BOSTON, April 14 (Xinhua) -- A Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor said here Sunday that restrictions on collaboration between the United States and Chinese scientists is "absolute inexcusable."

Yasheng Huang, a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, argued in a panel at the Harvard China Forum (HCF) that policies aimed at restricting collaborative research between the United States and China will not only hurt scientific research but also both countries.

To restrict public-domain and pre-commercial research is "absolutely inexcusable," Huang said, adding the action will "do great harm to the scientific work the best minds of this country and in China are doing."

"We have done research using Chinese scientists' publication data to show that the best research is done collaboratively, so essentially, you reduce collaboration you also reduce the quality of the research," Huang said.

Huang acknowledged the national security concerns that the U.S. government harbored, but said scientific research that has universal value should not be subject to such restrictions.

"For example, our food safety project is not for a single company. We publish papers we put up in the public domain," he said. "Indians can see it, Chinese can see it, Americans can see it."

According to a statement from the organizers, the HCF is expecting more than 1,000 attendees this year. It features 11 panels covering a wide range of issues, namely finance, technology, entrepreneurship, arts, culture, entertainment, international relations and development, philanthropy, consumers and retail, music, and pharmaceuticals.

The HCF, founded in 1997, is a student-run forum on China held in April every year at Harvard University.