tenure blog may 2012 1

Retracted papers, imprisoned scientists; the dismal future of funded science

A recent NY Times article by Carl Zimmer refers to a 2011 study in Nature that, in the preceding decade,  indicated retractions had increased about 10-fold in absolute terms and 7-fold per unit published; 

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/17/science/rise-in-scientific-journal-retractions-prompts-calls-for-reform.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

Why is this happening? There are a variety of reasons. First of all, as U Vermont’s Eric Peohlman – who was imprisoned for a year for lying on federal grant applications and fabricating data – points out, the pressure to keep labs going can be enormous. It is not only for oneself as PI that one works; there now is very problematic over-production of PhD’s in what has become a pyramid scheme. Currently, 15% of PhD’s can expect to be on tenure track within 6 years versus 50% in 1973.

As previously signaled here, much of the low-hanging fruit in science has already been picked. A century ago, Einstein and Dirac could gain unprecedented insight into nature with what is relatively simple math. Now there are too many researchers chasing too few facts. The new  MO has rather portentously been called "big data' with statisticians to be employed in the alchemical transmutation from sows' ears.

Fang and Casadevall did an analysis of retracted papers, concurring with the burgeoning retraction problem, and remarkably indicating that the New England Journal of Medicine had the biggest rate. Peohlman’s work also was biomedical. It is fair to say that people are dying because of a worldwide flawed administration of science. 

The idea of the research university reached Ireland about 2000, just as its limitations, particularly pedagogical,  were becoming evident elsewhere. Stupidity is only one part of it; the extravagant state funding of science affords many opportunities for scams like Medialab. Likewise, the idea of launching native industries on foot of work in our academies has been dispensed with; it is now understood that the idea is to do research beneficial to multinationals on state university campuses. 

So what can be done? This writer’s choice has been to avoid the whole rat race and publish open source peer-reviewed material, much of which has ended up on this website. Many subjects (like Biology) function in such an egregious absence of theory that there is space to write good fundamental papers. However, that is only an interim solution.

A first step is insisting that all data and software used in research should be included in the journal submissions. Next, anonymous review must be dispensed with; in fact, it would be simplicity itself simply to use the open science model simply to post papers, run the programs, and solicit critique. Ratings of reviewers could be performed with one of the many good ranking algorithms that exist. At some point, the paper could be deemed part of the corpus of that journal.

However, there are bigger issues here. The first is that, whether we like it or not, much of university education is going to be done over the web through sites like coursera.org (which now has 30 or so courses). Harvard and MIT, getting the hint, are about to collaborate on a giant alternative;

  http://www.edxonline.org/about.html.

 It is difficult to see how states can continue to justify to their citizens the setting-aside of land grants for activities that can be done at home. In many ways, this represents a lucky escape; the mantra “autonomous statutory responsibilities “, used so often in our parliament to justify inaction in the face of what was criminal activity by university management, indicates the grim future planned by the Irish state . 

There are several research themes that should never have been funded by the state. My favourite such is software localization; the existence of a national center for this, which replaced a successful degree program, is egregious – this should be paid for by Microsoft and other companies that benefit from it. In fact, beyond a few micro-specializations, there is no reason for Ireland to fund science at all, as it is simply duplicating work done better elsewhere. Countries like the USA might consider whether it is appropriate for private corporations to do drug development and testing. Here the USA’s massive resources might help.

In a decade’s time, all the above will look self-evident

Seán Ó Nualláin Ph D Stanford 28u Bealtaine  2012

PS 3 Meitheamh 2012

It's worth noting for a variety of reasons  that the QS university rankings are absolute nonsense, in particular placing good old Cambridge ahead of such upstarts as Stanford and Berkeley;

 http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/david-blanchflower/2011/09/world-university-faculty

Posted by Administrator at 5:26 PM

Saturday, May 12, 2012

Fighting the last war

First of all, there are a few points for the record about my personal views on education; I have never thought for a second that an on-line course, no matter how prestigious its source and how lucid the instructor, can compete in impact with a real-life teacher-student interaction with both sides committed to advancing learning. The problem in Ireland is that it was decided that the urgent intimacy of this interaction was to be disturbed by functionaries mediating the wishes of the state (and through the state, neoliberal dogma). On-line education from the better free sources operating now is infinitely better than an ethos in which it was made clear that credit for courses could be withheld on a whim of the administration, and indeed that instructors could summarily be dismissed – both of which processes have been in operation since 2002 at DCU. 

When a responsible journalist finally gets to research this issue, (s)he will marvel at how well several of us behaved, and how many opportunities were lost. In 2003, fully knowing that it would  lose me my house,  I turned down a settlement offer by DCU given  by its President through a parliamentarian – full salary, to be paid until a new job turned up,  in exchange for a formal resignation! At that point, there was a closed shop at DCU, and SIPTU could have held a ballot at any moment rescinding statute no 3. (It is worth noting that the redundancy provision in statute no 3 was indeed never used because it had a mechanism for summary dismissal, exposed by Judge Clarke).

So why has SIPU chosen to fight the last war, now that it is clear that technology is changing the tertiary education landscape? Well, simply, money. They lost the closed shop and perhaps 150k a year. So now they are trying to reclaim their virginity from a much weaker position. It is worth noting that, by 2009, staff were so cowed that nobody except me showed up to give support to Paul Cahill at the Supreme Court (I flew from California to do so). 

Arthur Cox has also made a fortune out of this – much more by having three disciplinary procedures rejected (one by governing authority, one by the courts, and now one by ballot) than it would have done by behaving responsibly and drafting something reasonable. Herein lies a tale – both my personal and intellectual property were seized by DCU and they refused SIPTU’s request to return it. I appealed to the current minister, Alan Shatter, to be told that it was a civil matter.

But of course! – white-collar expropriation is a civil matter in Ireland, one of the reasons that the country is ruined.  Shatter is also part of the Dublin 2 legal mafia and he will have seen that Cox was trying to create another nice little earner for themselves -  defending DCU against claims by staff of theft of their property,  and so ring-fencing through use of law as an instrument all work brought to DCU. 

Nice try, guys – I instead changed subject, country and institution. While the Irish state is using universities simply as coercive processes of neoliberalism, these institutions – like the state itself – do not deserve to survive. 

Seán Ó Nualláin Ph D Stanford 12 u Bealtaine  2012


PS  15 u Bealtaine  2012
Here is the reply of  Shatter's secretary;

"
30     May, 2011


Dear Mr. O'Nuallain,

I  am  directed  by the Minister for Justice, Equality and Defence, Mr Alan
Shatter, T.D., to refer to your correspondence dated 19 May, 2011.

It would appear that this is a civil matter and therefore outside the scope
of  the  Minister's official function.  If you feel that a criminal offence
has  been  committed  you  should  contact your local Garda station or seek
legal advice, as appropriate


Yours sincerely,


______________
Damien Brennan
Private Secretary to the Minister for Justice and Equality"

Of course, I went to the Gardai as far back as 2001 and did not even get a report on what happened after producing a signed statement. Exactly the same thing happened to us in the music biz when the DPP  - creid no na creid - told us to take a CIVIL case!More money for D2 legal mafiosi.

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Staff vote overwhelmingly against Statute No 5 at DCU

 In the odd little world we inhabit, I have been forced to take to citizen journalism, to the point of writing stimulus-response titles to the entries on this blog, like the above. The reason is that the media in Ireland have failed to feature a huge story -

1. a public University in Ireland has failed to produce a legal disciplinary statute

2. While failing to do so, it has produced not one, but two illegal versions

3. the first (and possibly the second) have already been used illegally on staff, several of whom were immensely gifted people who had given at least 20 years of their lives to bettering themselves in their profession, only to see their lives ruined. In at least one instance, the person on whom this criminality was visited – an immensely gifted English lecturer in chemistry – committed suicide

4. This issue has repeatedly been raised in the Irish parliament, with no results beyond a completely invalid claim that the 1997 universities act places DCU outside the ambit of Irish law

Mac Craith now has to resign, along with Burns, Conry, and all the criminals who perpetrated this on the Irish public. P$@#$#@ and the scum in Arthur Cox who were using this as a Trojan horse for summary dismissal must be charged with criminal conspiracy, for reasons made clear elsewhere in this blog. Minister Quinn – the quintessential smoked salmon  socialist, right to the point of preventing us in Sandymount from having a microbrewery as it might disturb his beauty sleep – was warned of this not only in this blog, but personally through the revered widow of a Labor TD and must now resign

Fellows, you see that the EU is only barely keeping you in these positions – and only if you continue to sell off the land that martyrs died for  for giveaway prices to a body (the IMF) whose leader was proven a pervert.

This is not going anywhere!

Seán Ó Nualláin Ph D Stanford 9 u Bealtaine  2012

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