal but it’s still inherently unfair for the US and those who attempted to conduct the research in a US institution.
You’re discounting the loss or setback of career for the US based researchers.
How does the title go from "Vast Dragnet Targets Theft of Biomedical Secrets for China" to the one in this comment thread? The original is much closer to the spirit of the original article.
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[ 443 ms ] story [ 607 ms ] threadThe article is also saying that as part of doing medical research at the NIH, you cannot accept financial contributions from the "Thousand Talents" program in China. It seems like the article is more about researchers breaking important conflict-of-interest policies and it just happens that those researchers are mostly chinese and the stolen data is being exported to China.
As to the allegations of racism - unfortunately due to human nature and the sensitivity of the issue, there of course will be some racial bias against the Chinese. I hope the majority will be able to sense this and reconsider their thoughts before they come actions.
You’re discounting the loss or setback of career for the US based researchers.