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by pryce 2468 days ago
Her point is that this tech was outdated in 2001. Her point is that the people funding and supporting this research were mislead across multiple ways:

* misled about state of the existing tech

* outrageous and unsubstantiated claims of its performance

* literally faking results in front of investors and stakeholders

Further info Taber links to this account[1] from Babak Babakinejad, an MIT Media lab research scientist who describes an environment of research based on clear fabrication, and one in which the lies extended to the director colluding with MIT Health and Safety to actively mislead Environmental Protection Drinking Water Program officials about safety checks.

> What horrified me the most was that Mr Harper, as director and operator of the permit, actively worked with senior staff at MIT Health & Safety to mislead the Environmental Protection Drinking Water Program officials about his team’s activities.

The behaviour described in these threads demonstrates repeated, rampant, widespread violations of R&D integrity, without which MIT loses its capability to perform research and development at all.

It is not dramatic to say that if fabrications are allowed to to be called research, and a conspiracy of lies can dismantle safety checks, the whole lab is in dire jeopardy.

[1] https://twitter.com/flypolitics/status/1175099839236886528

1 comments

Some small blame has to be on the people funding this, doesn’t sound like an elaborate fraud but a seeming utter lack of due diligence.