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In one set of articles OpenAg is a therenos grade scam with everything faked, all plants purchased instead of grown, etc. In another set of articles, they're i

by nullc 7y ago

In one set of articles OpenAg is a therenos grade scam with everything faked, all plants purchased instead of grown, etc. In another set of articles, they're in trouble because the nitrate levels in their waste water are too high: https://www.wbur.org/edify/2019/09/20/open-agriculture-initiative-middleton-harper https://www.wbur.org/edify/2019/09/20/open-agriculture-initi... So which is it? A total sham or a polluter? These positions sound incompatible.

nrp 7y ago
These don't appear to be incompatible or mutually exclusive claims. Like Theranos, it seems there was actual research, development, and small scale production work going on at OpenAg. Also like Theranos, it seems that work was nowhere near producing the results that were claimed by leadership, leading to falsifying results for the sake of publicity and funding. This means it's totally possible that the unsuccessful research they were doing was outputting wastewater containing excessive nitrogen levels while also misleading the public, press, and investors with faked demos.
Donald 7y ago
Why not both? It sounds like OpenAg engineers were trying various solutions for the device, but by the end of the effort, demo culture prevailed and the end-results were faked. At some point their staff decided to dump their concentrated nitrogen solution as waste water.
defap 7y ago
It's alleged that they made misleading claims, but it's not like the whole operation was a complete fabrication. There were plants and machines and whatnot, as can be seen in several articles on tis topic. So it's plausible that they illegally dumped wastewater as part of whatever it is they're doing that isn't working as advertised.
- nullc 7y ago
  Fair enough, though at some point it starts becoming a bit hard to distinguish between what OpenAg was doing and what a significant fraction of all demos do. It's typical for some amount of 'rigging' to exist in demos, particularly because Murphy's law has an ugly way of rearing its head. At a very minimum, almost everyone goes over the demo many times and fix or avoid any issue that causes a failure or questions that can't be easily and decisively answered. I really did get the impression from the first articles I read on OpenAG that the claim was that they were doing absolutely nothing and that it was 100% faked. The article on the nitrates discharge was surprising to me in light of that. I'm perhaps a bit jaded also by seeing how much computer science / signal processing academic publication is essentially fake. "The desktop version doesn't really exist but we have a basement version doing stuff" seems like a fairly mild level of deception compared to many other things I've encountered.
totemandtoken 7y ago
OpenAg had several projects - a Personal Food Computer, which is what I believe has the allegations of not being performant as claimed and another project called the Personal Food Server, which is where I imagine such a high discharge of waste water would come from. In any case, organizations can be failing in many ways simultaneously. "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." - Leo Tolstoy edit: I wrote 'image' instead of 'imagine'

by nullc 7y ago

nrp 7y ago

These don't appear to be incompatible or mutually exclusive claims. Like Theranos, it seems there was actual research, development, and small scale production work going on at OpenAg. Also like Theranos, it seems that work was nowhere near producing the results that were claimed by leadership, leading to falsifying results for the sake of publicity and funding. This means it's totally possible that the unsuccessful research they were doing was outputting wastewater containing excessive nitrogen levels while also misleading the public, press, and investors with faked demos.

Donald 7y ago

Why not both? It sounds like OpenAg engineers were trying various solutions for the device, but by the end of the effort, demo culture prevailed and the end-results were faked. At some point their staff decided to dump their concentrated nitrogen solution as waste water.

defap 7y ago

It's alleged that they made misleading claims, but it's not like the whole operation was a complete fabrication. There were plants and machines and whatnot, as can be seen in several articles on tis topic. So it's plausible that they illegally dumped wastewater as part of whatever it is they're doing that isn't working as advertised.

nullc 7y ago
Fair enough, though at some point it starts becoming a bit hard to distinguish between what OpenAg was doing and what a significant fraction of all demos do. It's typical for some amount of 'rigging' to exist in demos, particularly because Murphy's law has an ugly way of rearing its head. At a very minimum, almost everyone goes over the demo many times and fix or avoid any issue that causes a failure or questions that can't be easily and decisively answered. I really did get the impression from the first articles I read on OpenAG that the claim was that they were doing absolutely nothing and that it was 100% faked. The article on the nitrates discharge was surprising to me in light of that. I'm perhaps a bit jaded also by seeing how much computer science / signal processing academic publication is essentially fake. "The desktop version doesn't really exist but we have a basement version doing stuff" seems like a fairly mild level of deception compared to many other things I've encountered.

totemandtoken 7y ago

OpenAg had several projects - a Personal Food Computer, which is what I believe has the allegations of not being performant as claimed and another project called the Personal Food Server, which is where I imagine such a high discharge of waste water would come from. In any case, organizations can be failing in many ways simultaneously. "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." - Leo Tolstoy edit: I wrote 'image' instead of 'imagine'