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Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

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Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#501
post #80

Colleges and universities are like little countries, rarely answer to anyone and focused on their own insular practices.

They're more like hedge funds that do some light educating on the side. Especially ones as rich as Harvard.

Even hedge fund partners have to pay capital gains tax. Not Harvard!

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uhh, Singapore? Not everywhere is corrupt you know!

Singapore's not an economic system, but rather a country. In any case, it's still got corruption. Bribery is one form of corruption, and I have no doubt whatsoever that you can bribe someone in Singapore. https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2022/index/sgp

Illegally bribing someone is different from legally and secretly using money to influence the actions of institutions

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#503

I'm hesitant to share this because it's completely unverifiable in any way I'd be comfortable documenting. Not my life, not my secrets to tell. I had a close friend who did undergraduate research in a fisheries department. They had been researching plant selection for aquaponics to increase the yield of tilapia. They had a filtration system that pushed tank water through a bed of plant roots. The plants would be harv…

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Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#504
post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think sidelining the lead researcher and giving the project to another group is accurately described at "gutting a team". No, they didn't end the project, but the series of events described seems to be insinuating that she could have led the project if she was willing to have her work funded by Facebook, listen to one of their former people, etc. So if that was their goal, and they just got someone else to do the w…

Fair, but it raises the question of the motives behind it. It would seem they didn't necessarily have a problem with the research, but rather with the lead researcher. There's complicated issues of academic freedom to parse here, but in principle, if you aren't happy with the work someone is doing, it's not entirely unreasonable that you'd let them go and have someone else pick up the work.

Universities don't work that way. There's generally very little oversight over the PI of projects. The university generally wants more projects leading to more publications and grants, not less. Administrators understand that removing a PI generally means abandoning their lab's projects, so it usually doesn't happen.

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#505
post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why I decided to spend so much time on this on a Monday morning but I've read to page 35, and the picture is much more muddled. It looks like the FB Archive project gains momentum and launches but Dr. Donovan and the TASC get sidelined along the way (which understandably is very upsetting, you can feel the pain on every page). It does seem clear that the Dean doesn't approve of Dr. Donovan/TASC and he eventu…

Going out and getting Washington Post, New York Times articles about your issues through "Whistleblower Aid" - it brings to mind Barack Obama's great line: When some activists at that meeting said they felt that their voices were not being heard, Mr. Obama replied, "You are sitting in the Oval Office, talking to the president of the United States." https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/24/us/obama-says-movements-l... I don…

To be honest, there's a difference between having your issues entertained, versus taken seriously. The former is often done as political theater.

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#506
post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I gathered, they didn't simply switch leadership, they removed it entirely, along with the person doing the most work, replacing them with nothing, which effectively shut down the project. Is there someone continuing it that I missed?

According to the complaint, "the project" was FB Archive, which Dr. Donovan came up with the idea for and was the only person in the room with the actual source material. The Public Interest Tech Lab was the organization actually tasked with building out FB Archive, which they did, and it shipped: https://fbarchive.org I think Dr. Donovan's complaint is not that it didn't happen, so much as she was not allowed to pla…

Who exactly did the university get to replace the lead researcher they dismissed*?

Who remains at the university doing the research halted by the dismissal* of the lead researcher?

* – whether overtly or via constructive dismissal

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#507

I'm hesitant to share this because it's completely unverifiable in any way I'd be comfortable documenting. Not my life, not my secrets to tell. I had a close friend who did undergraduate research in a fisheries department. They had been researching plant selection for aquaponics to increase the yield of tilapia. They had a filtration system that pushed tank water through a bed of plant roots. The plants would be harv…

At that point is it legally okay to just open source whatever findings you have in hand? Do university research come with some form of NDA?

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#508

I'm hesitant to share this because it's completely unverifiable in any way I'd be comfortable documenting. Not my life, not my secrets to tell. I had a close friend who did undergraduate research in a fisheries department. They had been researching plant selection for aquaponics to increase the yield of tilapia. They had a filtration system that pushed tank water through a bed of plant roots. The plants would be harv…

On one hand I absolutely believe this does routinely happen. On the other every researcher/inventor out there with a project that went nowhere claims that they were on the cusp of a breakthrough and only silenced because of the government/corporations/illuminati. I'd wager the vast majority are in the second category.

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#509

I'm hesitant to share this because it's completely unverifiable in any way I'd be comfortable documenting. Not my life, not my secrets to tell. I had a close friend who did undergraduate research in a fisheries department. They had been researching plant selection for aquaponics to increase the yield of tilapia. They had a filtration system that pushed tank water through a bed of plant roots. The plants would be harv…

Forgive me if I'm being dense, but why wouldn't the researchers just go off and sell this to the customers of the large agriculture business?

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#510
post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bribery exists in every economic system, even before economic systems existed, and is not uniquely connected to the free market. Nor are they connected to "unintended societal consequences", since bribes very clearly have a specific goal. So it doesn't make any sense.

"Bribery exists in every economic system" is not an argument for being okay with bribery in this system.

Good thing I didn't make that argument anywhere. My point with that statement is that bribery is in no way connected to capitalism or free markets because it exists independent of the market type.

When bribery happens in a country with a command economy, do you still say "there's that invisible hand of capitalism again"?

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