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posted by LaminatorX on Friday September 12 2014, @12:18PM   Printer-friendly
from the guilt-by-friend-of-a-friend dept.

Jeffrey Mervis reports at Science AAAS that in 1979 Valerie Barr handed out leaflets, stood behind tables at rallies, and baked cookies to support two left-wing groups, the Women’s Committee Against Genocide and the New Movement in Solidarity with Puerto Rican Independence. In August 2013 she took a leave from her position as tenured professor of computer science at Union College to join the National Science Foundation (NSF) as a program director in its Division of Undergraduate Education. And that’s when her 3-decade-old foray into political activism came back to haunt her. Federal investigators say that Barr lied during a routine background check about her affiliations with a domestic terrorist group that had ties to the two organizations to which she had belonged in the early 1980s. On 27 August, NSF said that her “dishonest conduct” compelled them to cancel her temporary assignment immediately, at the end of the first of what was expected to be a 2-year stint. Federal investigators say those groups were affiliated with a third, the May 19 Communist Organization (M19CO), that carried out a string of violent acts, including the killing of two police officers and a security guard during a failed 1981 robbery of a Brink’s truck near Nyack, New York.

Barr’s first background interview was held in November 2013, 3 months after she began working at NSF. During that session, Barr answered “no” when asked if she had ever been a member of an organization “dedicated to the use of violence” to overthrow the U.S. government or to prevent others from exercising their constitutional rights. In a second interview after again being asked if she had been a member of any organization that espoused violence, Barr was grilled for 4.5 hours about her knowledge of all three organizations and several individuals with ties to them, including the persons who tried to rob the Brink’s truck. Four people were found guilty of murder in that attack and sentenced to lengthy prison terms, including Kathy Boudin, who was released in 2003 and is now an adjunct assistant professor of social work at Columbia University. “I found out about the Brink’s robbery by hearing it on the news, and just like everybody else I was shocked,” she recalls.

Barr says she is thankful that Union College has welcomed her back with open arms and says she will soon resume her teaching and research activities. In addition, she regards her year at NSF as “a very rewarding experience in many ways.” Even so, she has written to her representatives in Congress and to NSF Director France Córdova asking them to examine what she labels an “Orwellian process” for vetting rotators like herself. “We volunteer to do this,” she wrote Córdova on 29 August. Until a better process is put in place, Barr says, “NSF runs the risk that many highly qualified scientists will not even consider serving as IPAs. That will be a tremendous loss.”

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 12 2014, @06:33PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 12 2014, @06:33PM (#92537)
    Hang on cowboy. >Lying doesn't matter if the science is sound. Depends on what you are lying about. Telling your spouse it wasn't an affair is one thing. Fudging data is an epic fail in science (and it is lying, so it does matter) I have seen people in the physics lab tweak their data on the fly to get better R values for their fits. The result is pretty much the same but the data looks nicer, no harm done right? Except it is academically dishonest. What about the time in a real lab where their tweak happens to be the wrong way and it shifts the conclusion. Now it appears that science is failing when it is really their fault. >And on the other hand if their work isn't sound, then they should get the boot quite regardless if they lie or not. Pretty much. Unless it is an "oh crap we forgot that variable, run the experiment again." That is just poor data acquisition, maybe poor experiment planning but I wouldn't say that is unsound, just unskilled. >Science is not about believing. Well it is believing until you experimentally prove it. >Science is about suspecting everything, repeating experiments and verifying results. Yes >Single data points are worthless. Yes but if most scientist were lying about results there would be problems. >Mistakes happen and yes, people lie, all the time. Yet science inevitably progresses. That's the power of science. This one is a wash. We cannot determine who the liars are and who is actually progressing science to see if there is any correlation. >Besides what the hell do persons political views have to do with their ability to conduct scientific research? They don't as long as they don't influence the science which they sometimes do. The influence might usually be in the decision of what to research, just so it can get funded at all. >So sickening, so United States of American... I don't think there is any exclusive lock out there. Bad science can be anywhere. Maybe you don't see it behind the cloud of lies ;-)
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 12 2014, @06:44PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 12 2014, @06:44PM (#92543)

    Posting no preview fail

    Hang on cowboy.

    >Lying doesn't matter if the science is sound.
    Depends on what you are lying about. Telling your spouse it wasn't an affair is one thing. Fudging data is an epic fail in science (and it is lying, so it does matter) I have seen people in the physics lab tweak their data on the fly to get better R values for their fits. The result is pretty much the same but the data looks nicer, no harm done right? Except it is academically dishonest. What about the time in a real lab where their tweak happens to be the wrong way and it shifts the conclusion. Now it appears that science is failing when it is really their fault.

    >And on the other hand if their work isn't sound, then they should get the boot quite regardless if they lie or not.
    Pretty much. Unless it is an "oh crap we forgot that variable, run the experiment again." That is just poor data acquisition, maybe poor experiment planning but I wouldn't say that is unsound, just unskilled.

    >Science is not about believing.
    Well it is believing until you experimentally prove it.

    >Science is about suspecting everything, repeating experiments and verifying results.
    Yes

    >Single data points are worthless.
    Yes but if most scientist were lying about results there would be problems.

    >Mistakes happen and yes, people lie, all the time. Yet science inevitably progresses. That's the power of science. This one is a wash. We cannot determine who the liars are and who is actually progressing science to see if there is any correlation.

    >Besides what the hell do persons political views have to do with their ability to conduct scientific research? They don't as long as they don't influence the science which they sometimes do. The influence might usually be in the decision of what to research, just so it can get funded at all.

    >So sickening, so United States of American...
    I don't think there is any exclusive lock out there. Bad science can be anywhere. Maybe you don't see it behind the cloud of lies ;-)

  • (Score: 2) by khallow on Friday September 12 2014, @09:10PM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday September 12 2014, @09:10PM (#92578) Journal

    Telling your spouse it wasn't an affair is one thing.

    You do realize that the interview question is pretty much along these lines. It had nothing to do with her scientific integrity.