
Jeffrey Epstein’s Harvard connections show how money can distort research - LinuxBender
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/jeffrey-epsteins-harvard-connections-show-how-money-can-distort-research/
======
JamesBarney
This article is awful and does a terrible job explaining the facts, and
specifically blurs the timeline in a way that paints a different picture than
the facts.

[https://www.harvard.edu/president/news/2020/report-
regarding...](https://www.harvard.edu/president/news/2020/report-regarding-
jeffrey-epstein-s-connections-to-harvard)

Does a far better job.

1\. Jeffrey Epstein gives 9 million dollars to Harvard researchers. 6.5 was
for PED, with an additional 23.5 from his foundation. This funds PED's
creation

2\. Jeffrey Epstein gave $200,000 to Department Chair of Psychology, he
applied to be a Visiting Fellow. The Chair supported his application, and
Epstein was granted Visiting Fellow status for the 2005-2006 academic year.

3\. Jeffrey Epstein was arrested, so he withdrew his application for being a
Visiting Fellow for the 2006-2007 academic year.

4\. Epstein tries to donate to Harvard again, and Harvard denies him due to
his arrest record. He makes no more donations to Harvard despite several
professors lobbying administration. He does however introduce several
professors to rich philanthropists who do make donations.

5\. Epstein maintained a relationship with Martin Novak (director of the PED,
which Epstein funded), who let Epstein on campus 40 times between 2010 and
2018. There is no evidence he engaged with any undergrad students. He used
these visits to speak with prominent faculty.

~~~
darawk
Agree. People's response to all this is so strange. It seems clear to me that
this guy was legitimately interested in supporting science, _and_ was a sexual
predator. For some reason people really can't handle the idea of him being
both things simultaneously. The world is actually just complicated sometimes.

There is a long history of great scientific advancements being made by
otherwise unsavory people. Werner Von Braun, Ronald Fisher, Francis Galton,
just off the top of my head. By all accounts these people legitimately loved
science and reason _and_ also held otherwise abhorrent views, and in some
cases took abhorrent actions. This is just an ambiguity we have to live with.

~~~
tptacek
In 2007, with the support of luminaries like Steven Pinker and Alan
Dershowitz, Epstein managed to finagle from Alex Acosta a non-prosecution
agreement for human trafficking that ultimately resulted in a country club
sentence that allowed him, during his short custodial sentence, to work from
his own private office for 12 hours every day.

The problem people have with Epstein's "support for science" is that he spent
his life collecting influential people, and, in at least once notorious
instance but likely many others, deploying the influence of those people to
his ends, which included the trafficking of minors for rape. One reasonably
asks, "was Epstein actually trying to fund science at Harvard? Or was
brokering donations for programs he could brag about having a hand in getting
off the ground just an easy way to create social bonds with the world's most
influential people?" One then looks at what Pinker did for Epstein in 2007
and, probably, quickly finds the answer to that question.

This was also the problem with the MIT Media Lab's policy of denying named
donations for Epstein while allowing him to broker donations behind the
scenes. They were getting money from powerful people, because of Epstein's
work. But MIT and the Media Lab's management missed what Epstein was getting
out of the deal.

~~~
darawk
I agree that one may reasonably ask that. But there are much easier ways to
acquire power and influence if you are extremely wealthy.

The only reasonable conclusion you can draw about the man is that he was both
legitimately interested in furthering science _and_ interested in acquiring
personal power. That doesn't make anything he did any better, and we shouldn't
say things like "well, he did all this sexual abuse, _but_ he also funded
science". I'm not advocating that.

But I also think it's overly reductionist and cynical to say that he was
funding science for the sole purpose of insulating himself from legal
prosecution for abusing women. It's just a ridiculously inefficient way to do
that, if that's your only goal.

My broader point is that I think we need to be better about handling moral,
not ambiguity, but...ambivalence? Epstein is not a morally _ambiguous_
character, but he did do more than one thing in his life. Some of those things
were good, some of those things were bad. The bad things unequivocally
outweigh the good things, but it doesn't mean we have to erase them, or find
some way rube-goldbergian way to re-evaluate them as actually sinister.

Which is also not to say that we shouldn't think carefully about the kind of
power/legitimacy conferred by Epstein's activities. I think that's a
legitimate and important discussion. But i'd find the inability to handle
multi-dimensionality in some of these discussions strange.

~~~
tptacek
He was insulating himself from criminal charges for abusing _children_. He
raped children. He had children trafficked so that he could rape them, and
then hand them off to his influential friends to rape again.

~~~
darawk
Werner Von Braun was an actual nazi. He was also a great scientist. The world
is just complicated sometimes.

The idea that all his science funding was an elaborate ruse to insulate
himself from prosecution is just not a very well grounded view. His chosen
method of insulation was terribly inefficient with respect to time and money.
He would have gotten a much better ROI by investing in politicians directly,
the fact that he chose to focus more on science than politics makes it pretty
clear that he had a genuine interest/passion for it.

I don't see why he can't like science for its own sake _and_ be a child
abuser. The two things are not mutually exclusive.

~~~
tptacek
Epstein is not a great scientist. In fact, he's not a scientist at all.

~~~
darawk
That wasn't my point. My point was that people can simultaneously do evil
things and like science.

~~~
jacquesm
Have you considered the option that Epstein didn't like science as such but
liked the influence and air of respectability that hanging out with scientists
and being seen as a supporter gave him? It could easily be a form of
whitewashing of his reputation that he would not be able to do otherwise.
Nothing spells 'good guy' more clearly than large donations to science and
education.

------
gojomo
Article's details don't truly deliver on headline.

Epstein funded his pet research areas, yes. But all sources of funding
including government grants do the same, one way or another. And across all
rich funders, the variety of interests is very large, and include areas other
more institutional funding bureaucracies ignore.

Also, despite Epstein's (somewhat still-underexplained) wealth & largesse, his
money was a drop in the bucket. When the article points out that "more than
two thirds of Epstein's donations—$6.5 million—went to PED director Martin
Nowak" – an already well-funded researcher, it actually undermines its case.
Epstein gave less than $10 million total? And to established programs? How
does a tiny bit of funding, from an extreme-outlier bete-noire, to some not-
even-fringe programs, make any negative general case against private funding?

That such private funding picks a different mix of researchers than the
Harvard Professor writing this article would pick is the point - _don 't_ send
all funding through the exact same credentialed-panels of established
academia. Accept some curve-ball initiatives from other uncorrelated piles-of-
resources.

The article's one tangible example of some favors flowing from a Harvard
academic to Epstein's defense – Epstein's lawyer Dershowitz getting some
linguistic advice from Steven Pinker – doesn't involve research funding at
all. Someone's high-end legal counsel is _being paid specifically to marshal
resources & expertise for their defense_. There's no distorting quid-pro-quo
with regard to other payments: it's a totally up-front fee-for-advocacy
relationship. (And that's even before considering Dershowitz's other alleged
entanglements in Epstein matters.)

~~~
teachrdan
Your argument is logically sound but provably false. Humans are known to
compromise their ethics for relatively small amounts of money. For example,
Martha Stewart was a billionaire when she engaged in insider trading and then
lied about it to the FBI, resulting in her going to federal prison--all to
avoid a measly $45,000 loss!

The article makes clear that Epstein was granted physical access to
facilities, the title of "visiting fellow at Harvard" in areas of study in
which he had no credentials, and getting world-renowned researchers to
validate his crackpot theories of racial eugenics due to his wealth.

I mean, you are being reasonable: $10 million in funding is peanuts to
Harvard, which has an endowment of almost US $41 billion. But apparently
Harvard is willing to lease our their credibility for such "a tiny bit" of
money.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Stewart#Stock_trading_c...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Stewart#Stock_trading_case_and_conviction)

[https://www.google.com/search?q=harvard+endowment&oq=harvard...](https://www.google.com/search?q=harvard+endowment&oq=harvard+endowment)

~~~
WalterBright
Stewart was found guilty of lying to the FBI, not insider trading. There
wasn't enough evidence to convict her of the latter.

Ironically, if she'd simply said nothing to the FBI, she would have walked.

~~~
grugagag
The point was the small amount that she went to jail for, a drop in the bucket
for her wealth

------
Goronmon
Maybe someone can word this statement in a way that actually describes the
problem better for someone not as well-versed in the ins-and-outs of funding
in academia?

 _The Epstein affair brings to light a much larger problem: it undermines the
integrity of the research enterprise when individuals can pick and choose
lines of inquiry that appeal to them simply because they can pay for them._

People funding research that interests them seems like a pretty innocuous
statement by itself. Sure, it's connection to Epstein is blatantly
problematic, but if you remove him specifically from the statement, what is
the problem being highlighted?

~~~
sukilot
They pay for the results they want.

~~~
rsa25519
Maybe they do, but the article doesn't provide any data to back this up. I
would have liked a sample size larger than one

~~~
TeaDrunk
It'd be absolute career suicide for any researcher to have their work publicly
bankrolled by Epstein or reveal to the public that their research was aiming
for specific goals that Epstein was looking for.

------
hpoe
I'm just going to point out that to people that have a concern about wealthy
people funding research that is how science has been done long before research
grants or anything like that came on the scene.

For a long time art and the sciences were funded by wealthy merchants and
kings giving money to people like Lenardo Da Vinci to eat while they worked on
their ideas.

Also another point, people worry about the corrupting influence of money on
research but there is nothing that stops someone with money from setting up a
research lab independent of a university and producing their own research. In
fact I would think having the research done with a prestigious university
would be a better check on the results because the individuals doing the
research are tied deeply into their communities and as such their is more
oversight and discussion on the topic.

~~~
dredmorbius
What are the greatest advances in science and/or technology?

How were those financed?

Is there any evidence of bias toward or away from specific areas based on
moneyed, political, or other interests?

~~~
WalterBright
A couple:

1\. Einstein was funded by himself.

2\. The Wright Bros were funded by themselves. They were motivated by the idea
of getting rich selling airplanes. The government funded alternative, the
Langley, flopped (literally) into the Potomac.

3\. Whittle's jet engine was funded (in part) by a little old lady. Government
refused to fund it.

4\. The Reich refused to fund jet engines until Heinkel demonstrated a flying
prototype. It was financed by Heinkel.

5\. The transistor was invented by Bell Labs funded from AT&T's profits.

6\. The first transatlantic cable was funded by wealthy investors looking to
make money off of it.

7\. Several explorers were funded by newspapers in exchange for exclusive
story rights.

~~~
cma
Didn't Einstein do his work during business hours as a government-paid patent
clerk?

------
apsec112
If people are worried about scientific donors having undue influence, a much
cleaner route than trying to stop donations or screen every person is to
simply require that donations be anonymous. That way, everyone still has the
freedom to sponsor whatever they want, but nobody gets bribed to overlook sex
trafficking.

~~~
jackfrodo
I don't think that works in practice. If you donate money with the goal of
advancing some agenda, and it's officially anonymous, you'll find a way of
letting the right people know it was you.

------
ckemere
There's a comment below about Da Vinci, but I'd say that the problem claimed
in this article has been around since Archimedes yelled "Eureka" in his bath.
The way science has tried to protect itself has always been when research is
_published_ , not when it was funded. But it's also a mistake to think that
funders have _that_ much influence on research. Scientists usually study what
they want and there's been thousands of years of attempts to develop systems
to try force them to study what they're paid for that are still not completely
effective.

Where did Epstein get his unfortunate ideas? From other scientists! Young
researchers very early learn that their main task is the same as start up
founders - to inspire people they talk with about their research in order take
their money (or recruit them to the lab). I think that truth and societal
value are often easiest to convey but obviously not always.

~~~
joe_the_user
_There 's a comment below about Da Vinci, but I'd say that the problem claimed
in this article has been around since Archimedes yelled "Eureka" in his bath.
The way science has tried to protect itself has always been when research is
published, not when it was funded._

This unfortunately comment is filled with bad and dubious comment but this
seems notably deceptive. Society has to various extents aimed to protect
itself from the very worst behavior and the worst people - and has succeed in
to a rather spotty extent, certainly. Still, every stage of science has
involved some filtering out of the bad and worst. The increase in science's
scale has lessened the degree to which a scientist had to be "respectable" but
added filters like objective grant criteria, etc. Still, there's no way a
single filtering method can work. You can't count on publications to weed out
determined frauds - science counts on a certain ethos from scientists (and
counts now less than it should and suffers for this). Science needs a
community of honesty and it's significant the number of commentators who can't
understand this here.

------
lawnchair_larry
Suppose you remove the wealthy people funding research that interests them.
Now you’re left with the alternative of doing no research?

~~~
handmodel
I chatted with a friend who was in a Harvard class with one of the biology
professors funded by Epstein. In like 2015 or so (before Epstein was a huge
public deal) someone asked him about it and his response to the class was
"What am I supposed to do - tell the sex offender to keep his money so he can
spend it on more sex crimes?"

I think the issue is that there is always something in return. If you accepted
money and it was truly anonymous and Epstein never talked to the professors or
whatever than it would be hard to say its bad. But clearly people (good or bad
- but always rich) are getting a lot of prestige, access, bragging rights, or
whatever from these type of donations.

~~~
unishark
I'm with the professor on this one. This practice of shaming organizations
because they received cash gifts seems odd to me. Seems like another kind of
"first world" angst that I'll be struggling to explain to friends in other
countries. It's not like they were naming a building after him.

As for always getting something in return, in economics you must always
consider the alternative. The man had millions of dollars. For millions of
dollars you can get "something" from all directions. Harvard's refusal to take
his money would not have made him nine million dollars poorer. And as long as
Harvard-donor-bragging-rights are just as available to anyone as a multi-
million dollar beach house would be instead, I don't see why it matters.

------
scottlocklin
>but we have broad evidence that the interests of funders often influence the
work done.

As opposed to Government, drug company and institutional funders; they NEVER
influence the work done.

Epstein was an evil asshole, and Harvard is a disgusting, sinister
institution, but concentrating on rubbish like this overlooks the insane,
ridiculous, overt and pervasive problems with science research funding that
don't involve funding by the creepy dude who didn't kill himself, and who the
media otherwise seems strangely incurious about.

------
idm
It's a fact that wealthy donors support specific research that interests them.

On the one hand, hasn't research always been funded like this? Wealthy patrons
have always supported work that somehow gratified them. And history is replete
with despicable personalities who have nevertheless financed good science.

On the other hand, when the patron's interests turn out to be questionable,
the research supported by those interests _can_ be examined. It's okay to give
it a second thought in light of new information about the patron.

I happen to think this article raises valid questions. For example, I have
questions about the idea of buying a visiting fellowship. I have questions
about the mechanisms by which faculty become oddly encumbered by donations.

------
rsa25519
> The New York Times concluded that in this case it led researchers “to give
> credence to some of Mr. Epstein's half-baked scientific musings.” True or
> not, it should trouble us that a corrupt man was making decisions affecting
> research at a major U.S. university.

True or not? Really? I would have liked if this article shared statistics
instead of being so ambigious

~~~
Nasrudith
"Lend credence" is an underhanded phrasing given that it can mean both
"consider it more credible in theories" vs "associating with the evil crackpot
makes him look more credible". One can argue a responsiblity to avoid both but
the two are not at all identical - one is a corruption of their output while
the other is essentially a confidence trick like saying a Harvard professor
supports homeopathy - ignoring that it was a Philosophy professor and not
Biology or Medical. Bad for the institutional reputation but doesn't discredit
the work in itself.

------
mattxxx
I see a lot of comments are criticizing the article, because it seems to damn
the fundamentals of how research is funded. I think that response to the
article is justified. That is, yea - science needs a way to be funded, and it
should be wealthy people that foot the bill... altruistically.

------
spenrose
The author, Naomi Oreskes, is a prominent scholar of science history who has
written extensively on the corruption of research for political purposes by,
for example, tobacco companies.

------
known
"The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter
regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been
caught" \--H.L.Mencken

------
alpineidyll3
The things the average faculty member would do for a 100k grant are truly
disgusting, and would probably make Epstein retch.

------
godmode2019
From my understanding Epstein was an intelligence agent, who worked the honey
trap line. Compromising politicians, scientists & actors. This is pretty well
laid out by now re FBI Charing documents for Maxwell.

Is this not the common understanding of the situation?

~~~
joe_the_user
Links?

~~~
godmode2019
[https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/press-
release/file/1291491...](https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/press-
release/file/1291491/download)

[https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&obj...](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=12265937)

[https://www.scribd.com/doc/267173868/Virginia-Roberts-
Affida...](https://www.scribd.com/doc/267173868/Virginia-Roberts-Affidavit)

"19.In addition to constantly finding underage girls to satisfy their personal
desires,Epstein and Maxwell also got girls for Epstein’s friends and
acquaintances. Epstein specifically told me that the reason for him doing this
was so that they would “owe him,” they would “be in his pocket,” and he would
“have something on them.” I understood him to mean that when someone was in
his pocket, they owed him favors. I also understood that Epstein thought he
could get leniency if he was ever caught doing anything illegal, or more so
that he could escape trouble altogether"

That's probably enough information to get you started.

------
theqult
What is really distorting research are all those moralistic jerks off

------
hartator
> because Epstein was a criminal

Just random thought: Should will be saying alleged criminal or not since he
would never have a trial?

~~~
fiblye
He'd been convicted before.

------
gridlockd
> What made it even worse was that Epstein was a latter-day eugenicist whose
> interests were tied to a delusional notion of seeding the human race with
> his own DNA. Given this stance, it is particularly disturbing that he
> focused his largesse on research on the genetic basis of human behavior.
> Human genetics is an ethically sensitive and intellectually contested domain
> where it behooves us to ensure that the highest standards of scientific
> rigor are in place and that nongenetic explanations for behavior are given a
> fair chance to compete.

This is a thinly veiled attack on evolutionary biology, which keeps coming up
with plausible explanations that are nevertheless utterly disturbing to the
self-image of a moral human being and must therefore be suppressed from its
consciousness. This is an undue conflation of science (is) and morals (ought).
Morals are an artifact of human experience with nature, nature itself is
amoral.

For instance, let's ask: Why does rape exist?

Sociologist: _writes twenty paragraphs on patriarchy and rape culture while
ignoring the rest of the animal kingdom_

Evolutionary Biologist: It's a successful strategy for reproduction, the
selfish gene promotes its continued existence

If the sociologist is right, then rape should disappear in an enlightened
culture that has abolished all male dominance (utopianism). If the biologist
is right, then rape will not disappear without identifying and muting all gene
sequences that might lead an individual to be a rapist (eugenics).

In reality, neither are practical solutions, _both explanations_ are bound to
be contributing factors, but with one disregarding the other, we lose the
ability to draw rational conclusions and devise functioning systems.

