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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."
Sad, esp. considering how artifical such security is anyway. Frankly, with Ashcroft and Ridge at the helm, I trust the DHS less than what they ostensibly fight against... That aside, if we refuse to allow talented people into our country, what's that do but force them to work for our competitors and perhaps even enemies? Lovely bit of intel there. Oh, well. No one ever accused the Bush administration of having a collective brain cell.
#define DRM chmod 000
This is something I've beleived for a long time. Security through obscurity (i.e. preventing reserach in areas that may be dangerous), just does not work.
Yes...they're making an effort to make these decisions, on account of they could be arrested if they don't :-p
Twenties Retirement
A different world? Correct me if I'm wrong, but Bush wasn't elected on Sep. 11, either. Moreover, we had already identified Osama as a threat, and Bush was busy cancelling funds to arrest him. Nothing on 9-11 made the world so different. We had terrorist attacks around the world both before and after. There was war before and after. Bush sold us change the same way a used car salesman might. He told us the the world had changed in a fundamental way, and that we had to give up our freedom because of it. IIRC, the founding fathers had to worry about security, too. Security is not a new concern. The OK City bombing should have shown us that much. Alas, 9-11 was used by Bush to justify a huge expenditure of effort and money, at the expense of freedom.
#define DRM chmod 000
Like what? They'd probably give you three alternatives:
1) Publish and perish - really, perish. Perish as in get-a-bullet-in-the-back-of-your-neck kind of perish.
2) Present your results to the memebers of a classified US military project that helps us to fight the terrorists. This is the best option. You get your research read by the people who really matter.
3) Don't publish.
researchers are avoiding work with dangerous pathogens, choosing more innocuous micro-organisms."
And have you ever considered that the most dangerous kind of research is not the manipulation of known dangerous organisms (and the associated containment precautions), but of supposedly "innocuous" or "harmless" organisms, organisms where there is no need for increased security or containment protocols?
Feed the need: Digitaladdiction.net
Why do they feel terrorists could use their work? So far they have been using such advanced technology as trucks loaded with manure, a box-cutter and some homemade explosives.
Overall they're doing the right thing, but I can't help but feel they're doing it for the wrong reason.
1) the quoted article said 20% of students in physics were having trouble entering the US--that is a long ways from saying they didn't enter all all.
2) There is a real question of if the open borders policy has really helped US science in a meaningful way from the 20's-50's the US had a fairly strict immigration policy and quite a bit of science happened in the US. Right now the US has a serious problem of underutilizatin of native US technical/scientific talent.
I lived in the US on an H1B visa before 9/11. I first got it in 10 months, which is considered fast normally. When I applied for a renewal after 9/11, it was denied, although the first renewal was granted to me without problem and reasonably fast, and I never had so much as a speeding ticket in the US. I thought, well, the US of A doesn't want me no more, so I went back to the EC.
...
Now friends who have applied recently told me it's a matter of 2 or 3 years, and that quotas have gone down drastically (read: they can't get one).
I've started my company in France. So are my friends. We're all experiencing huge pains in the rectal area because the taxman in France is voracious, but we have to stay here (or perhaps go to Canada later, but right now we're staying here) because it seems Uncle Sam can do without enterprising people willing to go to great length and make sacrifices to try to succeed, and eventually pay taxes to the IRS.
I think the INS is right : there should be a barrier to entry in the US that's high enough to winnow out slackers and let worthy people in only. But when the barrier is too high, Uncle Sam deprives itself of workers who already have an education that didn't cost a cent to the country, are provably willing to work hard to make it, and willing to play the US economy game and pay their taxes. If I was a decision maker, I'd welcome such a population in the country.
Too bad your current administration doesn't see farther than its nose-tip
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
The good news is that the amount of research going into creating friendly, fluffy bunnies is skyrocketing!
Expect a new species of ultra-adorable housepets in the near future.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
I recently started working as a physics Ph. D. student in Innsbruck, Austria. In our group we have a Taiwanese post-doc who is really talented and does a tremendous job, working 12 hours a day, six days a week.
This guy used to be at Stanford, but when he wanted to get his visa renewed he was told he had to go back to Taiwan and renew it there. So he went to Taiwan, where he was told that he could not get a new visa. There he was in Taiwan, with all his stuff left in California, unable to go back! After some time he managed to get a temporary visa so he could at least go back for 14 days, sell his car and take care of his belongings. Then he went working with us in Austria instead.
Good for us, bad for USA.
It seems to me that if we really want to protect ourselves from chemichal and bio terrorisim, what we need are a lot of researchers who are experts in that area, and a lot of R&D so as to learn how to cope, plan, and respond to disasters. Thanks to my government, just the opposite is happening. So who'se the real threat to national security?
Sept. 11 changed everyone's PERCEPTION of the threat of terrorism, including Bush, as you pointed out. This was a change for the better as it's more in line with reality. As you point out, terrorism existed before 9/11. We didn't take it seriously enough before 9/11, however. No one needed to be sold on a wholesale change in policy. It's obvious that changes were needed. Exactly what those changes are is still a point of debate, but your clai that no changes were necessary is ludicrous.
Vote for Pedro
Actually, the article says that 20% of accepted foreign students in physics "...had problems entering the country last year". It doesn't say they've been denied visas. It also doesn't say what constitutes "problems", and what percent normally had trouble before 9/11. They all may have made it in, just with some troubles.
While I don't work with anything as sexy as pathogens, I am trying to get my grad-level thesis on computer security done. Practically any field of research I want to choose potentially opens me up to criminal prosecution.
As an example:
My university wanted me to do research on LDAP and its related security problems. They wanted me to do this at first on a strawman system, then on the actual system in use on the campus. I objected to this line of research because if I were "caught" probing or attacking the system and the person who discovered me jumped the appropriate chain of command and called the authorities, I would be up shit creek without a paddle.
I also brought up the problem on who owns (or has ultimate authority over) the campus network. It is operated by the university, but owned by the state and to some extent, the feds. What if the university gave me permission but the state or federal authorities decided they didn't like my work? What then?
My professors told me I could do the thesis and "bury" my work. That is, copies would be made for myself, my committee, and a copy in the library under the "restricted section". But if I do so, what's the use?
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
Do you seriously think that any of this research really would make a difference to a terrorist or not?
How much high tech did it take to fly two planes into two buildings? The planes, that's it. And it's not like they even built the planes themselves.
Security by obscurity is not the way to go. Anybody who has any experience in real life with security (be it physical security, or more abstract as in network security) knows that security by obscurity is nothing more than a pillow to sleep on for those who are trying to protect themselves.
And when that "security" measure is hindering science.. I don't think I have to spell it out for you.
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
currently, i'm employed at a major research institution as a postdoctoral researcher. One of our research projects currently is examining the factors influencing the transport of microorganisms in porous media (i.e., what happens to the bugs as they go into the groundwater).
One of the bugs we're looking at is Cryptosporidium parvum, a nasty parasite that was responsible for an outbreak in Milwaukee in 1993 that sickened something like 400,000 people and killed at least 100.
Interesting facts about crypto: It can be purchased over the phone with a credit card. With no previous clearance or paperwork or anything (at least as far as we can tell) to ensure that it is going to someone who won't misuse it. And it comes fully viable and capable of infecting individuals (as we accidently discovered a couple months back).
back of envelope calculations say that if we were to find a 1 million gallon reservoir, and dumped our sample in, (and somehow could mix it real well) there'd be near 1,000 particles per gallon. Given that it takes 1-10 to cause an infection, that's enough to infect the entire town i live in.
amazing. and all it takes is a credit card...
Present your results to the memebers of a classified US military project that helps us to fight the terrorists. This is the best option. You get your research read by the people who really matter.
Congratulations, you've just shown a fundamental misunderstanding of how scientific progress happens.
Presenting it only to the US military will result in errors not getting caught by peer review. It'll mean each individual research team has to re-invent the wheel in their research, instead of building on other teams' experience and results.
Not only that, but many researchers have to show that they get papers published - having no papers published = dead career.
My hope is that the situation will improve with the next presidential elections. I can't believe that Americans will not defend their freedom.
I think the event at 9/11 might be among the most negative events that have affected USA and probably far beyond what Osama bin Laden and his company had hoped for. I'm not sure he succeeded in the main goal with the act since the purpose of terrorism is almost always to create respect through fear. However, what they managed to do during the few seconds of the act, is to create enormous effects on the american society that is also reaching to other parts of the world. That terrorist act must have been one of the shortest, yet most affecting, event in recent history. When I think about it, only the nuclear bombs (released by USA ironically enough) in Hiroshima and Nagasaki to put an effective end to WW2 (in an arguably good way...) comes into mind. These were similar split-second events that changed the way how we think.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Science creates tools, means to ends, not ends in themselves. Tools have no morality in and of themselves, and so therefore their research should not be judged based upon what they could be used for. Final, production level products of that research, can and should be scrutinized for what they could be used for.
This, too, is pure ad hominem bullshit. The parent would not have to support complete unfettered access to firearms to be consistent. It's one thing to allow researchers unfettered access to materials for their research, but rather different to allow the end product of that research to be available to anyone.
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
1. I was not specifically talking about McCarthy and the "super vast majority" of people he accused, more about the atmosphere of conformity and the risks of speaking out.
2. Nobody said the people I'm speaking of who oppose the U.S. government in certain policy issues are against the interests of the United States. Criticising your own government does NOT make you a traitor, sorry. That's a right you have.
3. I am not a U.S. citizen, merely someone who believes in the concepts on which it was founded. Happily, I won't have people screaming "Traitor!" in my face if I dare question what my government is doing.
POWs I believe you mean 'illegal combatants'. POWs have very clear rights as laid down by the geneva convention. 'Illegal Comabatant' is a highly nebulous term which is being used to deny these individuals their basic human rights. These include lack of legal advice, no contact with their respective embassies and cases of alleged torture.
> Sept. 11 changed everyone's PERCEPTION of the threat of terrorism, including Bush, as you pointed out. This was a change for the better as it's more in line with reality. As you point out, terrorism existed before 9/11. We didn't take it seriously enough before 9/11, however.
Arguably we've gone from underperceiving terrorism to overperceiving it.
Yeah, 9/11 was bad, but how many people have died in car wrecks since then, and how much do your hear about that on the news?
Or from a less parochial perspective, how many people in the world have died of AIDS or died in the various slaughters that have been running in Africa?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade