Lab Theft Charges

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Business Research Ethics RES/351 May 6, 2013 Business Research Ethics “Researcher Acquitted of Lab Theft Charge” By: Andrew Lawler In this article there were charges of stealing and spying. A scientist by the name of Bin Han was originally charged with severe allegations. Bin Han was born in China and it was said that he was going to take the stolen property and information pertaining to it back to his homeland. If he did so, he would do it with the intent to sell the stolen property and the information for a profit. Bin Han had earned his graduate degree from Xian University in China but he was a United States citizen. The University of California was his place of employment in the ophthalmology department for 13 years. One day…show more content…
His lawyers showed that the vials of protein gels could be purchased in China. The University of California did not have an invoice with an amount on it for the vials of protein gels. Bin Han had picked up the vials on his way home and put them in the freezer until he brought them to his lab. As to the one-way ticket to China, Bin Han’s mother was ill and he did not know when he was leaving or coming back. This brought his felony charges down to misdemeanor charges. These were dropped after Bin Han was found not guilty. Bin Han’s behavior was in question by the legal authorities because his actions were out of character. Bringing lab property to his home was a good example of research ethics. The University of California was in error of poor ethical codes. Bin Han would not have gone through all of this if the University had better control of business research. There were others that felt the repercussions of this case. A California State Legislator, Judy Chu, has said this case had the same type of allegations as a former one, Dr. Wen Ho Lee, a physicist, charged with stealing classified materials. Asian Americans are said to be marked by these types of actions. This leads up to the thoughts of not trusting Asian Americans or Asian Americans not being faithful to the United States. (Lawler,…show more content…
The University of California guidelines were not up to date and there were many people affected by this situation of ethical boundaries that come with consequences. The Ethical Codes should have been re-evaluated and controlled for the sake of all nationalities. The University of California should recognize the internal controls of ethical codes and what this really means. Policies and procedures should be written out in detail and follow-ups should be done automatically. The lab researchers should be asked to sign non-disclosure forms upon their employment to protect them as well as the University. These matters should be taken care of promptly and the University of California looked to for these errors of ethics and business codes. The blame, for whatever it is worth, would lie on the University of California because of its delay of recognizing an error in their way of doing

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