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Gates Foundation Vs. Openness In Research
An anonymous reader writes "There have been complaints within the World Health Organization of some oddly familiar-sounding tactics and attitudes by the Gates Foundation. Scientists who were once open with their research are now 'locked up in a cartel' and are financially motivated to support other scientists backed by the Foundation. Diversity of views is 'stifled,' dominance is bought, and Foundation views are pushed with 'intense and aggressive opposition.'" The article tries hard for balance. It notes that the WHO official who raised the alarm on the Gates Foundation's unintended consequences on world health research is "an openly undiplomatic official who won admiration for reorganizing the world fight against tuberculosis but was ousted from that job partly because he offended donors like the Rockefeller Foundation."
It's happening everywhere, a gradual chilling debasement of science and open collaboration. On one hand the internet has brought great
opportunity, and some great things like Gutenberg, the Internet archive, Hyperphysics, and of course Wikis that are gaining credibility more and more, but these are not real scientific repositories, real science is being buried. Some online journals have their archives open to download free pdfs, but they are the exception, in general things are getting much worse than better. 15 years ago I had to go to a library to get papers, but at least they were there and I could photocopy for free. Now all the records have gone electronic its a nightmare. Do a Google search on any serious topic and the first two pages will be istore, free patents online, and all those for-pay peddlers of knowledge. These guardians of information charge $30 or more for an electronic reprint, on 80 year old papers, IP that doesn't even belong to them! I expect many great scientists are spinning in their graves. I sometimes laugh when I hear the phrase scientific community. There isn't one anymore! Everyone is out to obscure and bury. How can peer review be conducted anymore? Everyone is too afraid to publish in case patent trolls sieze their work, and only the few in large institutions can afford to. I have to share papers on the sly with other researchers and certain old textbooks are becoming treasured items. This knowledge belongs to us all. The vast majority from the last few hundred years is public domain, payed for by your tax dollars to fund research on national levels.
I certainly don't expect Microsoft to help in any way, their track record is to squeeze money out of every chance they get. What have they ever contributed to real science? We must reverse this slide into private and secret science or eventually university students will be signing NDA agreements before being allowed to study and progress will only be the preserve of the wealthy.
Google scholar is a step forward, but if you use it a lot you will see more than half of what it links to isn't actually available, it just leads to pay-for sites. They should block those so that only info that is actually available to read is presented.
Most mega-billionaires give away their money in hopes of achieving immortality. Why is this a bad thing? Many fine research and educational institutions would not exist without this desire to be remembered for something positive. I think if we look down on the idea of doing great things for society in order to achieve lasting immortality, we will lose all of the great things that can result from it.
The only "true" philanthropy is anonymous. That doesn't mean we should condemn the idea of "pseudo" philanthropy just because we find the idea of buying immortality distasteful. After all, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute would probably be just as good without Howard Hughes' name on it, but it certainly wouldn't be as good (or even exist) without his money in it.
How many rich people do you count as close personal associates? Blanket statements like yours are irritating at best, and idiotic at worst. Let's talk about how much money you donate to charities. No? Fine... then consider this: whether it's a tax write-off or not, charitable foundations depend on the generosity of wealthy patrons to continue their work. That's just how the system is structured. Don't like it? Okay, work to get the tax benefits of charitable contributions eliminated. While you're at it, please explain to those who benefit from the monies donated to medical research, food programs, etc why they don't deserve the help.
I'm no Bill Gates fanboy (kinda hard to be when I refuse to use Microsoft products at home), but your position is ridiculous.
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The Gates foundation provides funding so long as there is adequate proof of where the funding is going and so long as it aligns with the broad vision the Gates foundation has. It sounds like this guy has problems with some of the scientists receiving Gates funding and he has problems with the fact that the Gates foundation has its own internal, closed decision making process that is only accountable to itself. But, that's to be expected. The Gates foundation introduced a level of accountability not seen before on a large scale. They did for international philanthropy what organizations like Pew did for philanthropy within the US.
The Gates foundation had to fight to bring any real accountability into these fields. If the WHO feels threatened its probably because they were pushing funds into opportunistic pockets up until the Gates foundation forced real accountability to happen.
Given the state of affairs up until now, if the Gates foundation did just create their own WHO-like organization, there's a good chance more people would be helped per dollar invested than are being helped by the WHO now.
The gates foundation is far from perfect. But they are inevitably going to take heat from threatening the lifeblood of the people at all levels of international philanthropy that have been skimming off the top of a very broken system.
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Yep, I've been saying this for ages, and nobody believes me. It's like the old joke by Craig Kilborn:
"Bill Gates announced his initiative to eradicate the AIDS virus. He plans to buy all competing viruses and use his power of monopoly to drive the AIDS virus to extinction."
But this is no joke. Gates has established a monopoly on philanthropy and the addition of money from Warren Buffet has given even more power to the Gates Foundation. They don't fund charities, they assimilate them. It is impossible to fund any alternative charities when the overwhelming majority of monies are going to the Officially Approved Gates Foundation Charities. Those charities have become a monoculture, as this document asserts. And those charities are designed to get third-world companies hooked on first-world Big Pharmaceuticals. Guess what? Bill Gates is a major shareholder in Big Pharma, from Merck to Schering-Plough to a dozen others. Gates can't help but apply his business mindset to everything he does, he seeks to rebuild the world in his own image, even if this means working his will through phony philanthropy.
But what galls me the most is that the billions of dollars he's "donating" came out of the pockets of Microsoft customers: governments, corporations, and individuals. What diverse charities might WE have funded, if Bill Gates hadn't stolen those dollars from OUR wallets?
There is a great book by a primatologist named Franz De Waal ("Our Inner Ape"), and the book largely deals with this subject, by speaking at lengths to the behaviors of various primates. The conclusion is, of course, that humans are not innately good or evil-- we have the capacity for both compassion and uncaring selfishness.
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.