SAGWatch – Observing the Screen Actors Guild and AFTRA

8 Comments

1. david cooper says:

   February 21, 2010 at 1:45 PM

   Wow, what a story! The actors, union or non-union, were perfectly innocent. A little naive perhaps, I would’ve suggested a line change in my dialog at some point – that would’ve blown it open.

   But what strikes me is – this is another example of junk science for sale. It’s not new, just remember cigarette advertising in the 30′s and 40′s – it helped digestion, there were studies proving it. But we seem to be in a plague of anti-science, where trained scientists sell out everything they once held dear for money. Or is it security? Just two decades ago, 74% of all professors were tenured, now it’s 27% – no job security and a big old student debt to pay for that PhD. Here comes a corporation looking for proof of a theory that will be profitable, if only you’ll just slant the results a little bit.

   Besides this sad tale above, there was a story in the press this week of a prominent pharma researcher, with 31 peer reviewed articles published in his field and they had caught him faking numerous studies. Not just claiming he had 100 enrolled in a study when he only had 50, that’s pretty common like in the story above – no he faked his whole damned study, multiple times!!! And believe me, it would not be possible without the pharma company knowing.

   Science has become a weapon – not a truth. Beware the expert who wants to help you.
2. geo says:

   February 21, 2010 at 1:59 PM

   Wow, what’s amazing here is the hubris wasn’t even in having the actors do the “mock trial”. . . the hubris was in thinking such a gambit would stand up after he then sued the state and would thus face an extended discovery process with real money on the line. Just amazing.
3. Voiceguy says:

   February 21, 2010 at 3:38 PM

   It sounds as though this particular research was done under government grants from the National Institute for Drug Addiction, as opposed to direct corporate sponsorship. This simply means that the researcher was defrauding federal taxpayers.

   Many higher education institutions have, and probably all should have, ethics offices that are supposed to police the grant-funded research on campus for honesty, conflicts of interest, etc. There’s only so much that can be done, however, if a researcher is bent on fudging the work. Nonetheless, I have no problem with the full weight of state and federal sanctions falling on any researcher who falsifies data or hides conflicts, and believe that the institutions as well should bear responsibility for such events.

   VG
4. geo says:

   February 21, 2010 at 6:58 PM

   Yeah, but VG, the thing to be worried about is *he got thru that process*. It wasn’t until he tried to sue the state for more money that they got him. The article doesn’t say, but I would assume there was discovery in the civil suit that uncovered the fact that the “named” witnesses weren’t who actually testified at the disciplinary hearing, and eventually uncovered who did, and why/how. Talk about chutzpah.
5. Voiceguy says:

   February 21, 2010 at 7:12 PM

   This researcher has clearly raised the ante on all future inquiries about academic impropriety.

   At the same time, however, academic research has long since lost any semblance of objectivity, neutrality, or even reliability. No longer are things investigated because science or academic considerations point us in that direction; rather, they are investigated because grant money is available to support such investigation. Moreover, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy to the extent that tenure decisions and peer review of publications are heavily slanted toward whatever is politically (or academically) correct at any given moment. The recent scandals exposing fraudulent climate research are a stunning example.

   It is my view, therefore, that in the end none of this really matters, because we are already far beyond the pale. If there ever was a time that research was done on any kind of “pure” basis — and I don’t know that there ever was — we are past that time now.

   I still believe, despite the pessimistic outlook I have just expressed, that those who engage a researcher and hand over a bunch of money for research are entitled to honest, good quality work that is free of fudging and falsehood, and that if there is any unwritten expectation that the work will be slanted to a particular result, an ethical researcher should turn it down. Unfortunately, however, there is ample evidence that neither of those hopes are reliably fulfilled in today’s environment.

   VG
6. geo says:

   February 21, 2010 at 8:06 PM

   Well, you won’t get an arguement from me on the merits. . .both because my “baby” brother is a published laser physicist for the army (favorite affectionate phrase, “I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you, and mom would be upset”), and because I’m a contributor to http://www.surfacestations.org (not because of inherent implacable hostility to AGW, but because it is worth doing on its own, and baby jesus weeps that it took a volunteer effort to do so).
7. david cooper says:

   February 22, 2010 at 10:40 AM

   You know, you could make a movie out of this. Unconnected actors around the country start getting bumped off until you discover they all played “witnesses” by phone in some mock trial.
8. Billy says:

   February 22, 2010 at 11:08 AM

   The moral of this story: You should quit while you’re ahead.

   Heh.