Gina Kolata, The New York Times; Scientists With Links to China May Be Stealing Biomedical Research, U.S. Says
""The investigations have fanned fears that China is exploiting the
relative openness of the American scientific system to engage in
wholesale economic espionage. At the same time, the scale of the dragnet
has sent a tremor through the ranks of biomedical researchers, some of
whom say ethnic Chinese scientists are being unfairly targeted for
scrutiny as Washington’s geopolitical competition with Beijing
intensifies...
The alleged theft involves not military
secrets, but scientific ideas, designs, devices, data and methods that
may lead to profitable new treatments or diagnostic tools.
Some
researchers under investigation have obtained patents in China on work
funded by the United States government and owned by American
institutions, the N.I.H. said. Others are suspected of setting up labs
in China that secretly duplicated American research, according to
government officials and university administrators...
The real question, [Dr. Michael Lauer, deputy director for extramural research at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md] added, is how to preserve the open exchange of
scientific ideas in the face of growing security concerns. At M.D.
Anderson, administrators are tightening controls to make data less freely available."
