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China’s genetic profiling research faces pushback from academic journals over ethics concerns

  • More than 80 Chinese papers highlighted, including where DNA profiling of Uygurs and Tibetans is involved and voluntary consent is hard to establish
  • Publisher sees no merit in boycotting all research from a country but seeks to assess each paper on its merits and adherence to ethical standards

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Concerns about Beijing’s policies in Xinjiang and the mass DNA collection nationwide, led academics to write an open letter in June asking the scientific community whether it was acceptable to continue publishing such research papers from China. Photo: AFP
Some of the world’s biggest academic publishers are investigating research papers containing genetic or facial information on minorities amid allegations of ethical violations in the gathering of the data. Much of the research in question stems from China.

Concern about such profiling of marginalised groups has led to calls for the retraction of published research papers from China. In at least one case, several scientists on the board of a major US publishing house resigned over the issue.

Yves Moreau, a professor in computational biology and bioinformatics at Belgium’s University of Leuven, has raised the alarm over worldwide ethical lapses in genetics technology use since 2015. That year, his collaborators and he raised awareness of a law mandating DNA profiling of Kuwait’s population, which was then repealed two years later.

Moreau said he had now turned his attention to China’s DNA profiling or facial recognition research owing to the large number of reports being submitted.

“We don’t realise that we are doing a lot of research that contributes to very dangerous surveillance technology across the world, not just in China,” Moreau said. “But I focus on China because this is where I see the biggest problems right now.”

One of the research papers flagged by Moreau and withdrawn by Springer Nature examined DNA information from Han, Tibetan, Uygur and Hui in China. Photo: Shutterstock
One of the research papers flagged by Moreau and withdrawn by Springer Nature examined DNA information from Han, Tibetan, Uygur and Hui in China. Photo: Shutterstock

Minority reports

Moreau, who has served as a consultant for the Forensic Genetics Policy Initiative to set human rights standards for global DNA databases, said he had highlighted more than 80 China research papers for investigation to almost every major academic publisher since 2019.

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