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06-03-2004, 05:03 AM
<font size=4>Bioweapons labs outed by own research</font>
Analysis of research record reveals hidden activities.
2 June 2004
PHILIP BALL
Want to know whether a suspect laboratory is carrying out illicit weapons research? Just take a look at its publication record. According to US researchers, the pattern of scientific papers produced by a facility can give away vital information about any secret activities, even if these are never mentioned in the papers themselves.
Labs involved in developing illegal chemical or biological weapons can often appear perfectly respectable, publishing creditable work in scientific journals. Sending teams into such facilities to carry out inspections isn't always feasible, especially without good evidence of illegal activities.
So Rich Colbaugh of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in Socorro and his team have devised a way to tell if all is as it seems by using the only information available: the lab's published papers.
The technique relies on the idea that whenever you have a network of objects, such as scientific collaborations or literature citations, the way a particular object fits into the network can reveal a lot of information about the object itself.
You can make deductions about the content of a particular web page, for example, just by looking at the pages it is linked to. "You can get deep information from limited observations," Colbaugh says.
More on this Interesting Story (http://www.nature.com/nsu/040531/040531-1.html)
Analysis of research record reveals hidden activities.
2 June 2004
PHILIP BALL
Want to know whether a suspect laboratory is carrying out illicit weapons research? Just take a look at its publication record. According to US researchers, the pattern of scientific papers produced by a facility can give away vital information about any secret activities, even if these are never mentioned in the papers themselves.
Labs involved in developing illegal chemical or biological weapons can often appear perfectly respectable, publishing creditable work in scientific journals. Sending teams into such facilities to carry out inspections isn't always feasible, especially without good evidence of illegal activities.
So Rich Colbaugh of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in Socorro and his team have devised a way to tell if all is as it seems by using the only information available: the lab's published papers.
The technique relies on the idea that whenever you have a network of objects, such as scientific collaborations or literature citations, the way a particular object fits into the network can reveal a lot of information about the object itself.
You can make deductions about the content of a particular web page, for example, just by looking at the pages it is linked to. "You can get deep information from limited observations," Colbaugh says.
More on this Interesting Story (http://www.nature.com/nsu/040531/040531-1.html)