Major U.S. cancer center ousts ‘Asian’ researchers after NIH flags foreign ties

[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

[duxup]

When worked as technical support we had some large banks as customers who insisted everyone who worked their cases be US citizens. We worked with some semi sensitive technical data, but nothing directly banking related. A few banks required drug and credit checks (the credit checks were just dumb).

Amusingly they were happy to hire on connected people in less friendly nations when operating overseas.

I think the citizen thing was reasonable, credit check maybe not.

[yding]

The people mentioned in the article are Americans. Also discrimination on the basis of ethnicity and national origin is illegal: https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/discrimination/ethnicdisc

[dekhn]

hhahah, I remember a meeting with Roche (swiss drug company) where they said their SAP admins had to be swiss citizens. Not German, Not French and definitely not Italian was how he said it.

[Simulacra]

Everyone at my firm must be a United States citizen.

[sneak]

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

[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?

[tibbydudeza]

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

[darkpuma]

I do think that was a huge over-reaction, particularly in retrospect, but you can't chalk it up entirely to hysteria considering it happened in the aftermath of the Niihau incident.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[talloaktrees]

> Cancer center officials have not named any of the five researchers. MD Anderson President Peter Pisters says all are “Asian”;

I believe because that's the official statement.

[ABeeSea]

It’s a direct quote from a statement provided by the institution. Not a choice the reporter made, but they mention that they confirmed most are ethnically Chinese.

[i_am_proteus]

The United States Government has official racial categories for individuals, of which "Asian" is one.

Employers and academic institutions are required by law to categorize employees/researchers/students into these racial categories.

[aiyodev]

Your mystery can be solved by reading to the third paragraph.

> Cancer center officials have not named any of the five researchers. MD Anderson President Peter Pisters says all are “Asian”; Science has confirmed that three are ethnically Chinese.

[lainga]

MD Anderson President Peter Pisters says all [five] are “Asian”; Science has confirmed that three are ethnically Chinese.

[_bxg1]

Agreed. There's no reason to distrust "Asian researchers"; there's reason to distrust "researchers with ties to China in the political climate of 2019".

[calvinbhai]

Totally agree.

As it is, Indian diversity is already lumped together into one nation. No one says European cuisine, European language, European culture etc when referring to something specific.

As a person from India, who lived more than a decade in the USA, I took quite some time to realize the following:

- We are not Asians even though India is in Asia. Asians are those who have the "oriental facial features".

- We are not Indians, because generally native Americans are referred to as Indians, and I realized only later that if I mention "native Americans" when someone refers to them as Indians, can be a little incorrect (politically) based on who says that.

- We are all "South Asians" when a terror attack occurs in developed countries (especially European counties).

- When there's something specifically negative pointed out about India, then it's clearly "Indians" and "India" (this point is limited to celebs and US/Eu media, not the general population that I have come across).

people if USA are used to be called Americans and not "USAians". I guess it's the same attitude towards other countries that leads to such usage of terms.

[lotsofpulp]

In the US, Asian = people from eastern Asia. In the UK, Asian = people from southern Asia.

[president]

So you're fine as long as racism is only directed towards races other than your own?

[agumonkey]

because india is not in asia, it's in india

Weird jokes aside, I cannot not think asia = china,japan,tibet,koreas,vietnam,laos,thailand ..

In my brain, the rest is ~elsewhere

[Razengan]

Yes, “Asian” as used by most Westerners† is the current socially-palatable “Oriental” or “Mongoloid”, but it’s no less lazy, ignorant, annoying and even racist.

Imagine calling Canadians and Mexicans “American” because of the continent.

† If you’re annoyed by being lumped under “Westerner” you might be able to relate.

[spookybones]

But, how local should we get with descriptors? If the issue is about corporate espionage, then the culprit's nationality might be very relevant. However, I'm not sure focusing on ethnicity adds much in your first example. As a counterpoint, when someone ODs in West Virginia, should we report: white, middle-aged person dies of overdose? Another example: white male CEO commits fraud.

[Dirlewanger]

Welcome to 24-hour profit-driven journalism, you won't enjoy your stay...

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[mturmon]

For a peer reviewer of a proposal to send it to anyone else is both unethical and against the basic black-letter rules. Anyone doing peer reviews of proposals will be asked to ensure confidentiality of proposals under review. (https://grants.nih.gov/policy/research_integrity/confidentia...)

The level of paranoia around proposals is much higher than, say, peer reviews for conferences or journal papers, where sometimes a paper might be given to a grad student to take a look at.

[duxup]

It sounds like they have pretty clear rules that you're not allowed to do that.