Corruption Allegations Rock Australia's CSIRO 112
An anonymous reader writes "Australia's premiere government research organization, the CSIRO, has been rocked by allegations of corruption including: dishonesty with 60 top-class scientists bullied or fired, fraud against drug giant Novartis, and illegally using intellectual property, faking documents and unreliable testimony to judicial officers. CSIRO boss Megan Clark has refused to discipline the staff responsible and the federal police don't want to get involved. Victims are unimpressed and former CSIRO scientists are calling for an inquiry."
Terrible (Score:5, Funny)
They need to round up this lot of criminals and send them to an island!
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They need to round up this lot of criminals and send them to an island!
Yes, send them to an island on the opposite side of the world, let's say England.
That practically makes sense. The Brits would finally see sunshine, and the criminals would be surrounded by a moat and under constant CCTV surveillance. Blow up the Chunnel, and you're done.
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The Brits would finally see sunshine ...
Assuming the Brits and criminals swapped islands, I meant.
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Some of my best friends have been Brits, but I dont really want them here.
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They need to round up this lot of criminals and send them to an island!
I believe we called this "an idempotent operator" in my math classes.
Re: Terrible (Score:2)
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Q. Why did Australia get all the criminals, while the US got all the religious nuts?
A. Australia won the coin flip....
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And for all the others who are in denial..
The British used colonial North America as a penal colony through a system of indentured servitude. Merchants would transport the convicts and auctioned them off to (for example) plantation owners upon arrival in the colonies. It is estimated that some 50,000 British convicts were sent to colonial America, representing perhaps one-quarter of all British emigrants during the 18th century. [wikipedia.org]
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I'm always surprised the USA isn't full of hairdressers, middle managers and telephone sanitizers.
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I'm always surprised the USA isn't full of hairdressers, middle managers and telephone sanitizers.
Isn't it?
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I'm always surprised the USA isn't full of hairdressers, middle managers and telephone sanitizers.
I thought it was.
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My mother was a telephone sanitizer, you insensitive clod!
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Yep. All the stupid convicts that got caught first got sent to the US. :)
The craftier convicts that could figure out how to avoid capture eventually got sent to Australia.
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Yep. All the stupid convicts that got caught first got sent to the US. :)
The craftier convicts that could figure out how to avoid capture eventually got sent to Australia.
In 1810, if you stole a loaf of bread, you got sent to Australia. If you raped or murdered they'd keep you locked up in Britain.
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they think President Johnson was a famous basketball player
In all fairness, he did have a helluva hook shot.
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If you're calling CSIRO a patent troll, I think you need to have a closer look. As a govt research body, the money they actually make from patents goes into MORE research (unlike actual patent trolls).
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If you're calling CSIRO a patent troll, I think you need to have a closer look. As a govt research body, the money they actually make from patents goes into MORE research (unlike actual patent trolls).
I think the problem is that the new director may be turning CSIRO into a patent troll...
Re:Patent troll (Score:5, Interesting)
All pseudo-government organisations in this country have been forced to fund themselves to some degree by economic rationalism (neoliberalism) in successive governments . In the case of the CSIRO this means directly exploiting the patentable inventions they come up with rather than those inventions being for the greater good as it was in years of old. I fully expect CSIRO now spends more time chasing things with higher potential returns rather than greater public utility. I cannot fault the CSIRO for adapting although I do lament the good ol' days. I can think of far more odious examples of exploitation of dubious intellectual 'property' triggered by the same policies.
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the good ol' days
Like back in the 50-60's when their scientists were questioning the wisdom of exploding nukes in the backyard? One particular scientist showed that plutonium was getting into sheep and children, he was not only censured by CSIRO managers but also the government MP's and the military, he went to the press and it got worse for him before it got better.
This particular scandal seems to revolve around a particular ladder climbing bully running one department rather than systemic corruption or government oppre
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Profit is the best measure of benefit to society: how much savings/income are free individuals willing to sacrifice for the benefit of the good or service to their standard of living.
Real-estate bubbles the world over demonstrate the foolishness and fallacy of this position.
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Real-estate bubbles the world over demonstrate the foolishness and fallacy of this position.
Your statement is ambiguous, but I assume that you are implying that real-estate bubbles were bad for society, but that you believe that profitability as a measure would judge them to be good for society, therefore profitability is a poor measure of benefit to society.
If the above is an accurate representation of your argument, then my response would be that your argument is based on a misunderstanding of profitability.
The question you have to ask is whether the net effect of the bubble created by governmen
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Your statement is ambiguous, but I assume that you are implying that real-estate bubbles were bad for society, but that you believe that profitability as a measure would judge them to be good for society, therefore profitability is a poor measure of benefit to society.
My point is that people have spent huge amounts of money trading houses with each other and inflating huge real estate bubbles (with massively negative effects for contempoary, and particularly future, society) rather than doing anything produ
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If you're calling CSIRO a patent troll, I think you need to have a closer look. As a govt research body, the money they actually make from patents goes into MORE research (unlike actual patent trolls).
You would think an organization that guards its patents so aggressively would at least honor other peoples IP.
Please click the third link in the story.
Re:Patent troll (Score:5, Informative)
DIdn't they claim to have invented a particular (and difficult) aspect of recovering a clean signal from a noisy environment? (the noise being largely additional reflections of the initial signal). I believe the general consensus was that this was patent-worthy and worthy of recompense.
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Not a Submarine Patent (Score:2)
Re:Patent troll (Score:5, Informative)
You don't have to do a lot of research [wikipedia.org] to find get the real story rather than just relaying some of the overzealous misinformation that has gone on about this. They never said that they invented 802.11 WiFi, merely that it used some of their patented technology.
And unlike patent trolls who use submarine patents, the CSIRO and the IEEE actually discussed the use of the patent prior to its inclusion in the standard, at which time the CSIRO said they would make non-exclusive licenses available to implementers of the standard on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms.
uh-huh (Score:3)
And yet here is the other side of the story.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Australian_inventions [wikipedia.org]
Wi-Fi being on that list.
CSIRO talks out of two sides of its mouth. It wants to take credit for Wi-Fi. They promote themselves this way, and you even see the Science Minister of Australia (Evans) stating "It's hard to imagine an Australian-invented technology that has had a greater impact on the way we live and work".
But then in technical circles where they face informed response, they play things down.
And
Re:uh-huh (Score:5, Informative)
CSIRO talks out of two sides of its mouth. It wants to take credit for Wi-Fi.
Is it that they want to take credit, or do other people keep giving them credit. By the same token you could say that they want to be called a patent troll just because some people call them that!
And no, CSIRO did not discuss with IEEE the use of the patent prior to its inclusion in the standard. The standard was published in 1997 and CSIRO didn't pipe up until later. They were not even on the 802.11 committee. This is standard submarine trolling.
The CSIRO patent was first used with 802.11a, which was published in 1999. The '97 standard could only do a rather slow 2Mbit/s, a flaw that the patent helped fix. And they did discuss it with CSIRO prior to its release. From the Wikipedia entry that I cited:
In 1998 it became apparent that the CSIRO patent would be pertinent to the standard. In response to a request from Victor Hayes of Lucent Technologies, who was Chair of the 802.11 Working Group, CSIRO confirmed its commitment to make non-exclusive licenses available to implementers of the standard on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms.
Cooper, Dennis (4 December 1998). "Letter to Mr V Hayes, Chair, IEEE P802.11" [ieee.org] (PDF). Retrieved 13 May 2012.
That letter is located on the IEEE website, and it confirms the date that appears on the scanned letter. And further to that, they had also built their own chip that implemented their technology (and went around trying to sell it to various companies), so that makes them even less like a patent troll, who usually don't have any way of implementing their own patents.
And their FRAND terms? They wanted $4 per device.
Which, as they said, was an opening offer and not one that they ever expected. Every time companies negotiate a figure they start high; that is pretty much a standard tactic.
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As a govt research body, the money they actually make from patents goes into MORE research (unlike actual patent trolls).
Um, you know that's the opposite of a defense, right? They're self-perpetuating patent trolls. Being unbound by the need to actually commercialize anything, they can shake down independent inventors who do commercialize products, and then take that money and do some more R&D, so that they can get another patent and use that to shake down the next implementer.
At least the typical pat
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if what you said were necessarily true, NASA would be your worst enemy.
Tell me about the stack of patents NASA has created to exact money from industry, rather than to implement aerospace programs.
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I think your hate has blinded you to the definition of troll. Using/defending a patent they created != trolling.
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I think your hate has blinded you to the definition of troll. Using/defending a patent they created != trolling.
Patenting research that was done without any plans to commercialize is harmful to society and contrary to the purpose of patents. Triply so if it's done by a government, against the interests of its people.
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The FA (second linked article) matches your first few claims. It doesn't mention anything about the wireless patent. I'm not sure why you claim it is a submarine patent. It's established that the standard body were well aware of the patent when they created the standard. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_Scientific_and_Industrial_Research_Organisation#802.11_patent [wikipedia.org]
The CSIRO has, right from the start, tried to uphold the patent. It tried firstly by discussion. After years of this, presumably to
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Trolls are trolls. Patents are just the modern version of a club for certain trolls.
It looks bad (Score:5, Insightful)
Researchers feel ''sliced and diced'' and ''disempowered'', the reviews say, by the need to adhere to what paying customers want.
So it seems that CSIRO got a new director, and, not having enough funds, this new guy started operating the research group like a business, focusing on outside revenue from other companies. Of course, this made it hard to do science, especially since the director wasn't a particularly good director. The scientists almost are turned in to sales people. So it seems kind of bad.
It's a matter of 'not enough money' then 'getting money from the wrong sources' causing motivations to go bad.
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So it seems that CSIRO got a new director, and, not having enough funds, this new guy started operating the research group like a business, focusing on outside revenue from other companies. Of course, this made it hard to do science, especially since the director wasn't a particularly good director. The scientists almost are turned in to sales people. So it seems kind of bad.
My understanding was that instead of doing pure research, they were focusing on solutions to specific goals that were dictated by industry/clients.
They wanted to do basic research and couldn't.
Coupled with shitty matrix management and bullying, no wonder they're pissed.
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Not to forget the very thin skins of scientist types, known to get is quite a flat about perceived issues of Status. As for the Novartis, pretty bloody obvious the dirty players here are the private partner over hyping and selling the technology and Novatris obviously trying to shift fault from the private company with limited fiscal resources and on to the Australian government for the major revenue gaining law suit (must be losing as it is now pushing the bad publicity angle).
As for operating like a bu
This looks bad... (Score:5, Funny)
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You guys need to get your government under control.
The problem with this that the government has continually shrunk funding for CSIRO and as a result CSIRO has been forced to rely on other sources of funding. This means they spend more time and resources on securing revenue than doing actual science. To lack of government funding is directly behind this.
and the stupid voters will stay focused on stupid shit like gay marriage
Gay Marriage is actually an important issue. 50 years ago your country discriminated people based on skin colour, these days you do the same thing based on sexual preference. Taking a stand against this kind
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BTW, any thinking person knows that gay marriage is an important issue. It's just that the rest of the voters seem to think that it's important for all the wrong reasons.
Undoubtedly another Howard legacy (Score:1)
Judging by the SMH article, the problems started when a new director came in and started to run the place like a corporation instead of a research facility.
It would appear the CSIRO is - along with the ACCC, and others - another victim of the Howard neocons. New Labor being nearly indistinguishable in this regard, have just kept the ball rolling.
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Some sheet home blame to CSIRO's former chief executive Geoff Garrett. Before his appointment in 2000, each division of the organisation directed its own science, and its leaders enjoyed utter autonomy. Garrett bombshelled these silos, introducing a corporate hierarchy that funnelled to him and to his entourage control over funds. With the money went control of the direction of the organisation. [smh.com.au]
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And that would make you another Labor revisionist?
2009 - Labor was in power...
Seen all those ads on TV from Labor about how the Liberals were denying the GFC? It was Labor who said 'We are not in a recession' when the Liberals were talking about the GFC and how it hit Australia.. The only thing that saved us was Liberals hard saved cash that Labor spent.
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revisionist?
the only revisionism here is your post.
Seen all those ads on TV from Labor about how the Liberals were denying the GFC?
No, because they dont exist.
Stop getting your info from Murdoch.
We are not in a recession'
That's because we weren't in recession.
We experienced knock on effects from the GFC when it hit the US and Eurozone. We recovered within months whilst the US and Eurozone have been in actual recessions for the last 4 years.
The GFC never really hit Australia. Our economy has been growing since mid 2009 although a lot of idiots keep saying that it's going to hit us any minute now... Any minute now..
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That North Atlantic Banking Crisis (aka GFC) did not justify the incredible wastage by Batts, overpriced & unnecessary school (BER) buildings, and the $94 billion NBN, Thank God JH sold off Telstra and airports. Those places were hotbeds of union "regulatory capture" for wage rises. What we need is a Thatcher to stop all the union rorts.
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What we need is a Thatcher to stop all the union rorts.
Yeah. That overwhelming ~17% of the workforce that's unionised, mostly in average- to low-paying jobs like teaching and childcare, sure are "rorting" the system.
Like the other guy said, stop getting your new from Murdoch. All he wants to do is turn Australia into another America (and he's doing a bang-up job so far, thanks to useful idiots like you). If you want to live in America so badly, move there. It's pretty easy for Australians to emigrate.
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Teachers (NSW) get $70k-$100k. Average annual pay for my PT waiter about $25k. Average FT Oz pay about $50k. Don't start me on miners, MUA or union organizers ($100k+), And every time I see about 3 flag wavers (what are they on? $50k?) to every worker repairing footpaths I know how my council rates are being wasted. At least in NY there were 3 blokes repairing the road, and no flag wavers, just a light moveable barrier.
The system is rorted by a process called "regulatory capture" where laws are passed
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Actually median salary is around $50k. Average is around $70k.
For a skilled, degree-qualified job, teaching is not particularly highly-paid, especially in context of its importance.
A schoolteacher's (as in, someone in the classroom) salary in NSW will top out at around $85k, no matter how long they're employed. If you want to go higher than that, you need to look at principal or other administrativ
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PT = part time. As in that is the only work he/she has. $25k + tips.
As in "average" includes high flyers like Rhinehart and Julia, but does not include part time workers? Median is what FT workers get when the high flyers excluded?
WRONG: "A schoolteacher's (as in, someone in the classroom) salary in NSW will top out at around $85k". I know teachers employed in NSW to teach Physics who get over $100k. Of course they work in the unregulated (non union) private school system.
And yes, quite seriously, I d
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The GFC never really hit Australia. Our economy has been growing since mid 2009 although a lot of idiots keep saying that it's going to hit us any minute now... Any minute now... We've dodged 20 of these recessions in the last year. Mostly because idiots dont actually know anything about the economy.
Our time is coming. Or economy has been almost entirely hollowed out and the ridiculously high real estate prices have massively and unsustainably increased the cost of living, and are now putting a drag on the
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And that would make you another Labor revisionist?
Fuck no. I haven't voted Labor since Keating. Since they've become nothing more than Liberals Lite, I wouldn't touch them with a ten-foot pole. My political position is soft-left, and Labor hasn't been anywhere left of centre for a decade.
2009 - Labor was in power...
The rot started nearly ten years earlier. [smh.com.au]
"Some sheet home blame to CSIRO's former chief executive Geoff Garrett. Before his appointment in 2000, each division of the organisation directed its
Solutions (Score:2)
Part of the job of CSIRO is to "deliver solutions for agribusiness", which basically means, "let Monsanto do whatever they want to whomever they want".
I'm pretty sure the opportunities for corruption are quite numerous.
"Let's do research into how wonderfully effective all the new genetically modified crops are and how we need to make sure nobody can grow a goddamn thing without paying a license fee. And look at this: Monsanto has sent scientists to help us!"
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But we don't live in "decades ago" and today CSIRO is in bed with the multinationals. Look at the comment before yours for cites.
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An organization doesn't have to be corrupt every time in order to be corrupt.
That's how corruption works. You do what you're supposed to 95% of the time, but then the other 5% you really screw the pooch, morally. You're still corrupt. Through and through.
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Australia's research culture... (Score:5, Interesting)
In particular, it's common for low and mid-level people to be hired from overseas, come to Australia, and see their research stagnate due to lack of funding. New academics don't realise that when Australian positions have "grant writing" as part of the job description, they mean: "You must bring in ALL of your own money, dude, oh, and btw, hope you have better luck with that than ALL THE REST OF OUR DEPARTMENT!" These new people end up fiddling around with bits and pieces of their old research projects from former institutions while they're ground to dust lecturing a bazillion subjects. All of this is covered up by our glorious leaders in Administration who commission glossy brochures to explain how well we're doing in research.
Re:Australia's research culture... (Score:4, Interesting)
Seen it first hand (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not really at liberty to describe the research culture at CSIRO in great detail, but it is, or at least was, as the articles say, very application-driven and short-term, external-earning motivated. This was only in one division, I cannot speak for the whole of the organization, however these stories seem to indicate that the problem is widespread.
I was at CSIRO between the mid-1990 to the mid 2000, and I have seen it progressively become a very tough place to do research. I was very very happy to leave. I'm not a top researcher by any stretch of the imagination, and I was never bullied, although I did experience unpleasant conflict. Ever since I've left (for academia) I've been more free to conduct my research the way I wanted it, I have found that it is indeed easier to find funding (so far). Looking for funding first and doing skunk research second is a sure way to kill imagination and generate stress, dissatisfaction and mistrust, not to mention poor results. Scientists are not necessarily good salespeople (too frank). Basically CSIRO was (and apparently still is in some places) in some ways a toxic place for scientists.
I hope it improves. CSIRO is nowhere near the top 10 rank it seeks to achieve, at least in the areas I'm familiar with, but there are still very good people working there.
I didn't see bullying, but... (Score:2, Interesting)
As a project staff person, I really enjoyed my time at CSIRO. I was working on a project that had some initial success but eventually wound up. The uni I'm working for now is no better for job security - still fixed term employment tied to the duration of whatever grant is propping things up at the time - but there seems to be less confusion about budget and more strategy (or even just acknowledgement) of how to deal with my current term ending. At CSIRO, every year, we would receive termination E-mails and
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For example, in the US, The Aerospace Corp. routinely and deliberately re-negs on promises made at acceptance of an in-writing offer for employment (Who would sue their new employer for breach of contract?). Then they carefully, and step-by-step, try to bottle up talent, so that those employees are no longer marketable as scientists, effectively trapping them in their job at Aerospace. If talent continues to be expressed, punishments follow. They breed medioc
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I'm not really at liberty to describe the research culture at CSIRO in great detail, but it is, or at least was, as the articles say, very application-driven and short-term, external-earning motivated. This was only in one division, I cannot speak for the whole of the organization, however these stories seem to indicate that the problem is widespread.
Sounds like the culture needs improving, but I don't hear anything in there about "fraud", "corruption" or any other "illegal" goings-on, as the article suggests.
CSI RO ? (Score:1)
I must have missed that one. I thought the NY one was the best, especially after Grissom left the original series.
Incorrect responses to unfair ecosystem. (Score:2, Informative)
Posting as AC because I currently work at CSIRO. I've made my views known many times during employee surveys and reviews, this isn't new to CSIRO but I hope it is informative to the public.
The government has been cutting our funding progressively for a long time. They announce brand new funding agreements that are "amazing" increases, whilst not-announcing on-going small cuts to our funding between agreements. This is basically death by a thousand cuts, with a band-aid applied every 50 or so.
Our organisatio
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Why isnt this in the Australian news? (Score:1)
Oh. I guess it doesn't suit the powers that be that this subject be a topic for discussion. It might reflect badly on the Labour Party (= Democrat).
Beat-up (Score:1)