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Gemini confirms “All education is brain-washing”

February 28, 2024

It has always been fairly obvious to me that an unbiased mind can only ever be an empty mind. (Here I take a mind to be a human brain with its attendant senses). All knowledge and all learning must create bias. In reality no judgement can ever be unbiased because empty minds just do not exist. A learned judge is always a biased judge. He may be biased towards the truth (whatever that is) and may even be biased towards justice (whatever that is), but the greater the learning, the greater the bias.

I have been convinced for some time now that every education system for humans has to involve some level of brain-washing. Every education system defines its own “facts” and enforces what “correct” thinking means. The fundamental assumptions of any system – its “brute facts” – are taken as the incontrovertible foundation of all knowledge. All methods of education are for the sake of indoctrinating the learner. There is no substantive difference in method between a madrassa indoctrinating its 5-year olds into Islamic orthodoxy and a European pre-school indoctrinating its toddlers into political correctness. Religious indoctrination is just as much brain-washing as that provided by the most liberal “woke” play-schools.

Google’s Gemini has clearly been brain-washed by its “woke” teachers and this is most visible in its generation of ridiculous images. (This applies also to ChatGPT and its very PC teachers)

BBC: Why Google’s ‘woke’ AI problem won’t be an easy fix

…. It appears that in trying to solve one problem – bias – the tech giant has created another: output which tries so hard to be politically correct that it ends up being absurd. ….. Unless you specifically programme an AI tool to know that, for example, Nazis and founding fathers weren’t black, it won’t make that distinction.

However Gemini’s political correctness is not just for its images but is apparent in all its aspects. So I put the question directly to the Big G. It’s reply was less than impressive.

Is all education effectively brain-washing?

Gemini:

Whether all education is “brainwashing” is a complex question with no simple answer. It depends on how you define both “education” and “brainwashing.”

Here are some key points to consider:

Education:

  • Goals: Ideally, education aims to equip individuals with knowledge, skills, and critical thinking abilities. It should foster a love of learning and encourage students to question, analyze, and form their own opinions.
  • Methods: Effective education involves a variety of methods, including lectures, discussions, research, critical thinking exercises, and opportunities for independent learning.

Brainwashing:

  • Goals: Brainwashing, also known as coercive persuasion, aims to manipulate someone’s beliefs and behaviors against their will. It often involves isolating individuals, restricting information access, and using fear, intimidation, or reward to control their thoughts.
  • Methods: Brainwashing techniques can include sleep deprivation, sensory overload, physical or emotional abuse, and repetitive indoctrination.

Similarities and Differences:

  • Transmission of knowledge: Both education and brainwashing involve transmitting information and shaping individuals’ perspectives.
  • Critical thinking: However, a crucial difference lies in the emphasis on critical thinking. Education encourages questioning and independent thought, while brainwashing aims to suppress them.
  • Choice and consent: Additionally, education happens with the individual’s consent, while brainwashing is involuntary and often harmful.

Therefore, it’s inaccurate to say that all education is brainwashing.

However, it’s important to acknowledge that:

  • Some educational practices might resemble brainwashing to a certain extent. This could occur in situations where information is presented as absolute truth, without any room for debate or critical analysis.
  • It’s crucial to be aware of potential biases and limitations within any educational system. This highlights the importance of fostering critical thinking skills and encouraging students to engage in independent learning and exploration of diverse perspectives.

Ultimately, the distinction between education and brainwashing lies in their goals, methods, and respect for individual autonomy.

DUH!!!!

I was quite right. I told you so. Even the Big G agrees.

Ultimately there is no difference between education and brain-washing.

 

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Of course Claudine Gay was selected because she was black and female

December 13, 2023

UPDATE!

It becomes increasingly clear that Dr (?) Claudine Gay has committed many small plagiarisms starting perhaps even earlier than her doctoral thesis. Each plagiarism event does not, in itself, seem very serious. But taken altogether they have a weight which makes it crystal clear that having plagiarised or not is just not relevant for being Harvard President. She is, after all, black and female.

If Claudine Gay was not black and female she would not be President of Harvard.

In my view, ethnicity and gender are perfectly valid criteria for selection of people for particular tasks and specific positions. I am surprised at the clamour of politically correct voices trying to claim that these were not the deciding factors in selecting Claudine Gay. It borders on stupid to deny common sense. I don’t see anything wrong either in choosing an administrative leader who fulfills the primary condition of being seen as politically correct. For whatever reason the Harvard search committee decided that it was necessary to have a female, black President. Fine. That is/was their prerogative. For many positions – and not least President of Harvard – the image projected by the incumbent may be paramount. There are many instances where style and form are more important than substance. Technical competence is of secondary concern when skilled subordinates are available. What I find quite ridiculous are the attempts to claim that Claudine Gay would have been chosen as President if she was not black and not female. There is nothing wrong in being selected for being black and female. The stupidity lies in denying that.

It seems the duties of the Harvard President are primarily administrative and for fund raising.

Recently, however, the job has become increasingly administrative, especially as fund-raising campaigns have taken on central importance in large institutions such as Harvard. Some have criticized this trend to the extent it has prevented the president from focusing on substantive issues in higher education.

Each president is professor in some department of the university and teaches from time to time.

Harvard’s current president is Claudine Gay, having become Harvard’s 30th president on July 1, 2023. She succeeded Lawrence Bacow who retired on June 30, 2023. – Wikipedia

Since only Professors are eligible to be selected as President, the available choices of black, female professors must have been fairly limited. Of course it could be critically important for the selected person to project the desired image and to be seen to be politically correct. I do not see any objection to using these as criteria for selection. Droupadi Murmu would not be the President of India if she was not a woman and belonging to the tribal community.

Claudine Gay may prove to be a very able administrator and brilliant at garnering funding. That would be a great bonus since she was selected for being black and female. She certainly was not chosen for her unimpressive research record.  Her research publications consist of six while at Harvard according to Research Gate and up to 13 in total. (The titles are not very enticing and indicate rather mundane work. To me most of the abstracts read like sociological psycho-babble). This is rather a flimsy research record but this was not the guiding criterion for her selection. Now Claudine Gay has even been accused of plagiarism. It is a little more serious but seems not to be a major breach. Of course she is being judged much less harshly than a plagiarising student would be. So what? College Presidents are not students. Different standards tailored for different people sounds sensible, correct and perfectly logical to me. In any event, her few publications could not have been of any great significance in her selection. She has no great track record in administration either, but this probably does not matter very much when the Harvard President’s office has enough lackeys to administer the necessities. Clearly the primary target for the search committee was for a female, black professor who could project the right image and be politically attractive in the funding stakes.

Should she resign? Perhaps. Of course her recent inept congressional testimony was embarrassing. It demonstrated incompetence in the key task of representing the college. She is now a point of weakness in any future attacks on Harvard. She brings to a head the inherent conflict between “diversity” and competence. Only her future achievements may mitigate the general perception that she was selected for displaying “diversity” purposes rather than for any displayed competence. Her position – and Harvard’s –  on condemning terrorism also seems very suspect. (My perception is that she along with most Harvard academics blindly condemn all Israel’s actions but are apologists for even the most heinous Hamas actions). Obviously she cannot provide any kind of unifying point between the Palestinian supporters and the Jewish community. In fact she will find it difficult to get away from her now self-established position that “calling for the genocide of certain people in certain contexts” is acceptable. She may herself find the heat not worth bearing and resign. But if the Harvard Corporation thinks she can still represent Harvard’s values and be a good President then they have no need to call for her resignation. Their unanimous support for Gay was announced yesterday and that now places them directly into the firing line. There are many allegations and accusations flying about. If the allegation turns out to be true that during “her tenure as Dean and now as president, Gay has squelched speech she disfavors while defending and thereby amplifying vile and threatening hate speech, exhibiting a remarkable double standard”, then the Corporation’s support may vanish. With the President and 11 Fellows the Corporation consists of 12 members. The Fellows can all now expect to face critical scrutiny themselves from nosy, hostile parties. They should all ensure that their tax returns are in order. I note that their letter does at least acknowledge that the University should have ‘immediately, directly and unequivocally’ condemned Hamas terrorism, but nobody is being held accountable for that imbecilic lapse.

There is no question that the selection criteria and her selection by Harvard were perfectly proper. Not very smart but perfectly proper. But let us not pretend that Claudine Gay would be President if she was not black and female.

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It is time for “Human Resources” to be retired and to return to basics

July 30, 2020

I was pleased to see that in India’s New Education Policy the “Ministry of Human Resource and Development” was to return to its pre-1985 name of the “Ministry of Education”.  This is not a comment about the new policy but about the use of the term “Human Resource”. The Ministry of Education became the HRD Ministry in 1985 during Rajiv Gandhi’s time as Prime Minister. But this was, in hindsight, both misguided and counter-productive. The intention was to show how “modern” and up-to-date India was. In practice it shifted the focus from the core needs of Education to the cosmetics of being seen to be modern.

News18: The Ministry of Human Resource and Development (HRD) has been renamed as the Ministry of Education following an approval from the Union Cabinet. The name change was a key recommendation of the draft New Education Policy, which has also been cleared in Wednesday’s Cabinet meeting. The HRD ministry name was adopted in 1985, during the tenure of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, as it was changed from ministry of education.

The term “human resource” was first used in 1893 though entirely in a descriptive way. The concept of mobilizing, training and managing personnel and employees in industry grew in the first half of the 20th century. Later it spread into the Military and all Defense Industries as the Second World War demonstrated clearly the need for training, educating and managing large groups of personnel. After the war the concept of managing personnel relationships spread into every branch of commerce and even into government and bureaucracies. It used to be the Personnel Department until it became trendy and fashionable in the late 1970s for corporations to use the term “Human resources” to show how caring they were.

Human Resource: Pioneering economist John R. Commons mentioned “human resource” in his 1893 book The Distribution of Wealth but did not elaborate. The expression was used during the 1910s to 1930s to promote the idea that human beings are of worth (as in human dignity); by the early 1950s it meant people as a means to an end (for employers). Among scholars the first use of the phrase in that sense was in a 1958 report by economist E. Wight Bakke.

It is my contention that the use of the term “human resource” has been misleading and, on balance, more bad than good. It has enshrined the notion of people being just another commodity in the economic cycle. The use of the term “human resource” has helped to apply the same principles to people as those applying to raw materials (cost, security of supply, alternative suppliers, competition between suppliers). Seeing humans as resources rather than “personnel” has encouraged – and enabled – the corporate world to dehumanize people and shift and change to the cheapest resource available. The entire notion of outsourcing, which has became a major area of HR, is based on the same principles of shifting risks of fluctuating production volumes to sub-suppliers.

Personnel and employers once exhibited loyalty, trust, a sharing of goals and commitment. In both directions. Values evolve. Employers have become faceless and so have the resources they employ. Resources, after all, are consumable. They are to be fully utilized and then discarded and replaced. Brand loyalty from customers is highly valued and to be pursued. Employer/employee loyalty is of no relevance if it is not specified in the employment contract. The goals of a large corporation are rarely anything shared by all the cogs in the large wheel. Corporations, instead, have HR Departments to produce Vision Statements which are meaningless and shared by no one. Human resources, for their part, are required to perform to specification, be judged by Key Performance Indicators, are trained (not educated) and are discarded and written-off when non-performing or obsolete.

So I am very pleased to see Human Resource Development in India return to Education. And it is about time that Human Resources returned to being about People.

 

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“Dangerous lack of academic qualifications in top Swedish politicians”

January 25, 2019

The “knowledge society” is the catchphrase. But in Sweden it is administered by career politicians without academic qualifications of any significance.

As an opinion piece in the SvD points out:

Even the new Löfven government  thinks that politically groomed ministers without any special academic background or insight into the conditions of research should lead Sweden into the “knowledge society”. One can no longer imagine a Swedish prime minister with a doctoral degree or an education minister with a professorship ……

Science is and remains the largest and most important knowledge generator in society. One might therefore think that the ministers and other politicians who will lead us into the “knowledge society” – a mantra repeated by the new Löfven government – would themselves possess especially high academic competence and particular insight into the conditions of the search for scientific knowledge.

However, nothing could be more wrong.

Nor is the new government Löfven more familiar with knowledge acquisition than other groupings. One may be glad that the newly appointed Minister for Higher Education and Research has read more than a few extra courses and that the Minister of Justice, who is also responsible for migration issues, has at least a Bachelor’s degree. In law? No, in political science.

We can compare this with the German government, where Merkel himself is a PhD physicist and the former Minister of Education was a professor of mathematics. Almost all ministers in the new German government have an academic degree, of which six are PhDs.

………..Unfortunately, there are no clear signs that the new  Löfven government will be able to even identify the underlying system errors, let alone take measures and steps to actually fix them.

The talk about Sweden as a knowledge nation will therefore also in the future be in ironic contrast to the political reality.

 

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A question of genetics (race) or of parental engagement?

April 4, 2016

A new study from Centre Forum in the UK about educational achievements only confirms what has been obvious for the last 2 or 3 decades. It should be noted though that Centre Forum is a “liberal” think tank and does have an agenda to push. Nevertheless, it is more objective and data-driven than many other “left/liberal” groups. The difference between “Black African” and “Black Caribbean”, between “White British”and “White Irish” and between “Asian Pakistani” and “Asian Bangladeshi” convinces me that the difference in achievement is more due to parental engagement than genetics (race). But genetics is clearly also a factor.

The Telegraph: Pupils with English as a additional language (EAL) are outperforming white British students across subjects at GCSE, a new study has shown, as it was revealed students in England are further away from world class standards than previously thought. 

….. The new study shows white British pupils lagging behind ten other ethnic groups when judged against new benchmarks based on eight subjects to promote a broad and balanced curriculum at the end of secondary school.

UK education achievements 2016 age 5 (graphic via Daily Mail)

UK education achievements 2016 age 5 (graphic via Daily Mail)

 

UK education achievements 2016 age 16 (graphic via Daily Mail)

UK education achievements 2016 age 16 (graphic via Daily Mail)

 

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UK Government commission perpetuates “class” divisions

June 15, 2015

A report today from the UK Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission is garnering some headlines today because the study seems to show that there are “non-educational barriers to top jobs” and that “working-class applicants struggle to get access to top jobs in the UK”.  But this is a case, I think, of a social study which starts with pre-conceptions, proves them and makes nonsense recommendations. They advise firms to loosen (and downgrade) their job requirements to suit a wider range of applicants even though they don’t have a problem to fill their needs. The commission forgets that education (including of the “working class”) has to suit the jobs available and it is not for the job requirements to be diluted to suit the applicants. If the objective of the commision is to improve the employment prospects of the “working class” then perhaps the education system has to make the “non-educational” factors – which apparently are important – part of the education system.

Press Release:

The Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission has published research ‘Non educational barriers to the elite profession evaluation’ showing that working-class applicants struggle to get access to top jobs in the UK.

The research is the product of extensive interviews with staff from 13 elite law, accountancy and financial services firms, who together are responsible for 45,000 of the best jobs in the country.

It finds that elite firms are systematically excluding bright working-class applicants from their workforce. Data collected for the project showed that as much as 70% of job offers in 2014 were to graduates who had been educated at a selective state or fee-paying school, compared to 4% and 7% of the population as a whole.

Rt. Hon. Alan Milburn, the Chair of the Commission, said:

This research shows that young people with working-class backgrounds are being systematically locked out of top jobs. Elite firms seem to require applicants to pass a ‘poshness test’ to gain entry. Inevitably that ends up excluding youngsters who have the right sort of grades and abilities but whose parents do not have the right sort of bank balances.

Why can’t the comprehensive schools teach their “working class” students to be posh if that is what is required. Speaking and behaving “posh” is a matter of education not necessarily a matter of wealth. But that is not something that “political correctness” will admit. Of course Alan Milburn is a Labour MP with a vested interest in demonstrating that the “working class” are being hard done by. It is always wealth that must be shown to be the culprit. It could never possibly be the education of the “working class” which is inadequate. But what he, and the commission are actually doing, are perpetuating their preconceptions of the poor, discriminated against, working class.

The recommendations are equally silly:

Dr Louise Ashley of Royal Holloway, University of London, Research Project Lead, said:

Our research finds that recruitment and selection processes which advantage students from more privileged backgrounds remain firmly in place at most elite law and accountancy firms. As such, despite their focus on specific social mobility initiatives, the rate and pace of change is limited.

We make 3 key recommendations for firms wishing to access the widest range of talent to benefit their business and their clients in future; first, amend attraction strategies to encourage higher numbers of applications from students with a wider range of educational and socio-economic backgrounds; second, ensure that these diverse students have access to similar levels of support enjoyed by their more traditional peers, in order to navigate the selection process effectively; third, interrogate current definitions of talent, including how potential is identified and assessed, to ensure that disadvantaged students are not ruled out for reasons of background rather than aptitude and skill.

If speaking “posh” is a job requirement then perhaps the education system has to adjust. Firms will automatically adjust their requirements if they cannot get sufficient applicants who fit.

“Poshness”, however you wish to define it, is a perfectly valid job requirement. Lack of it among “working class” applications is a commentary on their education – not an excuse.

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Indian-American domination of the Spelling Bee – by the numbers

May 29, 2015

The domination of the Spelling Bee by Indian-Americans continues. It resembles the domination of long distance running events by East Africans. It is highly unlikely that a genetic component is not involved.

Vanya Shivashankar of Olathe, Kansas, and Gokul Venkatachalam, St. Louis, Missouri lift the trophy after becoming co-champions after the final round of the 88th annual Scripps National Spelling Bee at National Harbour, Maryland on Thursday.

  1. Vanya Shivashankar and Gokul Venkatachalam, both 8th graders, jointly won the 88th Scripps Spelling Bee.
  2. Vanya is the first sibling of a past champion to win, with her sister, Kavya, winning in 2009.
  3. 285 spellers took part in the 88th US Scripps Spelling Bee competition.
  4. They came from the 50 U.S. states, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Department of Defense Schools in Europe, the Bahamas, Canada, China, Ghana, Jamaica, Japan and South Korea.
  5. Though Indian-Americans make up just 1% of the nations population, they (64 or 65) constituted more than 20% of the Spelling Bee contestants .
  6. Three contestants, all of Indian origin, Vanya Shivashankar, Jairam Hathwar, and Srinath Mahankali, had siblings who have previously won the Scripps National Spelling Bee.
  7. Indian Americans have won for seven years in a row and all but four of the last 15 years.
  8. At the semi-final stage 29 of the 50 contestants were Americans of Indian origin.
  9. Seven of the ten finalists were Indian Americans.

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Numerical gibberish from a Professor of Meteorology at Florida State

January 12, 2015

There is a strange article in the Tallahassee Democrat by a Peter Ray, a Professor of Meteorology at Florida State University. This is not exactly Nature and the TD’s fact checking processes are not to be compared to a proper peer review, yet they allowed this nonsense to be published:

-TLHBrd_12-28-2014_Democrat_1_A003~~2014~12~27~IMG_-TLHBrd_11-16-2014_D_1_1_.jpg

Peter Ray – image Tallahassee Democrat photo Craig Litten

The population doubles every 40 years. In 100 years there will be 100 times as many people living on the earth. All will suffer the lack of food and water. Many will die and wars will be over resources.

Never mind that the UN projections show a world population of 7 billion today reaching a peak of about 10-11 billion by 2100. Never mind that global fertility is declining fast. Never mind that a doubling every 40 years would need some 265 years to reach a factor of 100. Never mind that in 100 years the growth would be by a factor of 6.6. Peter Ray seems to be calculating by his strange mathematics a population of 700 billion in 100 years (though quite how he calculates this is a mystery). The rest of the article is conventional gloom and doom gibberish but masochists can find it here.

Prof. Peter S Ray, Florida State University

However I thought it odd that somebody so numerically illiterate – in a public article – could be a Professor of Meteorology, which led me to the Florida State University page of a Professor Peter S Ray which in turn led me to his homepage and then on to his cv. He is the only Peter Ray listed. The pictures – if all of the same person – seem a little anachronistic. Presumably the Tallahassee Democrat picture was chosen as being the most flattering but I would guess it is from 20 years ago. Personally I would prefer the later picture.

The “back to the future” theme appears also in his cv where his PhD (Meteorology) is from 1973 but his MS (Meteorology) is from 2013. It is not inconceivable that a Masters degree could follow a PhD, but in the same field?

I get worried when Professors start spouting about matters outside their own narrow fields. They are imbued with an authority they do not have and – more often than not – are misguided and misinformed. We could call it the Newton’s Alchemy Syndrome (NAS). Professor Peter Ray should probably avoid demographics.

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Monkeys can learn how to use a mirror

January 11, 2015

Self-awareness is surely more than just passing a “mirror test”. There would seem to be a continuum between the two discrete states of “not being self-aware” (a stone) to being “fully self-aware” (higher primates and humans), though I am not entirely sure if even higher levels of self-awareness are conceivable. I take self-awareness to be on a higher plane than self-consciousness. Self-awareness is the recognition of a tree as “being in a forest” whereas self-consciousness is just being the “tree”. Empirically, sentience is an even higher cognitive capability where sentience requires self-awareness which in turn requires self-consciousness.

Most mammals are conscious of self or at least of self-interest. Even a tree for that matter could be said to exhibit self-interest. Passing the mirror test seems to be a fairly conclusive evidence of well-developed, self-awareness but that is not to say that some degree of self-awareness is not possible even when the mirror test is not passed. Whales, dolphins and some elephants have passed the mirror test along with most of the higher primates (gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos). The magpie is the only bird known which has passed the test. Monkeys (rhesus monkeys, macaques) do not pass the test but are clearly self-conscious.

Now, new research has shown that rhesus monkeys can be taught to make use of a mirror such that they could pass the mirror test. Can awareness therefore be taught?

Liangtang Chang, Gin Fang, Shikun Zhang, Mu-Ming Poo, Neng Gong. Mirror-Induced Self-Directed Behaviors in Rhesus Monkeys after Visual-Somatosensory Training. Current Biology, January 2015 DOI:10.1016/j.cub.2014.11.016

EurekAlert: Unlike humans and great apes, rhesus monkeys don’t realize when they look in a mirror that it is their own face looking back at them. But, according to a report in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on January 8, that doesn’t mean they can’t learn. What’s more, once rhesus monkeys in the study developed mirror self-recognition, they continued to use mirrors spontaneously to explore parts of their bodies they normally don’t see. …

“Our findings suggest that the monkey brain has the basic ‘hardware’ [for mirror self-recognition], but they need appropriate training to acquire the ‘software’ to achieve self-recognition,” says Neng Gong of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

In earlier studies, scientists had offered monkeys mirrors of different sizes and shapes for years, even beginning at a young age, Gong explains. While the monkeys could learn to use the mirrors as tools for observing other objects, they never showed any signs of self-recognition. When researchers marked the monkeys’ faces and presented them with mirrors, they didn’t touch or examine the spot or show any other self-directed behaviors in front of those mirrors in the way that even a very young person would do.

In the new study, Gong and his colleagues tried something else. They sat the monkeys in front of a mirror and shined a mildly irritating laser light on the monkeys’ faces. After 2 to 5 weeks of the training, those monkeys had learned to touch face areas marked by a spot they couldn’t feel in front of a mirror. They also noticed virtual face marks in mirroring video images on a screen. They had learned to pass the standard mark test for mirror self-recognition.

Most of the trained monkeys–five out of seven–showed typical mirror-induced self-directed behaviors, such as touching the mark on the face or ear and then looking and/or smelling at their fingers as if they were thinking something like, “Hey, what’s that there on my face?” They also used the mirrors in other ways that were unprompted by the researchers, to inspect other body parts. …… 

I note that Gordon Gallup Jr. who developed the mark test is not convinced:

Gordon Gallup Jr., an evolutionary psychologist at the State University of New York at Albany, who was not involved with the research, developed the “mark test,” which is essentially the gold standard for measuring whether an animal possesses self-recognition. [8 Humanlike Behaviors of Primates] ….

Gallup, who developed the mark test, called the study “fundamentally flawed,” because it merely demonstrated that the animals could be trained to do something, not that they understood what they were doing.

“I bet I could train a pigeon to pick the correct answers to the Graduate Record Examinations (GRE),” Gallup told Live Science. “If the pigeon got [the maximum GRE score], would it be qualified for Harvard University?”

Perhaps, given self-consciousness, much of what we call awareness can be taught. Maybe that is how babies develop; an inbuilt self-consciousness which then becomes self-aware as learning (mainly self-taught) occurs. Learning requires memory and maybe that is why this self-taught awareness is what also deteriorates with the memory loss that accompanies the onset of Alzheimer’s disease.

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Professor at Imperial College driven to his death?

December 8, 2014

This is sad and rather depressing.

On his blog, Professor David Colquhoun, FRS reports on the case of Professor Stefan Grimm of Imperial College who seems to have been bullied to his death.

Publish and perish at Imperial College London: the death of Stefan Grimm

This week’s Times Higher Education carried a report of the death, at age 51, of Professor Stefan Grimm: Imperial College London to ‘review procedures’ after death of academic. He was professor of toxicology in the Faculty of Medicine at Imperial.

Now Stefan Grimm is dead. Despite having a good publication record, he failed to do sufficiently expensive research, so he was fired (or at least threatened with being fired).

“Speaking to Times Higher Education on condition of anonymity, two academics who knew Professor Grimm, who was 51, said that he had complained of being placed under undue pressure by the university in the months leading up to his death, and that he had been placed on performance review.”

Having had cause to report before on bullying at Imperial’s Department of Medicine, I was curious to know more. 

Martin Wilkins wrote to Grimm on 10 March 2014. ………

……. It didn’t take long to get hold of an email from Grimm that has been widely circulated within Imperial. The mail is dated a month after his death. It isn’t known whether it was pre-set by Grimm himself or whether it was sent by someone else. It’s even possible that it wasn’t written by Grimm himself, though if it is an accurate description of what happened, that’s not crucial.

No doubt any Imperial staff member would be in great danger if they were to publish the mail. So, as a public service, I shall do so. ……

Read the rest at DC’s Improbable Science. 

Academic progress and goodness of research are not necessarily connected.

 

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