manqiangrexue
Brigadier
Let me elaborate a little on this. I am from a similar academic background to Vesicles. In a highly respected academic setting amongst well-educated researchers, there is very little (to no) nationalistic hostility. I can tell you I've trained at many many academic institutes across America and NEVER ONCE faced direct racial discrimination in a professional setting before. (Direct racism happens at Walmart, not Harvard LOL) Scientists are very nice to each other; lab directors like to put together highly diverse teams with members from all over the world. We get along juuuuust fine because we are interested in scientific breakthroughs and we have nothing but respect for those who can achieve them and those who can work with us to achieve them regardless of race. We want to work together harmoniously to better science.
What will make things ugly is when nasty aggressive agencies whose main agenda is national preservation rather than science get put into science and in a very powerful position. The FBI don't care that you have a great lab of people who love and trust each other. They don't even care that your project has the potential to cure XXX disease. The FBI sees that one member is Chinese so they look up his emails. They see that he has discussed things with his former colleagues in China before. Because they are not professional scientists, they are not truly qualified to understand the nature of the discussions but it makes them uncomfortable that a Chinese guy in an American lab is communicating with scientists in China. Their solution is to call him a spy, deport him, and tear him out of the American team that relied on him for a critical part of their research. (Even if they do eventually figure out he hasn't committed a crime, they do so after an extremely long and humiliating investigation of him, ruining his reputation at the institute and his comfort level staying in the US.) Then, they make rules so the lab can't hire more people from China unless its fails to recruit an American who can do the job. So you get Dave, 9-5 guy who "kinda" knows how to do it but not in a world-leading way. Now your research is stalled. So you argue that Dave wasn't really qualified and you need to hire another guy from China who chooses to work 120 hours a week for $45K and knows the technique like be was trained from the womb. But multiple efforts failed because their visas were denied. After a few years, the American lab director reads on Science or Cell that the guy who was called a spy and deported from his lab continued his work in China and completed the research his team was on track to complete together. Or if this is a field in which China is truly lacking, maybe he went to Switzerland and completed his work there with a Swiss team. That's how being paranoid and xenophobic hinders science.
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