Category Archives: Academia

Mandatory training violates my rights (and tenured faculty are chickensh*t)!

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Via the Twitters, DrugMonkey paged me for a consult:

Loon-tastic. Where’s @docfreeride? RT @CackleofRad: Sexual harassment training is an attempt to brow-beat the tenured.http://clarissasblog.com/2011/09/06/who-has-the-power-to-refuse/

The post linked in the tweet contains some interesting tidbits:

I wanted to call your attention to the story of Dr. Alexander McPherson who resisted the attempts of  the University of California Irvine to take the mandatory sexual harassment training:

“I have consistently refused to take such training on the grounds that the adoption of the requirement was a naked political act by the state that offended my sensibilities, violated my rights as a tenured professor, impugned my character and cast a shadow of suspicion on my reputation and career,” McPherson said.

“I consider my refusal an act of civil disobedience. I even offered to go to jail if the university persisted in persecuting me for my refusal. We Scots are very stubborn in matters of this sort.”

It’s so good to hear that such things still take place. Normally, at every campus I have visited or heard of, the most beaten down, brown-nosing, terrified folks who are ready to kiss ass of every minor administrator are not the tenure-track faculty, the adjuncts, the instructors, the grad students, or the secretarial staff. It’s the tenured profs. It’s as if the moment you got tenure, you somehow immediately learned to tremble in the presence of any minuscule administrative pseudo-authority. I have no idea why that is but I have gotten used to the fact that any resistance even to the greatest act of stupidity on campus will not come from tenured people. …

Every year, I am forced to take the so-called “ethics training” that teaches me in the most condescending way you can imagine not to accept bribes, not to divert university funding to my relatives, and not to steal office supplies. So I know where McPherson’s outrage is coming from.

I’m a little pinched for time at the moment (it being the first instructional day after a long holiday weekend) and thus will have to postpone a deeper and more nuanced consideration of the constellation of issues raised by the post. But, if I can channel the advice-nurse from our pediatrician’s office, here’s a quick identification of some of those issues, and my shooting-from-the-hip response to some of them:

What to say about required faculty training in safety, ethics, sexual harassment (and how not to do it), etc.?

It’s fair to say that faculty, among other employees, frequently grumble about such training. Many feel (and not without cause) that the training they are required to complete (whether in a face-to-face meeting in a conference room or by way of an online module with a quiz) focuses on stuff that should be pretty obvious to anyone who is paying attention. And, given the obviousness of much of the content, it would not be surprising to find that some of the people delivering it did so in a condescending manner (because it could be challenging not to be condescending to a grown-up who didn’t know better than to accept bribes or to demand sex for good grades or what have you).

But, it’s not clear that the obviousness of the content or the seeming pointlessness of the task raises it to the level of an attack on one’s academic freedom. Without something like a positive argument, I’m not persuaded by the claim that mandatory training violates anyone’s rights or impugns his character any more than having to turn in grades by the grade-filing deadline or having to take roll on Census Day does.

And, the mere fact that ethics training, or safety training, or sexual harassment avoidance training is delivered in a stupid way that is likely not to engage faculty productively in being ethical or safe or non-harass-y does not mean that faculty have no need for training in these areas. Arguably, the fact that a handful of faculty members each year will be caught doing unethical stuff, or sexually harassing their students or colleagues, or running labs that are death-traps, suggests that such training would be really helpful — if not to the wrongdoers, then to their colleagues, supervisors, and underlings looking for effective ways to respond to the wrongdoing. It just needs to be good training.

Are tenured faculty more cowardly in the face of administrative edicts, and if so, why the heck don’t they put on their Big Professor Pants and stand up to the stupid edicts?

I would love to see some actual empirical data to support the claim that the tenured professoriate are the biggest chickens in the academic pecking order. This has not been my experience of things (especially in a department with many senior colleagues who will go to the mat for their students and colleagues and department on a fairly regular basis).

But, in the absence of clear data one way or another, let me suggest that the underlying phenomena that might be observed in a coarse-grained manner as “taking a stand” or “folding like a card table” could be more complicated. For example, an apparently spineless tenured faculty member who doesn’t publicly protest the annual ethics training may:

  • Be collecting actual data on the effectiveness of the training currently in place, in order to build a stronger argument to the administration for abandoning this training and/or replacing it with more effective training.
  • Be involved in ongoing discussions with administrators about the effectiveness of this training, and/or the size of the burden it puts on the faculty to complete it — and may be reasonably confident that the administrators with the power to change the training requirement will be most receptive to such one-on-one engagement rather than public defiance.
  • Be picking her battles, having judged the required ethics training far less onerous than (for example) the new course assessment regime or paperwork requirement for ordering lab supplies or what have you; fighting all the battles you could fight in an academic workplace can use you up right quick.
  • Be of the opinion that actually, the existing ethics training, while imperfect, is doing some good (and that the people who seem to be making the biggest stink about it are actually the ones who seem most inclined to cut a corner or two when it serves their interests) — in other words, she may disagree with you that this is a site of administrative inhumanity to faculty, and thus be disinclined to protest it.

It’s also worth noting that, at least on campuses where administrators have been chosen from the ranks of the faculty, tenured faculty may be more likely to know the administrators from their time in the faculty. This makes it harder to regard administrators as pure evil in a suit. Dealing with folks you know to be human beings with commitments to the self-same institutions and principles you value sometimes requires some finesse. — and using some finesse when dealing with an administrator does not make you that administrator’s lapdog.

Finally, at least some tenured faculty may be casing the administrative joint, figuring out how they might bring about lasting change for the better from the inside. Flipping the bird to the existing administration might take that option off the table.

Harvard Psych department may have a job opening.

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… because Marc Hauser has resigned his faculty position, effective August 1.

You may recall, from our earlier discussions of Hauser (here, here, here, and here), that some of his papers were retracted because they drew conclusions that weren’t supported by the data … and then it emerged that maybe the data didn’t support the conclusions on account of scientific misconduct (rather than honest mistakes). Harvard mounted an inquiry. Hauser took a leave of absence from his position while the inquiry was ongoing. Harvard found Hauser “solely responsible, after a thorough investigation by a faculty member investigating committee, for eight instances of scientific misconduct under FAS standards.” In February, Hauser’s colleagues in the Psychology Department voted against allowing him to return to the classroom in the Fall. Meanwhile, since Hauser’s research was supported by grants from federal funding agencies, the Office of Research Integrity is thought to be in the midst of its own investigation of Hauser’s scientific conduct.

So perhaps Hauser’s resignation was to be expected (although it’s not too hard to come up with examples of faculty who were at least very close to scientific fraudsters — close enough to be enabling the fraud — who are still happily ensconced in their Ivy League institutions).

From Carolyn Y. Johnson at the Boston Globe:

“While on leave over the past year, I have begun doing some extremely interesting and rewarding work focusing on the educational needs of at-risk teenagers. I have also been offered some exciting opportunities in the private sector,” Hauser wrote in a resignation letter to the dean, dated July 7. “While I may return to teaching and research in the years to come, I look forward to focusing my energies in the coming year on these new and interesting challenges.”

Hauser did not respond to e-mail or voicemail messages today.

His resignation brings some resolution to the turmoil on campus, but it still leaves the scientific community trying to sort out what findings, within his large body of work, they should trust. Three published papers led by Hauser were thrown into question by the investigation — one was retracted and two were corrected. Problems were also found in five additional studies that were either not published or corrected prior to publication.

“What it does do is it provides some sort of closure for people at Harvard. … They were in a state of limbo,” said Gerry Altmann, editor of the journal Cognition, who, based on information provided to him by Harvard last year, said the only plausible conclusion he could draw was that some of the data had been fabricated in a study published in his journal in 2002 and retracted last year. “There’s just been this cloud hanging over the department. … It has no real impact on the field more broadly.”

Maybe it’s just me, but there seems to be a mixed message in those last two paragraphs. Either this is the story of one bad apple who indulged in fabrication and brought shame to his university, or this is the story of a trusted member of the scientific community who contributed many, many articles to the literature in his field and now turns out not to be so trustworthy. If it’s the latter, then we’re talking about potential impacts that are much bigger than Harvard’s reputation. We’re talking about a body of scientific literature that suddenly looks less solid — a body of scientific literature that other researchers had trusted, used as the basis for new studies of their own, perhaps even taken as the knowledge base with which other new findings would need to be reconciled to be credible.

And, it’s not like there’s no one suggesting that Marc Hauser is a good guy who has made important (and presumably trustworthy) contributions to science. For example:

“I’m deeply saddened by the whole events of the last year,” Steven Pinker, a psychology professor at Harvard, said today. “Marc is a scientist of enormous creativity, energy, and talent.”

Meanwhile, if the data from the Harvard investigation best supports the conclusion that Hauser’s recent work was marred by scientific misconduct characterized by “problems involving data acquisition, data analysis, data retention, and the reporting of research methodologies and results,” this seems to count against Hauser’s credibility (and his judgment). And, although we might make the case that teaching involves a different set of competencies than research, his colleagues may have decided that the his to his credibility as a knowledge-builder would also do damage to his credibility as a teacher. The Boston Globe article notes:

Another researcher in the field, Michael Tomasello, co-director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, said today that Hauser’s departure was not unexpected. “Once they didn’t let him teach –- and there are severe restrictions in his ability to do research — you come to office and what do you do all day?” he said. “People in the field, we’re just wondering — this doesn’t change anything. We’re still where we were before about the [other] studies.”

What could Hauser do at work all day if not teach and conduct research? Some might suggest a full slate of committee work.

Others would view that as cruel and unusual punishment, even for the perpetrator of scientific misconduct.

Helpful hint for ethics students.

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Let’s say you have been given a case study and asked to suggest an ethical course of action for the protagonist in the case.

If, in the course of explaining the course of action you are recommending, you find yourself writing, “Even though it would be unethical, the protagonist should …,” you may be doing it wrong.

State budget cuts mean … executive salary increases?

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The California State University Board of Trustees met July 12. As expected, they approved yet another student fee increase. Because, how could they not when they’re facing down at least a $650 million budget cut for the 23-campus system?

Not so expected (at least by those of us not on the inside) was their vote to pay Elliot Hirshman, the new president of San Diego State University, an annual salary of $400,000. Because … remember that $650 million budget cut for the 23-campus system?

How is this supposed to work again?

It should be noted that California Governor Jerry Brown sent a letter to the Board of Trustees urging them not to approve this salary increase. The letter (PDF here) is so clear in identifying the problem that I’m going to quote the whole thing:

As this Board well knows, California is still struggling to overcome the effects of the great recession which forced tens of billions of dollars in state budget cuts.

The state university system has been particularly hard hit with painful sacrifices on the part of faculty and students alike. As trustees, you have to make tough calls and strive as best you can to protect our proud system of higher education.

It is in this context, and prompted by the salary decision you are about to make today, that I write to express my concern about the ever-escalating pay packages awarded to your top administrators.

I fear your approach to compensation is setting a pattern for public service that we cannot afford.

I have reviewed the Mercer compensation study and have reflected on its market premises, which provide the justification for your proposed salary boost of more than $100,000. The assumption is that you cannot find a qualified man or woman to lead the university unless paid twice that of the Chief Justice of the United States. I reject this notion.

At a time when the state is closing its courts, laying off public school teachers and shutting senior centers, it is not right to be raising the salaries of leaders who — of necessity — must demand sacrifice from everyone else.

If it were me writing the letter, in the last paragraph I might also mention the already deep cuts to the CSU (many of which I’m sure have been obvious to the students at SDSU, as they have been to students here at SJSU). This is a situation where maybe President Hirshman and the trustees are banking on the students not following state news, because if they do keep up on current events, it might get awkward.

Of course, it’s being reported that some of the 12 trustees who voted to approve Hirshman’s compensation package (3 voted against it) say it’s necessary to pay him so much because of “the complexity of running a major university and the salaries that other university presidents around the country are paid”. This strikes me as a variant of the old saw that “we need to pay administrators so much because of how much they could be making in the private sector”.

Maybe it’s the larger class sizes, the absence of funds for graders or for work-related travel, or possibly the fact that the existence of my public-employee pension (which, given the way this job is going, I might not live long enough to use) has been used to demonize me and other CSU faculty like me in the minds of the voters, but I need to call shenanigans on this.

Could university administrators be making buckets of money in the private sector? It’s not clear to me that the private sector is doing a lot of hiring these days. But if they are, I’m inclined to tell those administrators, Vaya con Dios. Do what you must to feed your family, to fortify your compound, to get your yacht ready for the sailing season, to find fulfillment, but right now we can’t afford you. In a perfect world, maybe we could pay you what you feel you’re worth, but this, my dear, is nothing like a perfect world.

I’m sure your cash-strapped students can fill you in on some of the local details of its imperfection.

In the meantime, it’s worth noting that this newly increased salary doesn’t put President Hirshman close to the top slot of best-compensated California public employee. That honor goes to UC Berkeley football coach Jeff Tedford, at $2.3 million a year, with UCLA basketball coach Ben Howland ($2.1 million) a close second.

For comparison, Jerry Brown earns $173,987 a year to be Governor of the state.

Astounding claims made on the internet.

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On this post, from a commenter named Zac*:

I’m a philosophy student. When we disagree we reason, we argue, we discuss. We do not, ever, ever call for a boycott of those with opposing views.

My thoughts on this:

  1. What would make you think that reasoning, arguing, and discussing necessarily rule out boycotting? Where’s the logical contradiction you’re assuming?
  2. Also, would you like to offer a positive argument that people with whom we disagree are entitled to our money? I means, if we take their goods and services they have a claim to our money, but do they have a right to demand that we not take our business elsewhere?
  3. And look, for this particular X, the claim that “Philosophers do not do X” turns out to be clearly false. Perhaps you meant to make a normative claim rather than a descriptive one. If this is the case, you’ll probably also want to offer a defense of the particular “oughts” you are asserting.

This edition of “Astounding claims made on the internet” brought to you by my current inability to settle down and grade case study responses.
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*The permalink may be wonky. The comments appears at July 13, 2011 at 01:51 AM.

Assumptions that seem reasonable to undergraduates.

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Gleaned from my “Ethics in Science” students:

  1. There exists an Official Scientist’s Code of Ethics to which all scientists swear allegiance.
  2. There exists an Ethics Board that operates nationally (and maybe internationally) to impose penalties on scientists who violate the Official Scientist’s Code of Ethics.
  3. In the 22 years since the publication of Cantor’s Dilemma, the scientific community has likely evolved to become more civilized and more ethical.
  4. Anyone who has earned a Ph.D. in a scientific field (at least in the past 22 years) must also have had extensive training in ethics — at least the equivalent of a semester-long course.

As to the origins of these assumptions, I don’t know what to tell you. I’m curious about that myself.

A question for the trainees: How involved do you want the boss to get with your results?

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This question follows on the heels of my recent discussion of the Bengü Sezen misconduct investigations, plus a conversation via Twitter that I recapped in the last post.

The background issue is that people — even scientists, who are supposed always to be following the evidence wherever it might lead — can run into trouble really scrutinizing the results of someone they trust (however that trust came about). Indeed, in the Sezen case, her graduate advisor at Columbia University, Dalibor Sames, seemed to trust Sezen and her scientific prowess so much that he discounted the results of other graduate students in his lab who could not replicate Sezen’s results (which turned out to have been faked).

Really, it’s the two faces of the PI’s trust here: trusting one trainee so much that her results couldn’t be wrong, and using that trust to ignore the empirical evidence presented by other trainees (who apparently didn’t get the same level of presumptive trust). As it played out, at least three of those other trainees whose evidence Sames chose not to trust left the graduate program before earning their degrees.

The situation suggests to me that PIs would be prudent to establish environments in their research groups where researchers don’t take scrutiny of their results, data, methods, etc., personally — and where the scrutiny is applied to each member’s results, data, methods, etc. (since anyone can make mistakes). But how do things play out when they rubber hits the road?

So, here’s the question I’d like to ask the scientific trainees. (PIs: I’ve posed the complementary question to you in the post that went up right before this one!)

In his or her capacity as PI, your advisor’s scientific credibility (and likely his or her name) is tied to all the results that come out of the research group — whether they are experimental measurements, analyses of measurements, modeling results, or whatever else it is that scientists of your stripe regard as results. Moreover, in his or her capacity as a trainer of new scientists, the boss has something like a responsibility to make sure you know how to generate reliable results — and that you know how to tell them from results that aren’t reliable. What does your PI do to ensure that the results you generate are reliable? Do you feel like it’s enough (both in terms of quality control and in terms of training you well)? Do you feel like it’s too much?

Commenting note: You may feel more comfortable commenting with a pseudonym for this particular discussion, and that’s completely fine with me. However, please pick a unique ‘nym and keep it for the duration of this discussion, so we’re not in the position of trying to sort out which “Anonymous” is which. Also, if you’re a regular commenter who wants to go pseudonymous for this discussion, you’ll probably want to enter something other than your regular email address in the commenting form — otherwise, your Gravatar may give your other identity away!

A question for the PIs: How involved do you get in your trainees’ results?

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In the wake of this post that touched on recently released documents detailing investigations into Bengü Sezen’s scientific misconduct, and that noted that a C & E News article described Sezen as a “master of deception”, I had an interesting chat on the Twitters:

@UnstableIsotope (website) tweeted:

@geernst @docfreeride I scoff at the idea that Sezen was a master at deception. She lied a lot but plenty of opportunities to get caught.

@geernst (website) tweeted back:

@UnstableIsotope Maybe evasion is a more accurate word.

@UnstableIsotope:

@geernst I’d agree she was a master of evasion. But she was caught be other group members but sounds like advisor didn’t want to believe it.

@docfreeride (that’s me!):

@UnstableIsotope @geernst Possible that she was master of deception only in environment where people didn’t guard against being deceived?

@UnstableIsotope:

@docfreeride @geernst I agree ppl didn’t expect deception, my read suggests she was caught by group members but protected by advisor.

@UnstableIsotope:

@docfreeride @geernst The advisor certainly didn’t expect deception and didn’t encourage but didn’t want to believe evidence

@docfreeride:

@UnstableIsotope @geernst Not wanting to believe the evidence strikes me as a bad fit with “being a scientist”.

@UnstableIsotope:

@docfreeride @geernst Yes, but it is human. Not wanting to believe your amazing results are not amazing seems like a normal response to me.

@geernst:

@docfreeride @UnstableIsotope I agree. Difficult to separate scientific objectivity from personal feelings in those circumstances.

@docfreeride:

@geernst @UnstableIsotope But isn’t this exactly the argument for not taking scrutiny of your results, data, methods personally?

@UnstableIsotope:

@docfreeride @geernst Definitely YES. I look forward to people repeating my experiments. I’m nervous if I have the only result.

@geernst:

@docfreeride @UnstableIsotope Couldn’t agree more.

This conversation prompted a question I’d like to ask the PIs. (Trainees: I’m going to pose the complementary question to you in the very next post!)

In your capacity as PI, your scientific credibility (and likely your name) is tied to all the results that come out of your research group — whether they are experimental measurements, analyses of measurements, modeling results, or whatever else it is that scientists of your stripe regard as results. What do you do to ensure that the results generated by your trainees are reliable?

Now, it may be the case that what you see as the appropriate level of involvement/quality control/”let me get up in your grill while you repeat that measurement for me” would still not have been enough to deter — or to detect — a brazen liar. If you want to talk about that in the comments, feel free.

Commenting note: You may feel more comfortable commenting with a pseudonym for this particular discussion, and that’s completely fine with me. However, please pick a unique ‘nym and keep it for the duration of this discussion, so we’re not in the position of trying to sort out which “Anonymous” is which. Also, if you’re a regular commenter who wants to go pseudonymous for this discussion, you’ll probably want to enter something other than your regular email address in the commenting form — otherwise, your Gravatar may give your other identity away!

Does the punishment fit the crime? Luk Van Parijs has his day in court.

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Earlier this month, the other shoe finally dropped on the Luk Van Parijs case.

You may recall that Van Parijs, then an associate professor of biology at MIT, made headlines back in October of 2005 when MIT fired him after spending nearly a year investigating charges that he had falsified and fabricated data and finding those charges warranted. We discussed the case as it was unfolding (here and here), and discussed also the “final action” by the Office of Research Intergrity on the case (which included disbarment from federal funding through December 21, 2013).

But losing the MIT position and five year’s worth of eligibility for federal funding (counting from when Van Parijs entered the Voluntary Exclusion Agreement with the feds) is not the extent of the formal punishment to be exacted for his crimes — hence the aforementioned other shoe. As well, the government filed criminal charges against Van Parijs and sought jail time.

As reported in a news story posted 28 June 2011 at Nature (“Biologist spared jail for grant fraud” by Eugenie Samuel Reich, doi:10.1038/474552a):

In February 2011, US authorities filed criminal charges against Van Parijs in the US District Court in Boston, citing his use of fake data in a 2003 grant application to the National Institutes of Health, based in Bethesda, Maryland. Van Parijs entered a guilty plea, and the government asked Judge Denise Casper for a 6-month jail term because of the seriousness of the fraud, which involved a $2-million grant. “We want to discourage other researchers from engaging in similar behaviour,” prosecutor Gregory Noonan, an assistant US attorney, told Nature.

On 13 June, Casper opted instead for six months of home detention with electronic monitoring, plus 400 hours of community service and a payment to MIT of $61,117 — restitution for the already-spent grant money that MIT had to return to the National Institutes of Health. She cited assertions from the other scientists that Van Parijs was truly sorry. “I believe that the remorse that you’ve expressed to them, to the probation office, and certainly to the Court today, is heartfelt and deeply held, and I don’t think it’s in any way contrived for this Court,” she said.

Let me pause for a moment to let you, my readers, roll your eyes or howl or do whatever else you deem appropriate to express your exasperation that Van Parijs’s remorse counts for anything in his sentencing.

Verily, it is not hard to become truly sorry once you have been caught doing bad stuff. The challenge is not to do the bad stuff in the first place. And, the actual level of remorse in Van Parijs’s heart does precisely nothing to mitigate the loss (in time and money, to name just two) suffered by other researchers relying on Van Parijs to make honest representations in his journal articles and grant proposals.

Still, there’s probably a relevant difference (not just ethically, but also pragmatically) between the scientist caught deceiving the community who gets what such deception is a problem and manifests remorse and the scientist caught deceiving the community who doesn’t see what the big deal is (because surely everyone does this sort of thing, at least occasionally, to survive in the high-pressure environment). With the remorseful cheater, there might at least be some hope of rehabilitation.

Indeed, the article notes:

Luk Van Parijs was first confronted with evidence of data falsification by members of his laboratory in 2004, when he was an associate professor of biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge. Within two days, he had confessed to several acts of fabrication and agreed to cooperate with MIT’s investigation.

A confession within two days of being confronted with the evidence is fairly swift. Other scientific cheaters in the headlines seem to dig their heels in and protest their innocence (or that the post-doc or grad student did it) for significantly longer than that.

Anyway, I think it’s reasonable for us to ask here what the punishment is intended to accomplish in a case like this. If the goal is something beyond satisfying our thirst for vengeance, then maybe we will find that the penalty imposed on Van Parijs is useful even if it doesn’t include jail time.

As it happens, one of the scientists who asked the judge in the case for clemency on his behalf suggests that jail time might be a penalty that actually discourages the participation of other members of the scientific community in rooting out fabrication and falsification. Of course, not everyone in the scientific community agrees:

[MIT biologist Richard] Hynes argued that scientific whistleblowers might be reluctant to come forwards if they thought their allegations might result in jail for the accused.

But that is not how the whistleblowers in this case see it. One former member of Van Parijs’ MIT lab, who spoke to Nature on condition of anonymity, says he doesn’t think the prospect of Van Parijs’ imprisonment would have deterred the group from coming forwards. Nor does he feel the punishment is adequate. “Luk’s actions resulted in many wasted years as people struggled to regain their career paths. How do you measure the cost to the trainees when their careers have been derailed and their reputations brought into question?” he asks. The court did not ask these affected trainees for their statements before passing sentence on Van Parijs.

This gets into a set of questions we’ve discussed before:

I’m inclined to think that the impulse to deal with science’s youthful offenders privately is a response to the fear that handing them over to federal authorities has a high likelihood of ending their scientific careers forever. There is a fear that a first offense will be punished with the career equivalent of the death penalty.

Permanent expulsion or a slap on the wrist is not much of a range of penalties. And, I suspect neither of these options really address the question of whether rehabilitation is possible and in the best interests of both the individual and the scientific community. …

If no errors in judgment are tolerated, people will do anything to conceal such errors. Mentors who are trying to be humane may become accomplices in the concealment. The conversations about how to make better judgments may not happen because people worry that their hypothetical situations will be scrutinized for clues about actual screw-ups.

Possibly we need to recognize that it’s an empirical question what constellation of penalties (including jail time) encourage or discourage whisteblowing — and to deploy some social scientists to get reliable empirical data that might usefully guide decisions about institutional structures of rewards and penalties that will best encourage the kinds of individual behaviors that lead to robust knowledge-building activities and effectively coordinated knowledge-building communities.

But, it’s worth noting that even though he won’t be doing jail time, Van Parijs doesn’t escape without punishment.

He will be serving the same amount of time under home detention (with electronic monitoring) as he would have served in jail if the judge had given the sentence the government was asking for. In other words, he is not “free” for those six months. (Indeed, assuming he serves this home detention in the home shared by his wife and their three young children, I reckon there is a great deal of work that he might be called on to do with respect to child care and household chores, work that he might escape in a six-month jail sentence.)

Let’s not forget that it costs money to incarcerate people. The public picks up the tab for those expenses. Home detention almost certainly costs the public less. And, Van Parijs is probably less in a position to reoffend during his home detention, even if he slipped out of his ankle monitor, than is the guy who robs convenience stores. What university is going to be looking at his data?

Speaking of the public’s money, recall that another piece of the sentence is restitution — paying back to MIT the $61,117 that MIT spent when it returned Van Parijs’s grant money to NIH. Since Van Parijs essentially robbed the public of the grant money (by securing it with lies and/or substitute lies for the honest scientific results the grant-supported research was supposed to be generating), it is appropriate that Van Parijs dip into his own pocket to pay this money back.

It’s a little more complicated, since he needs to pay MIT back. MIT seems to have recognized that paying the public back as soon as the problem was established was the right thing to do, or a good way to reassure federal funding agencies and the the public that universities like MIT take their obligations to the public very seriously, or both. A judgment that doesn’t make MIT eat that loss, in turn, should encourage other universities that find themselves in similar situations to step up right away and make things right with the funding agencies.

And, in recognition that the public may have been hurt by Van Parijs’s deception beyond the monetary cost of it, Van Parijs will be doing 400 hours of community service. In inclined to believe that given the current fiscal realities of federal, state, and local governments, there is some service the community needs — and doesn’t have adequate funds to pay for — that Van Parijs might provide in those 400 hours. Perhaps it will not be a service he finds intellectually stimulating to provide, but that’s part of what makes it punishment.

Undoubtedly, there are members of the scientific community or of the larger public that will feel that this punishment just isn’t enough — that Van Parijs committed crimes against scientific integrity that demand harsher penalties.

Pragmatically, though, I think we need to ask what it would cost to secure those penalties. We cannot ignore the costs to the universities and to the federal agencies to conduct their investigations (here Van Parijs confessed rather denying the charges and working to obstruct the fact-finding), or to prosecutors to go to trial (here again, Van Parijs pled guilty rather than mounting a vigorous defense). Maybe there was a time where there were ample resources to spend on full-blown investigations and trials of this sort, but that time ain’t now.

And, we might ask what jailing Van Parijs would accomplish beyond underlining that fabrication and falsification on the public’s dime is a very bad thing to do.

Would jail time make it harder for Van Parijs to find another position within the tribe of science than it will already be for him? (Asked another way, would being sentenced to home detention take any of the stink off the verdict of fraud against him?) I reckon the convicted fraudster scientist has a harder time finding a job than your average ex-con — and that scientists who feel his punishment is not enough can lobby the rest of their scientific community to keep a skeptical eye on Van Parijs (should he publish more papers, apply for jobs within the tribe of science, or what have you).

Nostalgia for commencements of yore.

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Actually, I’m not sure if I’m allowed to invoke “yore” for events that happened within the last five year. If there’s an appropriately qualified language- or measurement-geek who’d like to make a ruling I’d be much obliged.

Anyway, my fair university had its commencement ceremony this past Saturday.

It had many of the features we’ve come to expect — faculty adorned in funny regalia, graduates in rented caps and gowns (some with amusing messages on their mortarboards or sporting leis made of candy or dollar bills), a confusion of lines on the procession into the stadium, sun beating down on us all during the addresses from the podium, proud family and friends in the stands (some with large signs or vuvuzelas).

But there was a conspicuous absence of one of the commencement regulars — the beach ball.

As recently as last year, there were probably half a dozen beach balls in play above the graduates at various points in the commencement ceremony. This year, as far as I could tell, there were none.

However, one of the graduates did inflate a condom, which was batted around for a short while. From the accretion of schmutz on it by the time it fell into the hands of a faculty marshal, it was lubricated.

Kids today …