Neotic conflict of interest precedence at USM

Date: May 14, 2004

Neotic conflict of interest precedence at USM

Date: May 14, 2004

Neumann,

Please tell us more about the other conflict of interest situations. They sound pretty flagrant to me. One of the deals you mention might even **** off the athletic boosters, if they understood what it involves.

The issue about marketing intellectual property is a complex one. I'm not opposed to universities patenting stuff per se--although I am strongly opposed to universities using other people's money to do research for companies that don't have to be responsible for employing the researchers. I'm also strongly opposed to arrangements whereby grad students aren't allowed to publicize the results of their disseration research for up to 5 years, and are thus required to kiss any chances of an academic career goodbye. (Does any unit at USM impose such conditions on grad students?)

But the Noetic Technologies deal looks like major-league corruption. It would be questionable if the principals had just quit university employment in order to start it. But obviously they expect to work as USM administrators and as principals of Noetic.

An engineering professor, whose case I know something about, was run out of Clemson a few years ago for an alleged conflict of interest. If all of the charges were true (which I doubt), what the ex-prof was doing didn't pose anywhere near the conflict of interest that Noetic does.

Robert Campbell

Date: May 14, 2004

Ah, now I know why posters to this board spell that phrase

pi$$ off

Robert Campbell

Date: May 14, 2004

If you want confirmation with the arrangement with John Cox, simply have some business person call him that is interested buying advertising time during a USM sportscat.

Fire Shelby · Status: Offline

quote:
Originally posted by: Robert Campbell
"Ah, now I know why posters to this board spell that phrase pi$$ off Robert Campbell"

LOL! Yeah, activeboards have a stupid profanity filter that considers "pi$$ed off" to be profanity. I guess it may be in some people's minds.

Date: May 14, 2004

quote:
Originally posted by: Robert Campbell
"Ah, now I know why posters to this board spell that phrase pi$$ off Robert Campbell"

Bob is right to be concerned about conflict of interest and issues that affect the ability of grad students to publish in a timely way. I don't know the answer to this Bob in terms of USM, but when I was at Rochester Institute of Technology in the early nineties the Insittute was heavily connected to research for and with the intelleigence community. This issue of secrecy and how it affected grad students was a major concern in the community, once that relationship was uncovered.

The concern about people who come in to administer a university related company and then being given faculty positions really raises some major flags, if that were to be the case. Generally the way it works is that researchers who are already on the faculty initiate the research which may then take any number of directions in terms of conversion to both knowledge and profit.

I think that these things can be compatable (that is university research for profit and university research that is more speculative and not profit driven). But a wall needs to be very carefully erected that will not allow the business side to overrun the academic side . . . they are really two very different cultures with very different ethical imperatives. When too many people have titles on both sides and there is no clear set of standards, guidelines, peer review or ethics panels to maintain a system of checks and balances, I'm afraid the imperatives of business and profit will always overrun the "disinterested" research which has traditionally been one of the activities that has separated the university from "real life."

At RIT we found the temptation for researcher/ administrators to bend the research to suit the needs of the client were very strong. This potentially led not just to piloting research in very limited directions, but then also affected hiring of researchers and further affected the selection of grad students who were willing to, for instance, take security oaths. There was also evidence that researchers began to exaggerate or manipulate the research ever so little to make deadlines, to come in under budget, or to justify asking for increased funds. The problem is that it was all secret and no one from the academic side could verify it was happening without a secruity clearance. But then when you were cleared for security you couldn't tell anyone outside the system that there was a problem. And if the system managers didn't believe you or simply didn't want to followup on evidence of a problem, you were SOL because there was no place to go. This of course, is an extreme because of the nature of the intelleigence community -- but we are in an era of storng national security imperatives. Who knows when the innocuous plastic of today becomes of interest to the security community of tomorrow?

This is really a problem. Not an insoluble one -- but an institution needs to be prepared to concede from the beginning that if this kind of mixing of commercial and university cultures is going to happen then every effort has to be made to keep every process as transparent as possible: that begins with being open about hiring; being clear about job descriptions; being committed to maintaining a distance between the academic and commercial sides in order to maintain a good system of checks and balances.

This administration NEVER has that discussion in anything it creates. And I'd cite the security technology document as a living example that the administration does not understand that secrecy is by nature corruptive and you need to develop and use very elaborate methods of controlling secrecy in order for the university not to be hijacked by those who control the secrets.