Paper Retracted After Anti-Immigrant Scientist Bans Use of His Software (sciencemag.org)

sciencehabit writes: An 11-year-old research paper describing Treefinder, a computer program used by evolutionary biologists, has been retracted after the program's developer banned its use in European countries he deemed too friendly to refugees. In September, German scientist Gangolf Jobb announced on his website that researchers in eight European countries, including Germany and the United Kingdom, were no longer allowed to use Treefinder, which builds phylogenetic trees from sequence data. The move sparked outrage among some scientists, and now, BMC Evolutionary Biology has pulled the 2004 paper describing the software because the license change 'breaches the journal's editorial policy on software availability.'

Comments

Re:Easy to explain

[amiga3D]

There is no question. The publisher is reacting to the change in license as well they should. Regardless of the motivation the license change violates their policy. What's the point of having a policy and then not following it?

Not anti-immigrant

[SuperKendall]

The most egregious yet prevalent error in modern news reporting, is to conflate someone being against ILLEGAL immigration with someone being against LEGAL immigration.

If you can't understand why someone who does not want people who are by definition criminals entering the country in large numbers, then heaven help you - because reality certainly will not and history just laughs at you.

Re:Not anti-immigrant

[tepples]

If immigrants are granted asylum as refugees, how are they "by definition criminals"?

Re:Not anti-immigrant

[JaredOfEuropa]

Indeed, the two have been conflated. And it's not just illegal immigration; the way some countries are handling immigration (or refraining from handling it) and open their borderds to any and all is also in violation of national laws or international treaties. Even so, it's not well done to mix politics with science in this way. However I do wonder if the reaction and backlash would have been the same if Jobb would have banned the use of his software in countries that oppose unlimited immigration, such as Hungary or Slovenia.

Re:Not anti-immigrant

[fahrbot-bot]

He says, " Immigration to my country harms me, it harms my family, ..." Are there a lot of immigrants writing software that builds phylogenetic trees from sequence data? Are they taking his job as a programmer and/or scientist? And, if so, does that harm him more if done (by either a local or immigrant) in his country than abroad? His work can be done anywhere.

Or is he simply a xenophobic racist?

Re:Not anti-immigrant

[jodido]

This is the wrongest part of his manifesto. Immigration--that is, the free flow of labor across national boundaries--strengthens the working class by undercutting national and nationalist prejudices, and anything that strengthens the working class hastens the demise of capitalism. His point of view is that workers are not capable of making history, only being the objects of history. This is wrong--if you don't believe me go work in a sweatshop for a few years.

Re:Not anti-immigrant

[Nutria]

How in the hell does cheap foreign labor taking someone else's job undercut national and nationalist prejudices? That's just... silly.

The free flow of labor across national boundaries is *always* from cheap to expensive, thus undercutting the wages of the existing working class. That does nothing but piss off the existing working class, making them *more* nationalistic, not less.

Re:The strings are his to attach

[amiga3D]

I spent 3 years in Germany while in the US air force. While I found the German people to be very friendly for the most part I did notice a decided antipathy towards foreign immigrants from Turkey. It sort of surprised me but then I thought about it and it pretty much paralleled how many people in the US act towards Mexican immigrants.

Re:Easy to explain

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the main reasons there are issues with migrants in Europe right now is the very fact that Germany declared itself a free for all with no way for those migrants to make it to Germany without forcing the countries in the migrants paths to break their own laws.

I think the thing that is really going to bite Europe in the butt with this is the fact that if even 0.1% of those migrants are radicalized then Europe is going to end up with large numbers of terrorists in their midst. I would also bet its more then 0.1%

Re:The strings are his to attach

[JackieBrown]

It sort of surprised me but then I thought about it and it pretty much paralleled how many people in the US act towards Mexican immigrants.

Legal or illegal Mexican immigrants? I live in San Antonio and we are extremely tolerant toward legal Mexican immigrants. The Mexican Americans are not please with the illegal ones due to the jobs and resources they lose/share. For the most part, they really look down on them.

Besides organizations like LaRaza, most of the support for illegal Mexicans comes from white people - usually either due to reasons of "white guilt" or cheap labor.

Re:Following policy

[tripleevenfall]

The only interesting question here is whether this would be a controversy if it were happening in reverse - if the author was denying it to countries who are not taking in refugees.

Re:Easy to explain

[tripleevenfall]

Refugees should probably not just mean people who are migrating to a wealthier place to get on the dole.

Still septette circumstances and ideology

[SuperKendall]

If a person is pardoned, it does not mean that prior to the pardon they were not a criminal.

There may be good reasons to pardon someone (or to grant asylum) but that is still a VERY different thing than supporting legal immigration which people traditionally apply for.

You can still be even for a large increase of LEGAL immigration vs. any kind of amnesty for those willing to spend the effort or money to break into the country illegally.

Of course you do realize supporting mostly amnesty instead of legal immigration is support for the privileged (who can pay tens of thousands in smuggling fees) or true criminals? You pretty much eliminate the middle class, unlike legal immigration which is much more even-handed in letting anyone apply.

If you like furthering inequality there is no better way I can think of than supporting amnesty for illegal immigrants.

Re:Still septette circumstances and ideology

[Anonymous Coward]

You are creating a false dichotomy and clearing forgetting about how this country came to be. The Irish came to this country in much the same fashion and numbers as Mexicans. They were fleeing starvation and lack of opportunity for a land that could provide them with opportunity as well as sustenance. It amazes me how similar the rhetoric is. The Chinese immigrants went through much the same which is why they ended up building large portions of our rail system that we use even today.

We closed our borders and created this problem because we no longer wanted open immigration in an attempt to limit our population growth. In addition to closing our borders we created rigid rules which say we can only allow so many people to immigrate from any single country. So we eliminated a majority of legal avenues for Mexicans to immigrate and then we're surprised when they walk on over because they want more opportunity than they can get in their home country.

That is also the problem with trying to punish them. If they are already here what are you accomplishing by spending billions of tax payer funds to relocate them back to Mexico or Honduras, or any number of other countries who's people are often confused with Mexicans? You have to change your immigration policy if you're going to even attempt to repair the problem. You have to let more Mexican immigrants in, you have to give the people here a chance to become citizens, then the pressure is released and populations will begin to stabilize. Once that is done then you can absolutely send them home but since those numbers won't be on the order of 10s of millions of people you can actually accomplish your goal.

America is obsessed with making sure criminals are punished hard instead of actually rehabilitated into a person that is actually useful to society instead of just being a drain that costs tax payers again more money than someone who makes minimum wage would make in a year.

Re:Easy to explain

[lgw]

I agree with most of that, but I think you missed the most important point: why is key academic software not open source? I'm all for this guy's right to publish software under any license he chooses, but why would you embrace such software in the academic community? IMO, that's the lesson here.

Re:The strings are his to attach

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, not just Germany. Check out the violent crime and rape stats in Sweden: http://www.gatestoneinstitute....

It's not so much that the statistics went up, it's that the courts are sympathizing with the rapists! Mind-boggling.

P.S. to mods: This is not a troll. This is data.

Re:I FOR ONE WELCOME OUR MEXICAN OVERLORDS

[__aaclcg7560]

Some of those street corners can be very lucrative. A newspaper survey found an intersection in San Francisco that made $85 per hour.

Re:The strings are his to attach

[Anonymous Coward]

I've heard the exact same things said about Mexican immigrants in the US, yet I had no specific problems with my neighbours, my classmates when I was in school, or classmates of my kids. I've also heard the same thing said about Panamanians when I was in Costa Rica for a while. And for people from Botswana when I was in South Africa.

All too often people are vague when referencing problems like this because they don't have more specific things to say. Or they do have specifics, but aren't comfortable with saying what the actual problem is because some part of them doesn't think it is wrong to be upset over that. Just saying things of the lines of, "spend some time with people X and you would know why they are a problem," backfires when some people have spent time and still don't have a problem.

Re: Easy to explain

[Rakarra]

or you can pay a decent wage?

That's not very "business friendly."

Re:I FOR ONE WELCOME OUR MEXICAN OVERLORDS

[Anonymous Coward]

You've never seen immigrants--legal or illegal--be leeches? Then you must not live in a blue state.

And if you give those "hard working" illegal Latin American immigrants amnesty, you wanna see how many more of them are gonna chose to work hard instead of go on the dole?

FACT: immigrants have distinctly HIGHER rates of welfare than native Americans: "immigrant households use welfare at significantly higher rates than native households, even higher than indicated by other Census surveys...In 2012, 51 percent of households headed by an immigrant (legal or illegal) reported that they used at least one welfare program during the year, compared to 30 percent of native households "
http://cis.org/Welfare-Use-Immigrant-Native-Households

FACT: "Notably, illegal immigrants are already receiving significant amounts of government benefits, writes Inserra. In 2010, the typical illegal immigrant household received $24,721 in government benefits but paid just over $10,000 in taxes..."
http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=25056

Re:Theyre not refugees!

[Anonymous Coward]

How is that not a refugee? It's not like they built up a permanent residence in Turkey.

Re:LOL

[GLMDesigns]

So. Who decides who enters the country? The citizens or everyone else? And what do you do with immigrants that do not want to conform to the norms of the parent country?

It's not simply a matter of calling someone a neo-na%i f**ta7d

Re:The strings are his to attach

[d34thm0nk3y]

It's amazing how once you make something legal, it's no longer illegal. Those tricky Mexicans!!

We are a territorial species

[TapeCutter]

This has been a problem since before humans were humans, humans and most other primates are highly territorial, they naturally form tribes with a hierarchical social structure. It's possible our invention of civilization will eventually change that but it hasn't happened yet, however it has dramatically changed the size of our tribes from a few hundred to hundreds of millions and those who attempt to swap tribes are likely to survive the ordeal, the behaviour of our species is moving away from the standard primate model, it now behaves like a cross between human tribalism and a technologically advanced termite mound.

At the end of the day the fighting is always about resources but we justify and rationalise it with our natural xenophobia. This is the way "nature intended", it is in the wetware toolbox we were given at birth. Peaceful co-existence in a land of plenty is what we all want, ironically our xenophobic tendencies mean we are more than willing to wipe out other tribes to get it.