[bosco_mcnasty]

I see it more simplistically. If there's two guys love neutrinos, neutrinos is they passion, one happens to be born in Russia, one in US (neither one chose to be born there), and they want to work together to understand life, the universe, everything, then so what? What matters more, life, the universe, everything, or some years-long dramatic squabble, years long on the scale of a 5 billion year old planet and millions year old species and perhaps tens of thousands of years old civilization.

The "ideal" of science is that there should be this purity, this honesty, etc. Deviations do occur, politics are common in science itself, data falsification, etc, but we must not let that deny the purity ideal. In the same way, I believe the idea here is to acknowledge that purity over political differences as something transcendent to politics. But yes, such collaborations do have political value in terms of being a "relationship". And yes of course I don't want to poo-poo politics. Whereas it's true that politics is as inescapable to the human condition as say language, perhaps we shouldn't let political constraints guide and dictate scientific work just as we shouldn't let linguistic barriers limit science, both part of the human condition, both miniscule in the face of the work being done.