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“Exporting” American Scientific Discoveries: Reflections and Circumspection

2019; Wiley; Volume: 33; Issue: 7 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1096/fj.190701ufm

1530-6860

Thoru Pederson,

Science Education and Perceptions

E. L. Doctorow's The Book of Daniel (1) was set in the literary form that had become known as the “nonfiction novel,” famously pioneered by John Hersey in his epic series in The New Yorker magazine that became his career-defining book, Hiroshima. Doctorow's book was built from the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg case, an American married couple accused of being Russian spies, who were tried, convicted, and sentenced to execution. I can still recall the silence that descended over my Syracuse, New York, neighborhood that day, June 19, 1953, with everyone glued to their radios. The Rosenbergs' two sons have long professed the innocence of their mother, as have some others who have scrutinized the evidence. Last April, one of the world's top institutions of cancer science and care, the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas, leveraged the resignation of two of its employees and fired a third. An investigation into a fourth scientist was terminated, and one on a fifth scientist was still in progress at that time. What had happened? The preceding August, U.S. National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins had sent letters to more than 10,000 U.S. research institutions warning them to elevate their awareness of possible stealth activities by foreign nationals, in particular that of stealing intellectual property in a “systematic effort.” Subsequently, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) went into action and sent letters to various institutions alerting them to particular suspicions in their crosshairs. Five of these landed at M. D. Anderson's doorstep. The Houston Chronicle broke the story, but its and subsequent media reports, and even that in Science, were muddy on the kinds of details peer scientists eagerly would seek. Despite any frustration we may have, the respondent institution's handling of these matters as highly confidential was proper conduct because these charges had been brought by the FBI. It seemed that the alleged transgressions may have included one or more of the following: 1) a scientist's dual employment at a Chinese institution; 2) a scientist being funded by a Chinese organization; 3) a scientist's transmission to one or more colleagues in China of information that may have been confidential. If these allegations sound imprecise, that is because our knowledge of them is imprecise at the time of this writing. We can take them up, however, in broad terms. But before doing so, let's look back. The long view is not always a path to pure truth, but it rarely fails to offer something of relevance. It shall do here. Science in China was curtained over the centuries, as was all of China, despite occasional pioneers who intrepidly got there (Marco Polo of course the poster child). In the modern era, we are indebted to the British embryologist Joseph Needham (1900–1995), who in addition to his prescient research on animal development, paralleling Jacques Loeb in sensing the underlying biochemistry, managed to somehow create a vast body of scholarship on the history of Chinese science that was then, and remains today, sui generis. In 1944, the Chinese leader contemplated a visit to Washington, but it didn't come off. Three decades later, the American historian Barbara Tuchman, having a keen interest in China, wrote a most engaging retrospective essay on this (2), speculating on how the course of U.S.-Sino relations might have evolved differently had Mao come to Washington at that time. That same year as Tuchman's piece, U.S. President Richard Nixon went to China, arguably a bold move. Despite his later political demise, the way he and his handlers branded this was not entirely disingenuous. In an interview years after leaving the Presidency in disgrace, Barbara Walters asked him to identify his greatest achievement. He replied, “Opening the door to China.” On this occasion, the former President was arguably speaking the truth, at least as he saw it. In 1973, still President, Nixon assembled a science delegation to go to China. He appointed as the lead member Emil L. Smith, a protein biochemist from the University of California, Los Angeles (Fig. 1). At about the same time, Roy Wu, a plant molecular biologist at Cornell University (Fig. 2), undertook an ardent campaign to reach Chinese scientists and foster collaborations. These noble efforts by Smith, Wu, and other American biological scientists were parallel to others mounted in the fields of chemistry and physics. It is to be born in mind that all these efforts were at a time when China's so-called Cultural Revolution was at its peak. Despite its deceptive term, this was a humanitarian disaster. So, we must bear in mind that Smith, Wu, and others needed to do a balancing act in reaching out to Chinese colleagues at this time. I witnessed the final embers of Chairman Mao's horrific campaign when I got to China in 1980 and have written of it in these pages (3). Image courtesy of the National Library of Medicine. Photo courtesy of Frank DiMeo/Cornell University. The M. D. Anderson cases are unclear and in litigation (vide supra), but there are some dimensions that can be extrapolated or plausibly speculated from the limited information available. One or more of the scientists in the institution's employ may have had a second employment in China and perhaps even run a laboratory there. One or more of them might have been funded through China's Thousand Talents Program. It also may be that one or more of these scientists transmitted to scientists in China various documents, such as grant applications, perhaps including information that was confidential. Let's look at the suspected scenarios, considering them broadly as to principles of conduct by scientists and their institutions. First, dual employment. If an academic institution's employee, in this case a faculty member, runs an outside landscaping business with her husband and does so within the allotted time and effort limitations of the institution as to such activities, this is not of concern. But if a faculty member holds a formal employment relationship with another university, research institute, or company, most U.S. academic institutions require this to be disclosed and subjected to review and, when necessary under the applicable policies of the institution, subjected to mitigation terms. The burden is, of course, on the faculty member to forthrightly so disclose such employment, as is the case for all institutional policies and procedures relating to outside activities and conflicts of interest. The Thousand Talents Program was created by the Chinese government in 2008, mainly to encourage ethnic Chinese scientists who have trained or are training elsewhere or hold academic appointments elsewhere, to return. Some observers have hailed the program's success while others have claimed it to have underdelivered. Meanwhile, the U.S. National Intelligence Council has flagged it as a threat to America's emerging technology. One arm of the Thousand Talents Program funds Chinese scientists while still working outside China. External funding of any kind typically moves through the appropriate offices of the recipient organization. In the M. D. Anderson cases, it seems likely that the scientist's or scientists' funding through this program underwent institutional review, including negotiation of intellectual property rights. However, perhaps the Thousand Talents Program funding had come to this scientist or these scientists without the institution's knowledge. I am skeptical of this latter possibility. The other dimension relates to sharing of science at various levels. In the normal course of collaborating with another scientist, wherever located, information is shared. It may be an idea (e.g., “We are thinking about trying out this idea, what do you think?”), a recent result, an entire body of findings, or a manuscript in preparation, submitted in press or published. It could also be a draft grant application or a submitted grant application or one already funded. These are all standard practices, and yet I suspect many of us conduct such communication unaware of the actual ownership of such information. Specifically, and perhaps at play in one of the M. D. Anderson cases, ownership of a grant application submitted to a federal agency is held by the institution, not by the scientist. The second point here relates to the suggestion that in one of these cases the information shared with a colleague in China may have contained intellectual property. If this were the case and the conveyed information indeed qualified as intellectual property, at first blush it would be owned by the institution. But there are vexing vagaries here. Had this information been disclosed to M. D. Anderson? But right here is a wobbly point. Most institutional policies leave it to the scientist to “decide” when a body of results in the lab constitute an invention. The institution's patent office is in the dark until such time, notwithstanding regular tours that members of that office make on campus. This is a systemic problem in managing intellectual property in academic institutions, aggravated by the fact that the practicing scientists are rarely in a position to gauge what constitutes an invention under U.S. patent law. Patent laws vary throughout the world, but with regard to the United States, most scientists don't realize that sharing any document, manuscript, grant application, etc. that discloses an actual inventive step would be deemed a public disclosure, which under U.S. patent law would typically inviolate a claim of priority. In the M. D. Anderson case, we do not know if the scientist or scientists had disclosed an invention to the institution and, if so, whether the institution had filed for patent protection. Strictly speaking, we do not even know if there was an intellectual property breach at all because, again, our knowledge of these cases is so limited. That notwithstanding, the more general checklist issues have been set forth here in the hope that they are constructive. Finally, there is the question of race and ethnicity. The cases being brought by the FBI may include scientists of many nationalities working in the United States. But so far, those we know of involve ethnic Chinese scientists. As always, the temptation to generalize and extrapolate is the poisonous vector that the 20th and earlier centuries have taught. If any improprieties are occurring, let the institutions pursue these to the extent they are known. If the FBI has reasonable cause to ask institutions to do so, that is also within the rule of law. But anything else reminds us, inter alia, of a dark time in America (4). Until any charges are proven, I stand with all international scientists working in America. At the time this editorial was going to press, an Emory University case was reported, resulting in two faculty terminations. The author is also the Research Integrity Officer of his institution, which gives him some perspective on the topic of this editorial. But the views expressed here are his and his alone, nor are they necessarily those of FASEB.