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Corruption Allegations Rock Australia's CSIRO
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."
They need to round up this lot of criminals and send them to an island!
Patent trolls are trolls.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
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.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
You guys need to get your government under control. Get with your boards of directors and insist on a proper budget for buying "compliant" government officials. I, know, it's painful sometimes, but it's the price of doing business. They payoff is that we can do just about anything we want and with a little more money thrown at the right political campaigns, and the stupid voters will stay focused on stupid shit like gay marriage and leave us alone. So get it done. We can't have the people thinking that they actually control things. Not now.
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.
Well played.
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!"
You are welcome on my lawn.
dishonesty
OK, business as usual
fraud
No big deal really.
faking documents
Nothing wrong with that.
unreliable testimony
Unheard of.
illegally using intellectual property
ELEVENTY BAJILLION DOLLARS PLEASE.
The allegations directed at the CSIRO are little different from what could be said about many Australian universities (speaking as a PhD graduate and post-doc of many years' experience in them). It's possible that the CSIRO problems are coming to light first because they have more senior academics; not just hoardes of PhD students and the occasional terrified post-doc.
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.
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 must have missed that one. I thought the NY one was the best, especially after Grissom left the original series.
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 be chasing up other work before we discover at the last minute we could hang around a bit longer if we wanted. And I know many of my colleagues were in a similar situation every year (or even more frequently!)
So, as much as I loved working with the people there, and as much as I found the work interesting, and as much as I know that higher-ups tried hard to improve this endless cycle of needless uncertainty - it gets increasingly difficult to remain fully committed to your work at an organisation where despite best intentions the net result is a feeling that you weren't important enough for your term to be sorted out in a more orderly fashion - so you know you'll be facing all that stress and anxiety, job interviews and perhaps having to decline offers again next year... I understand the matrix compounds this by decoupling funds from silos and so on but if the funds are in one place, you're employed in one division, and delivering to another... who is really making term renewal decisions? I certainly never met them! So it's no wonder I had a number of "which boss do I listen to" moments (all resolved, but still).
No oversight in Australia! There are no Whistleblowing laws so the politicians suggest one that would be giving themselves immunity. LOL! http://www.crikey.com.au/2013/03/26/labors-whistleblower-bill-just-window-dressing-without-an-overhaul/ and police are in bed with crooks! http://www.accci.com.au/Corruption.htm
A code of silence surrounds graft accusations in Canberra, writes Linton Besser. The Australian Federal Police, which concentrates on drug trafficking and counter-terrorism, is reluctant to deal with Commonwealth fraud matters.
http://www.smh.com.au/national/public-service-keeps-fraud-cases-private-20110923-1kpdr.html
Meh. Patent claims are very specifically worded. If someone hits you with a patent before you design a system you can easily design around it so you don't violate it. The CSIRO didn't pull their big throbbing patent out of their pants until Wifi was already boxed and in the stores.
http://www.greenpeace.org/australia/en/mediacentre/media-releases/food/Greenpeace-calls-on-CSIRO-to-come-clean-on-commercial-relationships/
http://www.gmwatch.org/latest-listing/1-news-items/13325-csiro-in-bed-with-multinationals
Psychopaths in middle level management is a common problem for all large organisations and the CSIRO is no exception. They tend to accumulate as they drive out decent humans so eventually the organisation's integrity starts to break down. The CSIRO needs a massive dose of ethical purgative to drive out these parasites before they do any more harm.
And yet here is the other side of the story.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Australian_inventions
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 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.
And their FRAND terms? They wanted $4 per device. This would amount to more than the entire cost of a WiFi chip.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/04/how-the-aussie-government-invented-wifi-and-sued-its-way-to-430-million/
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
One of the CSIRO eminent ex-scientists was lured out from the UK with a promise of blue-sky research, but found himself reporting to an untalented arsehole. He didn't know this until he'd quit his old job and the arsehole dropped in for tea. The areshole's superiors thought if they got a big name on his team then the arsehole might get better publicity. Instead of blue-sky research he found his new job was wiping the arsehole's arsehole.
Not a submarine patent - it just took a bit over a decade to go from polite requests to court orders which may be why you were not aware of it.
Perhaps, but my experience with scientists (and I've worked with a lot of scientists , currently physicists) is that, as a group, they're at least as ethically challenged as their managers. The image of the Noble Scholar they like to present publicly is laughable, typically they're about as ethical as used car salesmen and politicians. It's no surprise the public is becoming more and more skeptical of the claims and pronouncements of science and the scientific community. They have every good reason to be.
why is the public service like a septic tank? because the biggest s**** rise to the top!!!!!!
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 organisation makes up the slack by raising and re-raising the amount of "external contributions" required for each division. This basically means, if we don't have an industry partner the project doesn't go ahead. On top of this, the amount of overhead is ridiculous meaning 50% of external funding required may actually mean 6 times the salary of the scientists actually doing the work is required for any project to go ahead. How on earth is science meant to occur with that kind of investment disincentive.
The organisation also has never-ending red tape and administration. This means the top scientists, on the top wages, are spending sometimes over 75% of their time on paperwork. SIP planning, milestone reports, presentations, etc. To hire a new staff member can take over 3 months and require days of work by a manager just to form the proposal to request permission to produce a position description to be advertised. Most of this administration has come out of great "ideas" to minimise administration. A new system to do something is a daily occurrence and that system failing or requiring more than double the original effort is common place.
The last two points combine into a research destroying monster. Administration takes up the time of the best scientists, which must be made up through multipliers in externally funded research. The best scientists then can't work on the research because they are busy doing administration tasks to try and set up the next big project. The end result is frustrated scientists, under-performing research programs and a bloated organisation.
The only cure is to drastically cut red-tape, and reduce the number of people in management roles. The organisation needs to de-couple funding and employment and let a group of people find the money, while another group of people do the research. But this wont happen, and every attempt to achieve the objectives usually results in another grand system which just adds to the monolith of red-tape.
With all that said, CSIRO is full of amazing people who work incredibly hard. Most work, and aren't compensated, for long hours above and beyond their employment to achieve the science they aspire to achieve with the organisational burdens they carry. Even management is working hard to improve all these problems and work with what they have. Incredible research is getting done and most of my co-workers are proud to claim they work for CSIRO and dream of the day when all this bloat is finally removed.
Unfortunately, I do not see how this will occur with the current thinking. The government is not interested in increasing the money or paying for the overhaul required to improve efficiency. There are vested interests who want CSIRO to be cut up and sold off, and they are achieving more progress in their goals than the scientists are. This is evident in the one-sided, over-stated, under-substantiated news coverage that CSIRO gets. Certain newspapers are very blatant about their hatred for CSIRO and find allies from the right who enjoy offsetting budget deficits by selling assets.
The organisation is amazing but is sick. It has gangrenous limbs that need to be amputated, and is regularly being attacked by viruses who want to see it dead. What it needs is public support for the scientists and the organisation as a whole so that we can unplug life-support, get out of our hospital bed, and back out into the world, kicking ass and taking names (in the name of science)!
Did you expect a government department to behave within the confines of the law?
Nothing new here. Just another bunch of cronies who live at the expense of others via the state's monopoly on violence instead of earning their income from paying customers trading freely in the market place.
Being a scientist does not mean you are "not a psychopath".
Instead of blaming down the whistle blower the CSIRO and Datadot should be reading up on fraud. This is serious stuff
How The CSIRO Defrauded Novartis - http://www.insidetasmania.com/2013/04/how-csiro-defrauded-novartis.html
CRIMES ACT 1900 - SECT 192G Intention to defraud by false or misleading statement
192G Intention to defraud by false or misleading statement
A person who dishonestly makes or publishes, or concurs in making or publishing, any statement (whether or not in writing) that is false or misleading in a material particular with the intention of:
(a) obtaining property belonging to another, or
(b) obtaining a financial advantage or causing a financial disadvantage,
is guilty of an offence. Maximum penalty: Imprisonment for 5 years.
CRIMES ACT 1900 - SECT 192D - Obtaining financial advantage or causing financial disadvantage
192D Obtaining financial advantage or causing financial disadvantage
(1) In this Part, "obtain" a financial advantage includes:
(a) obtain a financial advantage for oneself or for another person, and
(b) induce a third person to do something that results in oneself or another person obtaining a financial advantage, and
(c) keep a financial advantage that one has,
whether the financial advantage is permanent or temporary.
(2) In this Part,
"cause" a financial disadvantage means:
(a) cause a financial disadvantage to another person, or
(b) induce a third person to do something that results in another person suffering a financial disadvantage,
whether the financial disadvantage is permanent or temporary.
CRIMES ACT 1900 - SECT 192B 192B Deception
(1) In this Part, "deception" means any deception, by words or other conduct, as to fact or as to law, including:
(a) a deception as to the intentions of the person using the deception or any other person, or
(b) conduct by a person that causes a computer, a machine or any electronic device to make a response that the person is not authorised to cause it to make.
(2) A person does not commit an offence under this Part by a deception unless the deception was intentional or reckless.
CRIMES ACT 1900 - SECT 192E Fraud 192E Fraud
(1) A person who, by any deception, dishonestly:
(a) obtains property belonging to another, or
(b) obtains any financial advantage or causes any financial disadvantage,
is guilty of the offence of fraud.
Maximum penalty: Imprisonment for 10 years.
(2) A person’s obtaining of property belonging to another may be dishonest even if the person is willing to pay for the property.
(3) A person may be convicted of the offence of fraud involving all or any part of a general deficiency in money or other property even though the deficiency is made up of any number of particular sums of money or items of other property that were obtained over a period of time.
(4) A conviction for the offence of fraud is an alternative verdict to a charge for the offence of larceny, or any offence that includes larceny, and a conviction for the offence of larceny, or any offence that includes larceny, is an alternative verdict to a charge for the offence of fraud.
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).
A contributing factor is that CSIRO and Radiata royally shafted Macquarie University (MU) and the employees of Macquarie Research Limited (MRL), which provided engineers for the development of the WLAN project. Both downplay the role of MU/MRL, since a chunk of the IP was ripped off from MU/MRL. To clear the air, they would have to acknowledge the contribution of MU and the MRL employees.
From the mid 1990s to 1997 a combination of MRL employees and PhD students, in the Electronic Department of Macquarie Uni, carried the WLAN project forward. It was Macquarie Uni (via Prof Skellern) that was doing the representation on the standards committees. In 1997, the MU project got shutdown, at face value for a lack of funding. The MRL employees instantly got the sack, despite the fact that they had been employed long enough on a rolling basis that their fixed term contracts had converted to full-time employment. The grey nature of their employment status left questions over IP ownership. The PhD students continued their study on other projects. A few months later, Radiata was founded, and all the IP had magically transferred from Macquarie University to Radiata. The PhD students moved to Radiata and the old MRL employees were left in the cold.
After the Cisco acquisition, Macquarie Uni threatened legal action, and got its pound of flesh out of Cisco/Radiata. Being a wholly owned subsiduary of MU, there was no such pressure from MRL. The MRL employees got zip and had to watch others getting rich off their work. You'll notice in the list of names on the academic paper, "a high-speed Wireless LAN", that there are the names mentioned in the public history and then some more names. There's a heap of backslapping about "inventors" in CSIRO and "entrepreneurs" in Radiata, but the public history leaves MU/MRL out, since people are too embarassed to talk about it, and there is a chance someone might say "what about me?"
"Despite – or maybe because of – the heat that Australia’s national research organisation is currently suffering over its industrial links, @CSIROnews posted a cheery tweet. ‘‘Howdy partner. We work with 1500+ companies a year – 350 of which are multinationals - this helps us get our science into your hands.’’ http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/csiro-should-proceed-with-caution-before-drilling-begins-in-bight-20130415-2hvxm.html
Since into my hands? More like money into her pocket.
What are the quotation marks in the OP indicating? Who said it? The CSIRO is an extremely accountable and ethical organisation. If the CEO and the AFP are not taking action against CSIRO staff, then it must be for a good reason that we have not been told. My guess is that this a beat-up by Novartis or some other patent troll. More critical thinking and less jumping to conclusions please.
Heavy is the head that wears the tinfoil hat.
Modded Off topic? Really? Ok I could have worded in nicer but here is a company accused of fraud which a serious offense but their first thought is hunting down the person who reported them?
Yep, all the ethical scientist have been driven out, Acadamy of Science,
The BOM, the ABC and sections of the ANU are also corrupt.