Security crackdowns on science collaboration backfired in a surprising way

Eight years of bibliometric data across 27 fields shows China's international co-authorship fell after 2018, but not where governments expected. Sensitive dual-use fields like physics and materials science declined only 3–6 percentage points, while nursing and dentistry fell 8–24 points. Scientists kept collaborating at the research frontier regardless of security friction — they just changed how they described the work.