This article is awful and does a terrible job explaining the facts, and specifically blurs the timeline in a way that paints a different picture than the facts.
1. Jeffrey Epstein gives 9 million dollars to Harvard researchers. 6.5 was for PED, with an additional 23.5 from his foundation. This funds PED's creation
2. Jeffrey Epstein gave $200,000 to Department Chair of Psychology, he applied to be a Visiting Fellow. The Chair supported his application, and Epstein was granted Visiting Fellow status for the 2005-2006 academic year.
3. Jeffrey Epstein was arrested, so he withdrew his application for being a Visiting Fellow for the 2006-2007 academic year.
4. Epstein tries to donate to Harvard again, and Harvard denies him due to his arrest record. He makes no more donations to Harvard despite several professors lobbying administration. He does however introduce several professors to rich philanthropists who do make donations.
5. Epstein maintained a relationship with Martin Novak (director of the PED, which Epstein funded), who let Epstein on campus 40 times between 2010 and 2018. There is no evidence he engaged with any undergrad students. He used these visits to speak with prominent faculty.
Agree. People's response to all this is so strange. It seems clear to me that this guy was legitimately interested in supporting science, and was a sexual predator. For some reason people really can't handle the idea of him being both things simultaneously. The world is actually just complicated sometimes.
There is a long history of great scientific advancements being made by otherwise unsavory people. Werner Von Braun, Ronald Fisher, Francis Galton, just off the top of my head. By all accounts these people legitimately loved science and reason and also held otherwise abhorrent views, and in some cases took abhorrent actions. This is just an ambiguity we have to live with.
I was disappointed with the article for a different reason. It starts out by saying it's not just about Jeffrey Epstein, but then it's mostly about Jeffrey Epstein.
I mean, Jeffrey Epstein is a problem of course, and his example helps to illustrate the problem, but the core of the issue is that things cost money, so the people with money call the shots. This can undermine the honesty and independence and objectivity of science, of journalism, of politics, of democracy, or any other aspect of life.
Money is power, and that makes a very unequal distribution of money a problem. To science, but also to many other aspects of our society.
#5 neglects the fact that Epstein had an office on campus, which is far more interesting than the number of times he was invited in by staff. (Covered in more detail by someone else, below.)
Article's details don't truly deliver on headline.
Epstein funded his pet research areas, yes. But all sources of funding including government grants do the same, one way or another. And across all rich funders, the variety of interests is very large, and include areas other more institutional funding bureaucracies ignore.
Also, despite Epstein's (somewhat still-underexplained) wealth & largesse, his money was a drop in the bucket. When the article points out that "more than two thirds of Epstein's donations—$6.5 million—went to PED director Martin Nowak" – an already well-funded researcher, it actually undermines its case. Epstein gave less than $10 million total? And to established programs? How does a tiny bit of funding, from an extreme-outlier bete-noire, to some not-even-fringe programs, make any negative general case against private funding?
That such private funding picks a different mix of researchers than the Harvard Professor writing this article would pick is the point - don't send all funding through the exact same credentialed-panels of established academia. Accept some curve-ball initiatives from other uncorrelated piles-of-resources.
The article's one tangible example of some favors flowing from a Harvard academic to Epstein's defense – Epstein's lawyer Dershowitz getting some linguistic advice from Steven Pinker – doesn't involve research funding at all. Someone's high-end legal counsel is being paid specifically to marshal resources & expertise for their defense. There's no distorting quid-pro-quo with regard to other payments: it's a totally up-front fee-for-advocacy relationship. (And that's even before considering Dershowitz's other alleged entanglements in Epstein matters.)
Your argument is logically sound but provably false. Humans are known to compromise their ethics for relatively small amounts of money. For example, Martha Stewart was a billionaire when she engaged in insider trading and then lied about it to the FBI, resulting in her going to federal prison--all to avoid a measly $45,000 loss!
The article makes clear that Epstein was granted physical access to facilities, the title of "visiting fellow at Harvard" in areas of study in which he had no credentials, and getting world-renowned researchers to validate his crackpot theories of racial eugenics due to his wealth.
I mean, you are being reasonable: $10 million in funding is peanuts to Harvard, which has an endowment of almost US $41 billion. But apparently Harvard is willing to lease our their credibility for such "a tiny bit" of money.
For those unfamiliar with academic research budgets, my lab's NIH budget was recently renewed and totaled to 2 million. So in the same ballpark as this.
2 million is not that much. When you add up research assistantship labor costs, scientific equipment and consumable reagents/materials, it depletes faster than you'd like. And our lab is quite small (~5 students); large ivy league research labs often have a couple dozen people.
Epstein funded his pet research areas, yes. But all sources of funding including government grants do the same, one way or another
Some grant-making-organization and state and private foundations now may have degenerated to the point that they are nothing but schemes for financing someone's pet ideas. But I will claim that at their best, they are better than that.
It seems like it's fashionable to dump on bureaucracies making decisions based on ostensibly objective criteria and assume that their decisions are no better than the pet of ideas of utterly vile people. But I'll stand against fashion and claim that isn't true.
Sure, okay, agreed that 6 million is not much on a global scale. But you can't be serious if you think 6 million in the hands of one person can't be used for some serious damage. You won't be able to buy a country but you could, i dont know, buy a really nice lab, and then use it to research eugenics or something.
Not a big fan of these 'drop in the bucket' arguments. A breakthrough scientific idea can cost anywhere between 0 dollars and a billion dollars. We don't want that breakthrough to be in the field of eugenics.
Maybe someone can word this statement in a way that actually describes the problem better for someone not as well-versed in the ins-and-outs of funding in academia?
The Epstein affair brings to light a much larger problem: it undermines the integrity of the research enterprise when individuals can pick and choose lines of inquiry that appeal to them simply because they can pay for them.
People funding research that interests them seems like a pretty innocuous statement by itself. Sure, it's connection to Epstein is blatantly problematic, but if you remove him specifically from the statement, what is the problem being highlighted?
The article explains this in the first paragraph, does it not?
- ... the mockery made of academic standards when, after donating $200,000 to the psychology department, Epstein was appointed as a visiting fellow there despite a complete lack of appropriate academic qualifications.
- Even after his release from prison, Epstein continued to be a frequent visitor: between 2010 and 2018 Epstein (at that point a registered sex offender) went to the PED offices more than 40 times. During that period he had an on-campus office and a key card and pass code with which he could enter buildings during off-hours.
Why should a benefactor have access to the research lab they fund?
The article also mentions:
- The New York Times concluded that in this case it led researchers “to give credence to some of Mr. Epstein's half-baked scientific musings.” True or not, it should trouble us that a corrupt man was making decisions affecting research at a major U.S. university. He had no academic competence—yet he effectively made choices about which research initiatives were interesting and promising.
So the problem it seems to be highlighting are twofold: (1) The access and "respectability" gained by donating to harvard without intellectual competence behind it, and (2) His ability to "softly dictate" researchers to give credence to his musings.
For what its worth, I disagree with what the article then proceeds to reach for:
> When peer review operates properly, it identifies the best ideas to support, usually by using panels—not individuals—to see to it that a range of views is represented. The process is imperfect, but women, people of color, young scholars, investigators at nonelite universities and individuals promoting ideas that challenge conventional wisdom at least have a chance
To me at least, the direction of scientific progress should be in the hands of scientists, not wealthy donors, big corporations or politicians. When the people who control the funding have their own narrow biases, it can't help but corrupt the results. Often, the results just disappear instead of being published when they're not what they're "supposed" to be.
> People funding research that interests them seems like a pretty innocuous statement by itself. Sure, it's connection to Epstein is blatantly problematic, but if you remove him specifically from the statement, what is the problem being highlighted?
There are two issues here. First, if it would be politically or financially more convenient to not know something, there is no money provided towards knowing it.
Second, in many cases the donors get to decide whether to publish the results after the research has been done. Naturally if only one of the possible results is inconvenient and the study reaches the inconvenient conclusion, that one doesn't get published. Then all your results are totally invalidated by selection bias.
I'm just going to point out that to people that have a concern about wealthy people funding research that is how science has been done long before research grants or anything like that came on the scene.
For a long time art and the sciences were funded by wealthy merchants and kings giving money to people like Lenardo Da Vinci to eat while they worked on their ideas.
Also another point, people worry about the corrupting influence of money on research but there is nothing that stops someone with money from setting up a research lab independent of a university and producing their own research. In fact I would think having the research done with a prestigious university would be a better check on the results because the individuals doing the research are tied deeply into their communities and as such their is more oversight and discussion on the topic.
If people are worried about scientific donors having undue influence, a much cleaner route than trying to stop donations or screen every person is to simply require that donations be anonymous. That way, everyone still has the freedom to sponsor whatever they want, but nobody gets bribed to overlook sex trafficking.
I don't think that works in practice. If you donate money with the goal of advancing some agenda, and it's officially anonymous, you'll find a way of letting the right people know it was you.
> That way, everyone still has the freedom to sponsor whatever they want
That still has a distortion effect on the institution and scientific community. And that's assuming the world's top scientists could never possibly guess that the only rich dude who always talks about X is making large anonymous donations to support research on X...
The correct way to do this is to fund a non-profit that then hires a set of third party reviewers to award grants on a competitive basis around one or more themes. This is how Elon Musk and Bill Gates do things, for example.
But no matter how you package it, anyone with a real reputation has more to gain than to lose by taking money from a pedophile. Harvard's/MIT's admins were trying to protect their faculty's reputation.
There's a comment below about Da Vinci, but I'd say that the problem claimed in this article has been around since Archimedes yelled "Eureka" in his bath. The way science has tried to protect itself has always been when research is published, not when it was funded. But it's also a mistake to think that funders have that much influence on research. Scientists usually study what they want and there's been thousands of years of attempts to develop systems to try force them to study what they're paid for that are still not completely effective.
Where did Epstein get his unfortunate ideas? From other scientists! Young researchers very early learn that their main task is the same as start up founders - to inspire people they talk with about their research in order take their money (or recruit them to the lab). I think that truth and societal value are often easiest to convey but obviously not always.
There's a comment below about Da Vinci, but I'd say that the problem claimed in this article has been around since Archimedes yelled "Eureka" in his bath. The way science has tried to protect itself has always been when research is published, not when it was funded.
This unfortunately comment is filled with bad and dubious comment but this seems notably deceptive. Society has to various extents aimed to protect itself from the very worst behavior and the worst people - and has succeed in to a rather spotty extent, certainly. Still, every stage of science has involved some filtering out of the bad and worst. The increase in science's scale has lessened the degree to which a scientist had to be "respectable" but added filters like objective grant criteria, etc. Still, there's no way a single filtering method can work. You can't count on publications to weed out determined frauds - science counts on a certain ethos from scientists (and counts now less than it should and suffers for this). Science needs a community of honesty and it's significant the number of commentators who can't understand this here.
I chatted with a friend who was in a Harvard class with one of the biology professors funded by Epstein. In like 2015 or so (before Epstein was a huge public deal) someone asked him about it and his response to the class was "What am I supposed to do - tell the sex offender to keep his money so he can spend it on more sex crimes?"
I think the issue is that there is always something in return. If you accepted money and it was truly anonymous and Epstein never talked to the professors or whatever than it would be hard to say its bad. But clearly people (good or bad - but always rich) are getting a lot of prestige, access, bragging rights, or whatever from these type of donations.
That assumes that “wealthy people funding research” is the only source of research funding.
Sure if Epstein was funding a bunch of research 100% we could just ignore it and move on... some man hours wasted. But if the guys he funded got other funding, taking it away from people researching stuff that isn’t eugenics, then there is a problem.
If we want to make speculations of what research could be, I would like to speculate that research could be funded by society as a whole and its benefits go to society as a whole.
>but we have broad evidence that the interests of funders often influence the work done.
As opposed to Government, drug company and institutional funders; they NEVER influence the work done.
Epstein was an evil asshole, and Harvard is a disgusting, sinister institution, but concentrating on rubbish like this overlooks the insane, ridiculous, overt and pervasive problems with science research funding that don't involve funding by the creepy dude who didn't kill himself, and who the media otherwise seems strangely incurious about.
It's a fact that wealthy donors support specific research that interests them.
On the one hand, hasn't research always been funded like this? Wealthy patrons have always supported work that somehow gratified them. And history is replete with despicable personalities who have nevertheless financed good science.
On the other hand, when the patron's interests turn out to be questionable, the research supported by those interests can be examined. It's okay to give it a second thought in light of new information about the patron.
I happen to think this article raises valid questions. For example, I have questions about the idea of buying a visiting fellowship. I have questions about the mechanisms by which faculty become oddly encumbered by donations.
> The New York Times concluded that in this case it led researchers “to give credence to some of Mr. Epstein's half-baked scientific musings.” True or not, it should trouble us that a corrupt man was making decisions affecting research at a major U.S. university.
True or not? Really? I would have liked if this article shared statistics instead of being so ambigious
"Lend credence" is an underhanded phrasing given that it can mean both "consider it more credible in theories" vs "associating with the evil crackpot makes him look more credible". One can argue a responsiblity to avoid both but the two are not at all identical - one is a corruption of their output while the other is essentially a confidence trick like saying a Harvard professor supports homeopathy - ignoring that it was a Philosophy professor and not Biology or Medical. Bad for the institutional reputation but doesn't discredit the work in itself.
I see a lot of comments are criticizing the article, because it seems to damn the fundamentals of how research is funded. I think that response to the article is justified. That is, yea - science needs a way to be funded, and it should be wealthy people that foot the bill... altruistically.
The author, Naomi Oreskes, is a prominent scholar of science history who has written extensively on the corruption of research for political purposes by, for example, tobacco companies.
"The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught" --H.L.Mencken
From my understanding Epstein was an intelligence agent, who worked the honey trap line. Compromising politicians, scientists & actors. This is pretty well laid out by now re FBI Charing documents for Maxwell.
Is this not the common understanding of the situation?
> What made it even worse was that Epstein was a latter-day eugenicist whose interests were tied to a delusional notion of seeding the human race with his own DNA. Given this stance, it is particularly disturbing that he focused his largesse on research on the genetic basis of human behavior. Human genetics is an ethically sensitive and intellectually contested domain where it behooves us to ensure that the highest standards of scientific rigor are in place and that nongenetic explanations for behavior are given a fair chance to compete.
This is a thinly veiled attack on evolutionary biology, which keeps coming up with plausible explanations that are nevertheless utterly disturbing to the self-image of a moral human being and must therefore be suppressed from its consciousness. This is an undue conflation of science (is) and morals (ought). Morals are an artifact of human experience with nature, nature itself is amoral.
For instance, let's ask: Why does rape exist?
Sociologist: writes twenty paragraphs on patriarchy and rape culture while ignoring the rest of the animal kingdom
Evolutionary Biologist: It's a successful strategy for reproduction, the selfish gene promotes its continued existence
If the sociologist is right, then rape should disappear in an enlightened culture that has abolished all male dominance (utopianism). If the biologist is right, then rape will not disappear without identifying and muting all gene sequences that might lead an individual to be a rapist (eugenics).
In reality, neither are practical solutions, both explanations are bound to be contributing factors, but with one disregarding the other, we lose the ability to draw rational conclusions and devise functioning systems.
[+] [-] JamesBarney|5 years ago|reply
https://www.harvard.edu/president/news/2020/report-regarding...
Does a far better job.
1. Jeffrey Epstein gives 9 million dollars to Harvard researchers. 6.5 was for PED, with an additional 23.5 from his foundation. This funds PED's creation
2. Jeffrey Epstein gave $200,000 to Department Chair of Psychology, he applied to be a Visiting Fellow. The Chair supported his application, and Epstein was granted Visiting Fellow status for the 2005-2006 academic year.
3. Jeffrey Epstein was arrested, so he withdrew his application for being a Visiting Fellow for the 2006-2007 academic year.
4. Epstein tries to donate to Harvard again, and Harvard denies him due to his arrest record. He makes no more donations to Harvard despite several professors lobbying administration. He does however introduce several professors to rich philanthropists who do make donations.
5. Epstein maintained a relationship with Martin Novak (director of the PED, which Epstein funded), who let Epstein on campus 40 times between 2010 and 2018. There is no evidence he engaged with any undergrad students. He used these visits to speak with prominent faculty.
[+] [-] darawk|5 years ago|reply
There is a long history of great scientific advancements being made by otherwise unsavory people. Werner Von Braun, Ronald Fisher, Francis Galton, just off the top of my head. By all accounts these people legitimately loved science and reason and also held otherwise abhorrent views, and in some cases took abhorrent actions. This is just an ambiguity we have to live with.
[+] [-] mcv|5 years ago|reply
I mean, Jeffrey Epstein is a problem of course, and his example helps to illustrate the problem, but the core of the issue is that things cost money, so the people with money call the shots. This can undermine the honesty and independence and objectivity of science, of journalism, of politics, of democracy, or any other aspect of life.
Money is power, and that makes a very unequal distribution of money a problem. To science, but also to many other aspects of our society.
[+] [-] mrslave|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] raxxorrax|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gojomo|5 years ago|reply
Epstein funded his pet research areas, yes. But all sources of funding including government grants do the same, one way or another. And across all rich funders, the variety of interests is very large, and include areas other more institutional funding bureaucracies ignore.
Also, despite Epstein's (somewhat still-underexplained) wealth & largesse, his money was a drop in the bucket. When the article points out that "more than two thirds of Epstein's donations—$6.5 million—went to PED director Martin Nowak" – an already well-funded researcher, it actually undermines its case. Epstein gave less than $10 million total? And to established programs? How does a tiny bit of funding, from an extreme-outlier bete-noire, to some not-even-fringe programs, make any negative general case against private funding?
That such private funding picks a different mix of researchers than the Harvard Professor writing this article would pick is the point - don't send all funding through the exact same credentialed-panels of established academia. Accept some curve-ball initiatives from other uncorrelated piles-of-resources.
The article's one tangible example of some favors flowing from a Harvard academic to Epstein's defense – Epstein's lawyer Dershowitz getting some linguistic advice from Steven Pinker – doesn't involve research funding at all. Someone's high-end legal counsel is being paid specifically to marshal resources & expertise for their defense. There's no distorting quid-pro-quo with regard to other payments: it's a totally up-front fee-for-advocacy relationship. (And that's even before considering Dershowitz's other alleged entanglements in Epstein matters.)
[+] [-] teachrdan|5 years ago|reply
The article makes clear that Epstein was granted physical access to facilities, the title of "visiting fellow at Harvard" in areas of study in which he had no credentials, and getting world-renowned researchers to validate his crackpot theories of racial eugenics due to his wealth.
I mean, you are being reasonable: $10 million in funding is peanuts to Harvard, which has an endowment of almost US $41 billion. But apparently Harvard is willing to lease our their credibility for such "a tiny bit" of money.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Stewart#Stock_trading_c...
https://www.google.com/search?q=harvard+endowment&oq=harvard...
[+] [-] biophysboy|5 years ago|reply
2 million is not that much. When you add up research assistantship labor costs, scientific equipment and consumable reagents/materials, it depletes faster than you'd like. And our lab is quite small (~5 students); large ivy league research labs often have a couple dozen people.
[+] [-] joe_the_user|5 years ago|reply
Some grant-making-organization and state and private foundations now may have degenerated to the point that they are nothing but schemes for financing someone's pet ideas. But I will claim that at their best, they are better than that.
It seems like it's fashionable to dump on bureaucracies making decisions based on ostensibly objective criteria and assume that their decisions are no better than the pet of ideas of utterly vile people. But I'll stand against fashion and claim that isn't true.
[+] [-] Ar-Curunir|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] atq2119|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nlosti|5 years ago|reply
Not a big fan of these 'drop in the bucket' arguments. A breakthrough scientific idea can cost anywhere between 0 dollars and a billion dollars. We don't want that breakthrough to be in the field of eugenics.
[+] [-] Goronmon|5 years ago|reply
The Epstein affair brings to light a much larger problem: it undermines the integrity of the research enterprise when individuals can pick and choose lines of inquiry that appeal to them simply because they can pay for them.
People funding research that interests them seems like a pretty innocuous statement by itself. Sure, it's connection to Epstein is blatantly problematic, but if you remove him specifically from the statement, what is the problem being highlighted?
[+] [-] bollu|5 years ago|reply
- ... the mockery made of academic standards when, after donating $200,000 to the psychology department, Epstein was appointed as a visiting fellow there despite a complete lack of appropriate academic qualifications.
- Even after his release from prison, Epstein continued to be a frequent visitor: between 2010 and 2018 Epstein (at that point a registered sex offender) went to the PED offices more than 40 times. During that period he had an on-campus office and a key card and pass code with which he could enter buildings during off-hours.
Why should a benefactor have access to the research lab they fund?
The article also mentions:
- The New York Times concluded that in this case it led researchers “to give credence to some of Mr. Epstein's half-baked scientific musings.” True or not, it should trouble us that a corrupt man was making decisions affecting research at a major U.S. university. He had no academic competence—yet he effectively made choices about which research initiatives were interesting and promising.
So the problem it seems to be highlighting are twofold: (1) The access and "respectability" gained by donating to harvard without intellectual competence behind it, and (2) His ability to "softly dictate" researchers to give credence to his musings.
For what its worth, I disagree with what the article then proceeds to reach for:
> When peer review operates properly, it identifies the best ideas to support, usually by using panels—not individuals—to see to it that a range of views is represented. The process is imperfect, but women, people of color, young scholars, investigators at nonelite universities and individuals promoting ideas that challenge conventional wisdom at least have a chance
[+] [-] calibas|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AnthonyMouse|5 years ago|reply
There are two issues here. First, if it would be politically or financially more convenient to not know something, there is no money provided towards knowing it.
Second, in many cases the donors get to decide whether to publish the results after the research has been done. Naturally if only one of the possible results is inconvenient and the study reaches the inconvenient conclusion, that one doesn't get published. Then all your results are totally invalidated by selection bias.
It also provides the opportunity to do this:
https://xkcd.com/882/
Study doesn't say what you want? Fund another one, maybe tweak it a little, sooner or later it will, and you only publish the one that does.
[+] [-] sukilot|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hpoe|5 years ago|reply
For a long time art and the sciences were funded by wealthy merchants and kings giving money to people like Lenardo Da Vinci to eat while they worked on their ideas.
Also another point, people worry about the corrupting influence of money on research but there is nothing that stops someone with money from setting up a research lab independent of a university and producing their own research. In fact I would think having the research done with a prestigious university would be a better check on the results because the individuals doing the research are tied deeply into their communities and as such their is more oversight and discussion on the topic.
[+] [-] dredmorbius|5 years ago|reply
How were those financed?
Is there any evidence of bias toward or away from specific areas based on moneyed, political, or other interests?
[+] [-] apsec112|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jackfrodo|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwawaygh|5 years ago|reply
That still has a distortion effect on the institution and scientific community. And that's assuming the world's top scientists could never possibly guess that the only rich dude who always talks about X is making large anonymous donations to support research on X...
The correct way to do this is to fund a non-profit that then hires a set of third party reviewers to award grants on a competitive basis around one or more themes. This is how Elon Musk and Bill Gates do things, for example.
But no matter how you package it, anyone with a real reputation has more to gain than to lose by taking money from a pedophile. Harvard's/MIT's admins were trying to protect their faculty's reputation.
[+] [-] ckemere|5 years ago|reply
Where did Epstein get his unfortunate ideas? From other scientists! Young researchers very early learn that their main task is the same as start up founders - to inspire people they talk with about their research in order take their money (or recruit them to the lab). I think that truth and societal value are often easiest to convey but obviously not always.
[+] [-] joe_the_user|5 years ago|reply
This unfortunately comment is filled with bad and dubious comment but this seems notably deceptive. Society has to various extents aimed to protect itself from the very worst behavior and the worst people - and has succeed in to a rather spotty extent, certainly. Still, every stage of science has involved some filtering out of the bad and worst. The increase in science's scale has lessened the degree to which a scientist had to be "respectable" but added filters like objective grant criteria, etc. Still, there's no way a single filtering method can work. You can't count on publications to weed out determined frauds - science counts on a certain ethos from scientists (and counts now less than it should and suffers for this). Science needs a community of honesty and it's significant the number of commentators who can't understand this here.
[+] [-] lawnchair_larry|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vmception|5 years ago|reply
So you “cancel” a guy that doesn't need employment or advertisements to get anything done, by condemning anyone that received money from him.
What do people want to happen to the money instead?
What punishment do people think they are enacting?
Has anyone actually thought that far?
[+] [-] handmodel|5 years ago|reply
I think the issue is that there is always something in return. If you accepted money and it was truly anonymous and Epstein never talked to the professors or whatever than it would be hard to say its bad. But clearly people (good or bad - but always rich) are getting a lot of prestige, access, bragging rights, or whatever from these type of donations.
[+] [-] scandox|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dwighttk|5 years ago|reply
Sure if Epstein was funding a bunch of research 100% we could just ignore it and move on... some man hours wasted. But if the guys he funded got other funding, taking it away from people researching stuff that isn’t eugenics, then there is a problem.
[+] [-] TeaDrunk|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nlosti|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _jal|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] scottlocklin|5 years ago|reply
As opposed to Government, drug company and institutional funders; they NEVER influence the work done.
Epstein was an evil asshole, and Harvard is a disgusting, sinister institution, but concentrating on rubbish like this overlooks the insane, ridiculous, overt and pervasive problems with science research funding that don't involve funding by the creepy dude who didn't kill himself, and who the media otherwise seems strangely incurious about.
[+] [-] idm|5 years ago|reply
On the one hand, hasn't research always been funded like this? Wealthy patrons have always supported work that somehow gratified them. And history is replete with despicable personalities who have nevertheless financed good science.
On the other hand, when the patron's interests turn out to be questionable, the research supported by those interests can be examined. It's okay to give it a second thought in light of new information about the patron.
I happen to think this article raises valid questions. For example, I have questions about the idea of buying a visiting fellowship. I have questions about the mechanisms by which faculty become oddly encumbered by donations.
[+] [-] rsa25519|5 years ago|reply
True or not? Really? I would have liked if this article shared statistics instead of being so ambigious
[+] [-] Nasrudith|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mattxxx|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spenrose|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] known|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] alpineidyll3|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] godmode2019|5 years ago|reply
Is this not the common understanding of the situation?
[+] [-] joe_the_user|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] theqult|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hartator|5 years ago|reply
Just random thought: Should will be saying alleged criminal or not since he would never have a trial?
[+] [-] fiblye|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] gridlockd|5 years ago|reply
This is a thinly veiled attack on evolutionary biology, which keeps coming up with plausible explanations that are nevertheless utterly disturbing to the self-image of a moral human being and must therefore be suppressed from its consciousness. This is an undue conflation of science (is) and morals (ought). Morals are an artifact of human experience with nature, nature itself is amoral.
For instance, let's ask: Why does rape exist?
Sociologist: writes twenty paragraphs on patriarchy and rape culture while ignoring the rest of the animal kingdom
Evolutionary Biologist: It's a successful strategy for reproduction, the selfish gene promotes its continued existence
If the sociologist is right, then rape should disappear in an enlightened culture that has abolished all male dominance (utopianism). If the biologist is right, then rape will not disappear without identifying and muting all gene sequences that might lead an individual to be a rapist (eugenics).
In reality, neither are practical solutions, both explanations are bound to be contributing factors, but with one disregarding the other, we lose the ability to draw rational conclusions and devise functioning systems.