Did you know that scientists have created artificial DNA? Just for the record, that’s only one step away from inserting the DNA into a cell and bringing it to life. However, this area of research is still in it’s infancy so we won’t have any soulless synthetic human puppets for very much longer a long time.

Most recently, the synthesis of a meager 500,000 base pair bacterial genome was explained in detail by the researchers at the J. Craig Venter Institute. The size of the bacterial genome pales in comparison to our hulking 3 billion base pair human genome of champions but it’s a step in the right direction. Naturally, stepping in said direction is a cause for bioethical concern but I’m more interested in the new possibilities for biocrime!

It has been 20 years since DNA evidence was first admitted in court which lead to a death sentence. Similarly, it has been a recurring plot device for television crime drama for just as long. Being exposed to such shows, today’s criminals know better than to leave saliva, blood, or semen at the scene of a crime if they can help it. Although, with the advent of synthetic DNA, bodily fluids may be making an unexpected comeback…

Everyone knows that planting DNA evidence like hair or fingernail clippings is a straight forward way to frame someone for a crime they didn’t commit, but let me walk you through a more intriguing scenario:

1. Almost half a billion DNA profiles of offenders are contained in the FBI’s CODIS National DNA Index.
2. A crooked cop or hacker mastermind leaks criminal DNA profiles to the internet. 
3. A regular joe (RJ) obtains a DNA profile of regular criminal (RC) on parole in his area.
4. RJ has DNA synthesized en masse and inserted into cells by a private lab.
5. RJ commits his crime of choice, stealing a rhubarb pie from a windowsill, without leaving any trace of his own DNA (easier said than done).
6. The forged DNA is left at the scene of the crime.
7. Forensic scientists find a direct DNA match with RC using the CODIS National DNA Index.
8. Assuming RC has no significant alibi, he is considered a repeat offender and found guilty of grand theft pastry.
9. RJ, pretty hungry at this point, consumes pie and sends an anonymous thank-you card to J. Craig Venter Institute without ever having made contact with RC.

This scenario may seem far fetched but it’s undeniable that the validity of DNA evidence relies on the fact that people assume DNA cannot be tampered with. Much like the questionable admissibility of digital photography and digital video in court due to computer forgery, DNA evidence will one day be under high scrutiny. 

A grayscale range of hats are often used to qualify moral standing of computer hackers. There are the virtuous white hat hackers who discover and patch holes in security systems but not surprisingly there are malicious black hat hackers who hack for profit and spite!

In between lies the ambivalent league of grey hat hackers who dabble in both affairs. They aren’t afraid to break a law to get a point across about security to administrators. This edgy type of hacker anonymously creates far more social impact than the white hat hacker, advancing security nonetheless. 

Similarly, in between the everyday scientist and the mad scientist lies a new breed of researcher with similar objectives to the grey hat hacker. They aren’t afraid to break a law or an ethical norm for the advancement of science.

Allow me to illustrate a scenario where grey hat scientists could make significant impact.

As we speak, hackers are in control of millions of home computers in botnets. Not to alarm you, but there’s a chance that your computer compromised and being rented out for password cracking, spam, and other nefarious online business.

It has been speculated that the magnitude of computing power distributed across these zombie computers is enormous! Meanwhile, distributed computing projects such as Folding@Home, a project where people donate computing cycles to fold proteins, is slowly making progress. I agree that it’s unethical to access another persons computer and install Folding@Home without their permission, but should a breakthrough in the understanding diseases caused by mis-folded proteins, wouldn’t your idle screensaver time be worth it? 

Forced computation has been attempted before. A SETI@Home virus began to spread in 2003 to put unused CPU cycles to use in home computers. If you aren’t familiar, the SETI project aims to discover extra-terrestrial life by analyzing radio telescope data. Sign me up for that virus!

Although distributed computing is a rather tame example compared to the ethical boundaries that will have to be crossed in order to advance fields like bio-engineering. There will surely be an uprising of grey hat scientists who choose to loosen their moral obligations, perhaps anonymously as hackers have done, in order to make scientific progress. 

The grey hat scientist follows a consequentialist philosophy. Put simply, that the ends justify the means. I’m not saying I subscribe to this philosophy, but I’m curious, especially in biology, as to if our culture will be able to keep up with the breakthroughs in research. Otherwise scientists will be forced to undermine laws and ethics to continue research and the age of the grey hat scientist will be at hand!

PirateBay is the Paris Hilton of anti-copyright organizations. Somehow, mainly due to the lenient copyright laws, they are still serving up the hottest uncensored videos even after a constant barrage of publicity. Well, to be more precise, PirateBay doesn’t actually serve up any copyrighted material they simply host and track torrent files.

Torrent files are instructions to find other people on the internet with the latest Radiohead album (bad example) that you want to download. A torrent application of your choice assembles chunks of the files you get from others and simultaneously sends those chunks to others in the same boat as you. Before you know it you have “the gentlest, prettiest Radiohead set yet” (Entertainment Weekly).

It’s hard not to weep a little for the directors, producers, musicians, actors, and technicians which I am indirectly stealing from but I reverse-weep when I think of the percentage of money that goes to said individuals when I purchase a CD or DVD. So, I go back to weeping, but with joy, as I witness Cloverfield in the theatre and The Roots live in concert.

However, the real question is, who would I be weeping for if I could download scientific literature on a site like PirateBay without having to pay expensive journal subscription fees (subscription required) that Universities are required to pay?

I might weep for the niche journal publishers and some peer reviewers for a little while, but my tears would instantly evaporate at the thought of the greater good. It’s no question that the merits of open-access science are hotly debated but who actually stopped to consider a business model for downloading TV shows on the internet before just doing it?

It’s called piracy! It’s not really a complicated thing. What you do is go ahead and download using your new and innovative distribution method like Torrents and 12 months later companies realize this and adapt in order to stay in business. They advertise online, they sell shows on iTunes, they stream shows with commercials on their websites, …whatever! The same should be true with scientific publishing. 

This idea was already started by Joanna Karczmarek in like 2005. With permission from Arxiv, she grouped up entire categories of Arxiv as torrent files and hosted them at UBC. Of course, Arxiv is free to begin with but the concept is the same.

Having a local copy of all high energy theoretical physics papers (a mere 9GB at Arxiv) would be mind boggling for a researcher in that field. One could research entirely offline, free from any institution, with search speeds as fast as ones hard drive could read. Journal subscriptions could be automatically synchronized to a local copy and scientists across the world could all be on the same page (an electronic page).

So, with Arxiv already dealt with, one has only a few more journals left to go! Of course, you’d want to specify what journals are relevant to your field, but I’m estimating that all of Nature in PDFs will be 143GB (20mb per issue with 7193 issues). Similarly, I expect Science will be 117GB (20mb per issue with 5878 issues). With disk space costing about $200 for a single 1000GB drive this isn’t so unreasonable.

Of course, there are minor technicalities in obtaining 100′s of gigabytes of science papers, but putting that aside, pirating science is entirely PloSable. It may be just the shady underhanded approach to open-access science that people are looking for.

Thank goodness for Sweden! 

Edit: Lots of great comments on this article at http://reddit.com/r/science/info/6jmij/comments/