Security Versus Science

dogfrt writes "According to this Wired News article, post-9/11 homeland security has had a decidedly negative effect on US scientific research. In specific, researchers are self-censoring what they publish, talented foreign students are being denied visas (approximately 20%, according to one source in the article), and researchers are avoiding work with dangerous pathogens, choosing more innocuous micro-organisms."

Comments

-1 Wrong

[Pave Low]

It's amazing to see how the moderators fall over themselves to mod up the typical Bush-hating rhetoric as soon as possible. I'd like to see citations for ANY of the claims the parent poster has made.

Bush cancelling funds to arrest Osama Bin Laden? Bush said we had to give up our freedom because of 9/11? Where did see say these things? It would be perfect to suit the haters.

Typical Slashdot: make up facts and quotes to suit your agenda, and get modded up for it.

Re:The real enemy

[Ken@WearableTech]

If you didn't know. The super vast majority of those accused of being communists by McCarthy were.

People who oppose the interests of the United States and its ability to protect itself are traitors.

If the US government is too unbearable, then go to a nation that more suits your taste.

USA isRight: Security before Science

[reporter]

The article "Science Suffers Security Complex" that sparked this discussions has two key quotes.

To start, consider the first quote.

Some of the estimated 550,000 foreign graduate students and postdoctoral researchers who help staff the nation's laboratories may take their brainpower to countries where visa hurdles are less rigorous. "They're now better off looking for jobs outside the United States," said William Greenough, a professor of international medicine at Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health. "This will set us back 20 years."

These particular foreign students are identified with a group of immigrants who are relatively wealthy (compared to their peers overseas), relatively well educated (compared to their peers overseas), and extremely opposed to assimilating into Western culture. If they do not come to the United States of America (USA), their absence is no loss for the USA. It is better off without them. (reference: "Immigrants: Traitors Among Us")

One characteristic of these foreign students is their strong pride in their own capabilities. They believe that the American hi-tech industry -- indeed, the entire American economy -- would grind to a halt if the American government did not allow them to come en masse into the USA. Their attitude and behavior have brainwashed respected professors (at, for example, John Hopkins University) into believing the same rubbish.

The USA will work fine without these foreign students. If there is a demand for new technologies, then the capitalistic economy of the USA will produce those technologies without those foreign students. "It" really is that simple. Salaries will rise, and the high salaries will attract more people into science and engineering.

One distinction between the West and the non-Western countries like China is the following. In the West, people discover the truth. In non-Western countries, people manufacture the truth (via deception). The foreign students want Americans to believe that the USA needs the immigrants much more than the immigrants need the USA. The foreign students deliberately manufacture this lie, and it has become an accepted "truth" among academicians. Yet, what is the truth? The truth is that foreign students desperately want to escape the ignorant, barbaric overseas societies in which they were born. They all want to flee to the West -- usually, the USA. In order to guarantee that the USA will always accept them, they trick Americans into believing that the USA actually needs them. Baloney.

Americans owe nothing to foreign students and certainly do not depend on them. Americans simply, out of their own generosity and compassion, allow foreign students to enter the USA to study to improve themselves. Of course, Americans allow immigrants to enter the USA to enjoy the economic and social freedoms that do not exist in ignorant, barbaric overseas countries.

Americans are fully entitled to deny entry to foreign students who come from hostile states. Those states are listed in the second quote.

Researchers from Syria, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Cuba, North Korea and Sudan -- countries considered terrorism supporters -- are forbidden by law from working with any of 82 "select agents" classified as potential bioweapon agents by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The agents include human killers like anthrax and the plague as well as things that harm animals, like the agent that causes mad cow disease.

This list of hostile states omits 3 important political states: Hong Kong, mainland China, and Taiwan province. The Chinese support