Most regular people assume that scientists are ethical and trustworthy. When men in white coats walk in and declare their message, we assume they are objective. That’s an incredibly naïve attitude, and it costs us money, time, and trust, because people forget that scientists are also people. Scientists have agendas too, and all too often, this lack of integrity leads them to spy on others either to undermine them or beat them to the punch. Research is incredibly cutthroat. You publish or perish, and so scientists sometimes pull out all stops in order to scoop other labs on discoveries, evidence, or products so that they can get payments, promotions or preference. The reason you should care about this is that certain political movements rely on the premise that they exist in a vacuum. However, the truth is that American innovation and research makes most scientific advancement possible. Other people are successful because we did the work, and they stole it from us. I know that sounds rather Gollum of us, but it’s true. Someone has to innovate it, and research is exceptionally expensive.
During the summer of 2001-2002, I worked at ARUP Laboratories in Research Park at the University of Utah. That was my first exposure to research espionage. Seeing as I was the only member of research and development without a PhD, I was essentially the R&D technician, and so I used whatever workspaces were not currently in use by my superiors. Consequently, this mean I had no desk, no computer, and no permanent presence (I am not grousing, there is a point to this). Then, we learned in August that Roche AG was coming to visit our facility, and the head of molecular genetics came to me. They decided to entrust me with all of their materials that were especially cutting edge, secret, and vulnerable because the last time Roche AG came to visit, they stole things. Well, my work area looked like a tornado had touched down, so Roche came and went without getting a single thing, and my boss was happy that my impression dissuaded the scientists from Roche from any interest in or contact with me during their visit.
While working on my PhD in biochemistry, I became the victim of research espionage. At one point in my literature review early on in my project, I found a laboratory at the University of Guelph in Canada working on a similar project. I contacted the lab, got in touch with the graduate student working on that project, and offered to collaborate. When we reached a particularly critical stage, I sent him information. He stopped communicating. Then, we received word that a paper was being published, including the information we generated, but without any credit given to us for our work. That’s when the college legal counsel got involved and lectured me for naively trusting my compatriot (who subsequently graduated with his PhD and moved back to his homeland- Syria).
I learned a lot about research espionage in graduate school. I testified against a classmate in Animal Biotechnology who plagiarized research; admittedly I was probably overly sensitive and emotionally driven having myself been a recent victim thereof. She was expelled. My pharmacology teacher, who worked for Merck before becoming a professor taught us that most generic drugs, especially those from Canada, cost less because they don’t do the research. They steal it from other labs. The man who became my best friend at the time who worked for Rohm and Hass (A division of DOW) told me the same thing, that industrial chemistry processes were often stolen and then reverse engineered so that companies wouldn’t have to do trial and error. They already knew that Rohm and Hass products and processes worked, so all they had to do was find out how.
Someone has to pay for the research. Often, this money is coopted from tax money and spent in federally funded fishing expeditions on the auspice that it will be “beneficial to society”. Which society? I had an enormous operating budget at ARUP when I worked there. I was allowed to spend on my projects alone $25,000 per month because you have to beat someone to the discovery, so we paid other people to do menial tasks and purchased everything ready to go. In academia now, since the money isn’t ours, most people just fritter it away because it’s “use or lose” money, and then they go out and tell the granting agency that it will make pigs fly, horses dance and help you conceal the moon beneath the folds of your robe. A lot of research is stolen. A lot of benefits form the basis of “success” that are ill gotten gains representing the success of people distal to us in space and time. Many students hate James Watson, but they love Swedish health care (even though none of them have ever been to Sweden). Both of those benefit from stolen science. "Where does the health care technology come from that Swedish hospitals use? Where do the drugs and medicines come from? We are free-riding on the competition that goes on in the American system." Every organization is only as ethical as the people of whom it is comprised. If you’ve never worked on a PhD in science, you’ll probably unjustly ascribe virtues to us that we do not deserve, and if you’ve never lived in another nation it’s easier to lionize a situation about which you have no firsthand knowledge. Just consider that the Swedes themselves know that “by the blood of our people are their lands kept safe”.
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