NSF Funds Researcher Who Was Sanctioned for Misconduct

Can this possibly be true? Nature reports

Days after being sanctioned for research misconduct, bubble-fusion researcher Rusi Taleyarkhan was back in business — with a $185,000 grant from the US National Science Foundation (NSF).

More on the Taleyarkhan mess from writedit, Janet Stemwedel and Uncertain Chad.
Words fail.

Repost: Eye on the Prize…

I have a whole bunch of reasons I was thinking about an old post of mine in the last few days. Politics, mostly, but also some blog topics floating around here or there. Rather than frame it my way, I’ll just put up something I posted on June 13, 2007.

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There’s been some interesting hoopla in the last couple of days sparked by Zuska’s post examining gender discrimination in academia by way of excoriating those who ignore their own inherent privileges. The ensuing discussion became vehement and led Rob Knop to post his own examination of privilege and, more importantly, the strategy of demonizing one’s natural allies that some perceive in Zuska’s approach. I’ve also been reading Chembark’s little rant suggesting that poor stewardship of the public’s (grant) money verges on ethical misconduct. And YoungFemaleScientist expresses a common enough frustration with the dismal prospects for scientific transition. There’s an older one from Adventures in Ethics and Science on gender equity in science too. Finally, the situation at MIT with the tenure denial of James Sherley (tip to Dynamics of Cats) has been picked up by both Nature and Science in recent issues.
All of this has me thinking about agendas, advancing the same and styles of discourse and approach. Your Humble Narrator must confess to agenda, really, who doesn’t have a series of agendas? In terms of the future and present conduct of biomedical research science, most specifically in YHN’s chosen field, I have…opinions.