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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!
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."
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 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.
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...
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.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
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.
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.
Trolls are trolls. Patents are just the modern version of a club for certain trolls.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
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.
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.
Megan Clark was installed as Director under Labor in 2009. While you might want to cast some blame howards way for funding cutbacks, the mess didn't really start till labor took over.
I don't believe they claimed to invent wifi but claimed to invent the algorithm which wifi uses to overcome the issue it had with severe packet loss, without this algorithm wifi would be next to useless.
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.
You have 5 Moderator Points!
Which Helpless Linux zealot/MS basher do you want to mod down today?
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.
Patent litigation: A doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction... in which everyone seems willing to push the button
You don't have to do a lot of research 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.
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).
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
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 oppression. I'm not trying to excuse the behavior but these sort of scandals have going on at the CSIRO since it was first commissioned ~100yrs ago. I would be less trusting of the CSIRO as an organization if we never heard anything like this in the news.
Summary: Most of the CSIRO patents deserve to be patents, the bully will not survive regardless of what the head of the organization says today.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
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... We've dodged 20 of these recessions in the last year. Mostly because idiots dont actually know anything about the economy.
was Liberals hard saved cash
LoL, I guess you'd be an expert on revisionism.
The Liberals "hard saved" cash came from selling off public assets. Without selling off Telco assets and the airports, Howard would have left in debt. What Labor is spending is to build new public assets and fix systems that have been horribly broken under the previous Liberal government (notably Education and Health).
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
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.
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)!
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
The CSIRO has, right from the start, tried to uphold the patent. It tried firstly by discussion. After years of this, presumably to try and keep the lawyers out of it, they got fed up and then started to sue. http://blog.patentology.com.au/2012/04/story-behind-csiros-wi-fi-patent.html
Your Ars Technica article mentions that the CSIRO tried sending letters to "28 different wireless companies", in 2003/2004. The article is very much biased against the CSIRO, but even it does not try to claim this was a submarine patent.
I think your hate has blinded you to the definition of troll. Using/defending a patent they created != trolling.
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).
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.
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.
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.
"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."
Both the Liberals and New Labor follow the same neo-liberal economic/authoritarian social playbook that's been destroying western civilisation in the name of corporate greed for nearly three decades now. They are practically indistinguishable in their economic policies, though Labor at least having the minor preference of a) being responsible for nearly every positive economic and social improvement in Australian history and b) paying at least lip service to fulfilling the social contract of Government. The Liberals don't even try to pretend, anymore, that they're for anything except greater concentration of wealth amongst few, the gutting of public services and the socialisation of "big capital's" losses.
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.
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.
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 whole economy as retail struggles to survive. The only thing holding the whole shebang together is the ludicrously high currency.
In short, when the mining boom stops, we're fucked. It's going to be painful and, unfortunately, laid almost entirely at the feet of Labor, even though the Liberals are at least, if not more, culpable.
The Liberals "hard saved" cash came from selling off public assets. Without selling off Telco assets and the airports, Howard would have left in debt.
You forgot the structural deficit Howard's huge cash handouts and entrenched middle-class welfare left behind. Old Labor would have fixed that by cutting back on breeding payments and non-means-tested handouts and raising taxes, but New Labor is just Liberals Lite and thus continued those same unsustainable policies.
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.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
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.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
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 government policy was a profit or loss for society. If the net effect was negative (i.e., not profitable), as in the case of the most recent housing bubble in the US, then the actual effect of those policies that contributed to the bubble were bad as measured by profitability.
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 that favour unions and industries that are unionised. (those flag wavers) Know why your kids know zilch about math and physics? Because Simon Crean in his wisdom has declared to teachers "You all do the same job, so you all get the same pay". So a math major in industry earns $150k - $200k, why would he go into teaching? OTOH The average historian/geographer/artist/Litt major would be hard pressed to get $40k-$60k. Gee we have plenty of them in schools, I wonder why?
Murdoch prints truth. That is why he prospers. In every country where he prints newspapers. That is because everybody sees through the lies and omissions of the "liberal" press (except of course the alarmists).
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.
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 productive with it.
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 administrative positions. *Most* teachers will earn well under $85k.
Indeed, unskilled, uneducated bogans earning six-figure salaries for driving trucks around is absurd. Union organisers are just standard middle-managers, and $100k for one of them is nothing amazing. However, how is the fraction of one percent of the workforce you're complaining about responsible for our economic woes, exactly ?
The increasing proportion of part-time, "flexible" and similarly precarious jobs make this claim laughable.
Once again, less than one-fifth (and consistently dropping) of the workforce is unionised. Of those, most are not being paid particularly highly. If the laws are favouring unions, they're doing a pretty shit job at it.
Compared to the phenomenal amount of waste going into utterly unproductive rentier industries like real estate and finance, it is absurd to try and blame unions for much of anything at all.
On top of all that, you're fundamentally arguing from a logical fallacy: that unionisation is implicitly bad.
Because your mate Murdoch - along with most of the right-wing party machine - has been waging war on people like teachers and academics for over a decade. He's front and centre in the ongoing anti-science and anti-intellectual media campaign. No-one wants to be a teacher because it's gone from being a career with high levels of community respect to a dead-end loser's job.
Are you seriously trying to argue schools could pay maths teachers $150k ? Or are you arguing that children shouldn't be taught geography, history and language skills ?
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 do argue that we should pay Math and Science teachers up to $150k. Whatever it takes to get them. Am I wrong in guessing your PhD is not in Physics, Chemistry or Math?
"how is the fraction of one percent of the workforce you're complaining about responsible for our economic woes, exactly ?" It's a symptom, not a cause. An unintended consequence.
If teaching has been downgraded as a career, it's because students are unable to find competent teachers in the crucial Science and Maths arenas in our public school system. OTOH (Yawn) our children know all about the atrocities committed by a handful of convicts on Aboriginals, (Myall Creek springs to mind) and the horrors of Global Warming. (People dying of heatstroke, but don't mention the people saved from freezing.)
Unless you have a command economy, all jobs are "precarious".
If the employing organization does not deliver value, it goes broke. If the coal costs too much to extract, then coal miners are out of work (50 shades of Thatcher).
"less than one-fifth (and consistently dropping) of the workforce is unionised.". When Pilbara train drivers get $500k? p/a, it becomes economically viable to install automated trains at $1M each. When wharfies got paid too much, then installation of automated machinery became viable. etc. etc. And hence precarious, low paid, part time, non union jobs in the service industries are all that survive.
"you're fundamentally arguing from a logical fallacy: that unionisation is implicitly bad.". No. Unions are implicitly good. It's corrupt union bosses and politicians (most of them seem to be at state level, and in the Labour Party) that subvert the system that are bad. Our system fails the transparency test. We need direct government (like California) and recall elections and deregulation of the labour force.
Your use of the word "rentier" betrays a marxist attitude. Finance of commerce and the sale of goods and property are not "unproductive".
Your criticism of Murdoch is inaccurate and unfounded. It is from the Murdoch papers that we actually learn of these deficiencies in the public school system, and I would point out that State Labour politicians had control of the state education system for past decades in NSW. It is also a fact of life that wage rises, once granted, cannot be rescinded. (all that we can do is sack them, 50 shades of Thatcher). Hence the charge of "trashing the house". I suspect that the only way to fix the State Public school system is by issue of education chits to each child, and let the parents decide which educational institution to patronize. I suspect only about 10% of the public school system would survive for a decade.
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?