Posts Tagged ‘ethics’

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“KPMG are stupid” – How valuations are made

November 11, 2010

Sydney Morning Herald.

KPMG and regulators are too stupid to notice if an asset is overvalued and investment bankers are leeches, say the characters in an online video lampooning the working culture inside international investment banks.

I have seen how the Big 4 accounting firms behave over the last 30 years and this video thought to be made by employees of an investment bank is not so far away from reality.

SMH continues:

BusinessDay is not implying these events took place, but our source claims the videos were made as an in joke by current staff of a large multinational investment bank for former employees. Another video pokes fun at job descriptions in the corporate world after one of the characters meets a “business accelerator”, who was “somewhat vague in his description of his services, but he was very compelling”.

“Investment bankers are generally perceived to be sharks,” the man then says.

“We are also leeches, but we are leeches with a lot of smaller leeches clinging to our backs,” the lady responds.

The videos end with investment bankers heading out for a typical after-work activity – drinking beer and playing ping pong.

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Posted in Behaviour, Business, Ethics | Comments Off on “KPMG are stupid” – How valuations are made

American Geophysical Union backs away from the “Warriors of the faith”

November 9, 2010

Wattsupwiththat has the story.

The American Geophysical Union has issued a press release backing away from “a broad campaign to push back against congressional conservatives who have threatened prominent researchers with investigations and vowed to kill regulations to rein in man-made greenhouse gases” which was widely reported yesterday: See “Warriors of the Faith”: Global warming zealots declare jehad”

The Press Release is available at http://www.agu.org/news/press/pr_archives/2010/2010-37.shtml.

 

AGU Logo

 

Inaccurate news reports misrepresent a climate-science initiative of the American Geophysical Union

WASHINGTON—An article appearing in the Los Angeles Times, and then picked up by media outlets far and wide, misrepresents the American Geophysical Union (AGU) and a climate science project the AGU is about to relaunch. The project, called Climate Q&A Service, aims simply to provide accurate scientific answers to questions from journalists about climate science.

“In contrast to what has been reported in the LA Times and elsewhere, there is no campaign by AGU against climate skeptics or congressional conservatives,” says Christine McEntee, Executive Director and CEO of the American Geophysical Union. “AGU will continue to provide accurate scientific information on Earth and space topics to inform the general public and to support sound public policy development.”..

“AGU is a scientific society, not an advocacy organization,” says climate scientist and AGU President Michael J. McPhaden. “The organization is committed to promoting scientific discovery and to disseminating to the scientific community, policy makers, the media, and the public, peer-reviewed scientific findings across a broad range of Earth and space sciences.”…….

The Army of the Warriors of the Faith has gone from 700 to 39 to zero in one day.

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Posted in Alarmism, Behaviour, Climate, Science, Scientific Fraud | Comments Off on American Geophysical Union backs away from the “Warriors of the faith”

Prof. Hal Lewis resigns from the American Physical Society

October 10, 2010

Harold Lewis is Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, former Chairman; Former member Defense Science Board, chmn of Technology panel; Chairman DSB study on Nuclear Winter; Former member Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards; Former member, President’s Nuclear Safety Oversight Committee; Chairman APS study on Nuclear Reactor Safety, Chairman Risk Assessment Review Group; Co-founder and former Chairman of JASON; Former member USAF Scientific Advisory Board; Served in US Navy in WW II; books: Technological Risk (about, surprise, technological risk) and Why Flip a Coin (about decision making)

From: Hal Lewis, University of California, Santa Barbara

To: Curtis G. Callan, Jr., Princeton University, President of the American Physical Society

6 October 2010

Dear Curt:

When I first joined the American Physical Society sixty-seven years ago it was much smaller, much gentler, and as yet uncorrupted by the money flood (a threat against which Dwight Eisenhower warned a half-century ago).

Indeed, the choice of physics as a profession was then a guarantor of a life of poverty and abstinence—it was World War II that changed all that. The prospect of worldly gain drove few physicists. As recently as thirty-five years ago, when I chaired the first APS study of a contentious social/scientific issue, The Reactor Safety Study, though there were zealots aplenty on the outside there was no hint of inordinate pressure on us as physicists. We were therefore able to produce what I believe was and is an honest appraisal of the situation at that time. We were further enabled by the presence of an oversight committee consisting of Pief Panofsky, Vicki Weisskopf, and Hans Bethe, all towering physicists beyond reproach. I was proud of what we did in a charged atmosphere. In the end the oversight committee, in its report to the APS President, noted the complete independence in which we did the job, and predicted that the report would be attacked from both sides. What greater tribute could there be?

How different it is now. The giants no longer walk the earth, and the money flood has become the raison d’être of much physics research, the vital sustenance of much more, and it provides the support for untold numbers of professional jobs. For reasons that will soon become clear my former pride at being an APS Fellow all these years has been turned into shame, and I am forced, with no pleasure at all, to offer you my resignation from the Society.

(more…)

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Posted in Ethics, Physics, Science | 2 Comments »

Is Greenpeace fabricating data?

September 28, 2010

In July this year Greenpeace trumpeted

rain forest

“A new investigative report from Greenpeace, ‘How Sinar Mas is Pulping the Planet’, shows how major brands like Walmart, Auchan and Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) are fueling climate change and pushing Sumatran tigers and orang-utans towards the brink of extinction. These companies are using or selling paper made from Asia Pulp and Paper (APP), part of the notorious Sinar Mas group that is destroying Indonesia’s rainforests and carbon-rich peatlands.”

The Jakarta Globe reports

Sinar Mas commissioned an independent audit which has now accused Greenpeace of “false and misleading information to attack a company’s credibility”. International Trade Strategies Global (ITS) conducted a peer-review on Greenpeace’s report, “How Sinar Mas is Pulping the Planet.”

“The evidence shows that Greenpeace provided quotes that don’t exist, maps that show concessions that don’t exist, and used source material with high margins of error that was cited as absolute fact,” said Alan Oxley, chief executive office of the Melbourne-based ITS Global on the press release.

Oxley said the Greenpeace report was highly misleading and indefensible. In addition, the audit stated that a map in the Greenpeace report shows four concessions which don’t exist. “Sadly this is not an isolated incident. Greenpeace has exaggerated claims in the past.  When we see reports like this with such obvious factual inaccuracies it makes us call into question the real Greenpeace agenda, risking the greater good to achieve its own political ends.”

However, Bustar Maitar, lead forest campaigner for Greenpeace Indonesia, dismissed ITS’s report, saying it was biased. “If they claim it’s an independent report, it’s a joke because Alan Oxley is speaking as an APP representative,” he said.

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Posted in Development, Environment, Ethics | 2 Comments »

Update: Two more papers retracted by Mount Sinai

September 24, 2010
Mount Sinai School of Medicine logo.png

Image via Wikipedia

There is an epidemic of retractions.

Retraction Watch reports that Gene therapy researcher Savio Woo has retracted two more papers in addition to the 4 retracted earlier.

Mount Sinai School of Medicine researcher Savio Woo, whom Retraction Watch reported last week has already retracted four papers from major journals as two postdocs have been fired from his lab, has retracted two more from Molecular Therapy: The Journal of the American Society of Gene Therapy.

The two papers, both from 2007, were “Metabolic Basis of Sexual Dimorphism in PKU Mice After Genome-targeted PAH Gene Therapy” and “Correction in Female PKU Mice by Repeated Administration of mPAH cDNA Using phiBT1 Integration System.” As Nature noted in its coverage of the other retractions, the papers apparently followed from a now-retracted paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that, as we noted in a previous post, “claimed to have discovered a possible cure for phenylketonuria, or PKU, in mice.”

Li Chen and Zhiyu Li were the pot-docs implicated.

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Harvard President says Hauser could lose tenure

September 22, 2010
Statue of John Harvard, founder of Harvard Uni...

John Harvard: Wikipedia

The Boston Globe reports on an interview of Harvard’s President Drew Gilpin Faust by former ABC correspondent Charlie Gibson.

The discussion, billed as a start-of-the-school year address, was held at Sanders Theatre and broadcast over the Internet. In response to Gibson’s question about why Marc Hauser remained on the faculty even after the university found him guilty of eight instances of scientific misconduct, Faust said Harvard is addressing the issue. “Integrity is absolutely fundamental in everything we do,’’ Faust said. “We have a process we have undertaken, and that process still has some part to continue because it involves federal funds.’’ Cases of scientific misconduct could result in a loss of tenure, Faust said.

Gibson said the silence from the university has been “somewhat deafening,’’ and raised the possibility that the lack of response could call into question Harvard’s research integrity and have financial implications. But Faust replied that Harvard has moved to depart somewhat from its normally confidential proceedings, in order to correct the scientific record, though it remains mindful of ongoing federal investigations. “Announcing that there were indeed findings, that was unprecedented,’’ she said.

Whether the Harvard President is actually trying to maintain and protect integrity or merely engaging in damage control is unclear. The second part of the Boston Globe article is about the honouring of Martin Peretz and how Harvard is swallowing its principles and seems to show that there is a price at which Harvard is prepared to compromise integrity.

But meanwhile the wagons continue to circle.

Bert Vaux who is a former Professor of Linguistics at Harvard University and Jeffrey Watumull who is a PhD student in Linguistics and a member of Hauser’s lab have rushed to his defence in The Harvard Crimson.

“In our experience, Marc Hauser is the consummate scientist—the most disinterested, the most rational, the most ethical. We are proud to be his colleagues. However, we are less than proud of those in the cognitive sciences reacting publicly to Hauser’s case with irresponsible impatience (disrespect for due process), unjustified slurs, and half-baked conjectures. All are interested in the truth, but as scientists we ought to consider the case reasonably and measuredly, with objectivity and fairness”.

But they forget that his nonsense started at least as long ago as 1995. One wonders whether Hauser’s defenders are part of a concerted damage control exercise. Methinks they do protest too much.

The onus of proof has shifted.

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Posted in Ethics, Science, Scientific Fraud | 1 Comment »

After Harvard’s Hausergate, now misconduct at Mount Sinai

September 21, 2010
Mount Sinai School of Medicine logo.png

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Earlier this week, the blog Retraction Watch called attention to four recent paper retractions by noted gene therapy researcher Savio Woo of Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. Today, the school said in a statement that two of Woo’s postdoctoral fellows have been fired for research misconduct and that an internal investigation has cleared Woo of any wrongdoing.

Two of Woo’s post-doctoral fellows at Mount Sinai School of Medicine were dismissed for “research misconduct,” said Ian Michaels, a spokesman for the institution. According to Michaels:

When Dr. Savio L C Woo came to suspect that two post-doctoral fellows in his laboratory may have engaged in research misconduct he notified the Mount Sinai Research Integrity Office. Mount Sinai immediately initiated institutional reviews that resulted in both post-doctoral fellows being dismissed for research misconduct. At no time were there allegations that Dr. Woo had engaged in research misconduct. As part of its review, the investigation committee looked into this possibility and confirmed that no research misconduct could be attributed to Dr. Woo, who voluntarily retracted the papers regarding the research in question. Mount Sinai reported the results of its investigations to the appropriate government agencies and continues to cooperate with them as part of its commitment to adhere to the highest standards for research integrity.

File:HippocraticOath.jpg

Wikipedia: A twelfth-century Byzantine manuscript of the Hippocratic Oath.

According to ScienceInsider, the names of postdocs Li Chen and Zhiyu Li were recently removed from Mount Sinai’s directory. Chen and Li were listed as first authors on the retracted papers. Three  major journals — Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Human Gene Therapy, and the Journal of the National Cancer Institute — recently retracted papers authored by Woo and others.

In a retraction notice issued this month, Woo wrote that:

It was discovered that some of the micrographs in two papers we published [figure 4 in J Natl Cancer Inst 2008;100:1389-1400 (1), and figure 3 in Hum Gene Ther 2009;20:751-758 (2)] are apparently duplicated. This has been reported to the institutional research integrity committee by the authors and while the outcome of an investigation is pending, the undersigned co-authors respectfully request a retraction of both papers and sincerely apologize to our colleagues.

The four papers in question focus on two different areas of gene therapy research. One pair, published in 2008 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute and in 2009 in Human Gene Therapy, investigate genetically engineered bacteria as a weapon against cancer. The other two papers describe a method for using bacterial enzymes to introduce therapeutic genes. A 2005 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reports experiments in which mice with the metabolic disorder phenylketonuria appeared to be cured using this method. As a demonstration of the promise of gene therapy, that work garnered some media coverage, includingthis article in Science. A 2008 paper in Human Gene Therapy described the use of the technique in human cells.

Source: http://blog.the-scientist.com/2010/09/20/new-in-a-nutshell/

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Posted in Behaviour, Ethics, Medicine, Science, Scientific Fraud | 2 Comments »

Researchers show that peer review is easily corrupted

September 18, 2010
PhysicsWorld reports on a new paper:
Peer-review in a world with rational scientists: Toward selection of the average
by Stefan Thurner and Rudolf Hanel
1Section of Science of Complex Systems, Medical University of Vienna, Spitalgasse 23, A-1090, Austria
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1008/1008.4324v1.pdf

Just a small number of bad referees can significantly undermine the ability of the peer-review system to select the best scientific papers… Scholarly peer review is the commonly accepted procedure for assessing the quality of research before it is published in academic journals. It relies on a community of experts within a narrow field of expertise to have both the knowledge and the time to provide comprehensive reviews of academic manuscripts.Stefan Thurner and Rudolf Hanel at the Medical University of Vienna created a model of a generic specialist field where referees, selected at random, can fall into one of five categories. There are the “correct” who accept the good papers and reject the bad. There are the “altruists” and the “misanthropists”, who accept or reject all papers respectively. Then there are the “rational”, who reject papers that might draw attention away from their own work. And finally, there are the “random” who are not qualified to judge the quality of a paper because of incompetence or lack of time.Within this model community, the quality of scientists is assumed to follow a Gaussian distribution where each scientist produces one new paper every two time-units, the quality reflecting an author’s ability. At every step in the model, each new paper is passed to two referees chosen at random from the community, with self-review excluded, with a reviewer being allowed to either accept or reject the paper. The paper is published if both reviewers approve the paper, and rejected if they both do not like it. If the reviewers are divided, the paper gets accepted with a probability of 0.5.

Peer review gauntlet

Thurner and Hanel find that even a small presence of rational or random referees can significantly reduce the quality of published papers. Daniel Kennefick, a cosmologist at the University of Arkansas with a special interest in sociology, believes that the study exposes the vulnerability of peer review when referees are not accountable for their decisions.

Kennefick feels that the current system also encourages scientists to publish findings that may not offer much of an advance. “Many authors are nowadays determined to achieve publication for publication’s sake, in an effort to secure an academic position and are not particularly swayed by the argument that it is in their own interests not to publish an incorrect article.”

(This could have been written about Marc Hauser — https://ktwop.wordpress.com/2010/09/17/harvard-reviews-hausers-work-but-is-the-purpose-investigation-or-vindication/)

But Tim Smith, senior publisher for New Journal of Physics feels that the study overlooks the role of journal editors. “Peer-review is certainly not flawless and alternatives to the current process will continue to be proposed. In relation to this study however, one shouldn’t ignore the role played by journal editors and Boards in accounting for potential conflicts of interest, and preserving the integrity of the referee selection and decision-making processes,” he says.

In fact Journal Editors have much to answer for in the perversion of the peer review process which was revealed by Climategate. (The Hockey Stick Illusion by Andrew Montford— reviewed here)

Thurner argues that science would benefit from the creation of a “market for scientific work”. He envisages a situation where journal editors and their “scouts” search preprint servers for the most innovative papers before approaching authors with an offer of publication. The best papers, he believes, would naturally be picked up by a number of editors leaving it up to authors to choose their journal. “Papers that no-one wants to publish remain on the server and are open to everyone – but without the ‘prestigious’ quality stamp of a journal,” Thurner explains.

When reviewers show bias (in acceptance or in rejection) or misuse and hide behind the cloak of anonymity and are not required to be accountable then Hausergate and Climategate become inevitable.

Oliver Manuel comments: The most basic problem with ANONYMOUS peer-review is this: “That methodology is flawed and those flaws have been gradually undermining, corrupting, and trivializing American science for decades.” Anonymous peer review of papers and proposals has been steadily “undermining, corrupting, and trivializing American science” since I started my research career in 1960.

The evolution of peer review with the use of open servers in now overdue but is beginning.

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Walrus and melting ice story was a hoax

September 18, 2010
Large walrus on the ice - Odobenus rosmarus di...

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This post was from 2010. See 2014 post where the gullible media regurgitate the whole story again!

 

There were headlines across the environmental lobbies and the NYT and others just swallowed it.

“Walruses have joined polar bears and other creatures that are acutely affected by the record decline of Arctic sea ice in recent years”

But it was all just nonsense and a hoax.

Walrus landing on the beaches is nothing unusual. Yes, the beaches in Alaska have been invaded by thousands of walrus. But it turns out that this is nothing unusual. The Tucson Citizen reports here that according to the The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service:

The largest concentrations are found near the coasts, between 70 degrees North and Pt. Barrow in the east and between Bering Strait and Wrangel Island in the west. Concentrations, mainly of males, are also found on and near terrestrial haulouts in the Bering Sea in Bristol Bay and the northern Gulf of Anadyr throughout the summer. In October the pack ice develops rapidly in the Chukchi Sea, and large herds begin to move southward. Many come ashore on haulouts in the Bering Strait region. Depending on ice conditions, those haulout sites continue to be occupied through November and into December, but with the continuing development of ice, most of them move south of St. Lawrence Island and the Chukchi Peninsula by early to mid-December.

Why are they early this year? The Tucson Citizen also quotes the Alaska Fish & Game Department, which says that concentrations of walrus on beaches is not unusual.

Best known among the Walrus Islands is Round Island, where each summer large numbers of male walruses haul out on exposed, rocky beaches.” “Walrus return to these haulouts every spring as the ice pack recedes northward, remaining hauled out on the beach for several days between each feeding foray.

Started by environmental groups and spread by a gullible media.

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Harvard reviews Hauser’s work – but is the purpose investigation or vindication?

September 17, 2010
Harvard is reviewing all “relevant” work by Marc Hauser . But there is a large element of “damage control” and “vindication” of Hauser’s co-workers which is mixed in with the investigation. It is to be hoped that they will be able to resist the temptation to stand on the position that if further misconduct by others cannot be rigorously proven then these others can be acquitted. Now that Hauser’s misconduct has been established the onus of proof shifts – and must do so. The default position must be that all his work is now tainted unless shown beyond reasonable doubt to be otherwise.

The focus must be on investigation and not on a pre-planned vindication or on “rescuing” the money spent if the work is suspect.

http://www.thecrimson.com/

With a federal investigation now underway, much of Hauser’s research has been called into question—and with it, the annals of literature that have grown out of it. In response, the Psychology Department at Harvard has set in motion a project to review Hauser’s work and to determine the areas of his groundbreaking research that can be salvaged.

Cotton-top tamarind

In the last 10 years alone, Hauser has published 143 articles and four books, work that has helped form the foundation for an entirely new field of science. “It creates a lot of uncertainty for people in those fields,” said a Harvard psychology professor who asked to remain anonymous, stating that the situation is still evolving. “They may begin to worry about whether they can trust other findings from that lab.”

The department established a committee to begin a process that could include combing through decades of research. “We are starting a process in collaboration with the animal cognition community about how to deal with this,” Carey said. “Clearing the record is the way you deal with the integrity of the science.” Carey said that the department has also assumed the responsibility of vindicating any department members—students and colleagues alike—who may have worked with Hauser in the past.

According to his curriculum vitae, Hauser has advised 24 Ph.D. students and overseen 15 post doctoral students. The CV lists 221 published papers authored or co-authored by him. And in an academic web of peer research, hundreds of published articles cite and work off of Hauser’s research. And in an academic web of peer research, hundreds of published articles cite and work off of Hauser’s research.

Hauser has made a name for himself by executing novel research techniques in the field of animal cognition. His work with primates and cotton-top tamarinds—the subject of Hauser’s only article to have been retracted—has involved a unique set of research skills and costly access to the animals.

“You don’t want to throw out about two decades of groundbreaking work, but you also don’t want to build a science on shaky ground,” said the psychology professor. “How do we rescue millions of dollars of research?” the individual added.

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Posted in Ethics, Science, Scientific Fraud | 1 Comment »

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