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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 sa

by gojomo 6y ago

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 6y ago
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_case_and_conviction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Stewart#Stock_trading_c... https://www.google.com/search?q=harvard+endowment&oq=harvard+endowment https://www.google.com/search?q=harvard+endowment&oq=harvard...
- alexryan 6y ago
  if "Humans are known to compromise their ethics for relatively small amounts of money", how does transferring the ability to choose how money is spent from "humans who have money" to "humans who do not" solve the ethics problem?
- s1artibartfast 6y ago
  >getting world-renowned researchers to validate his crackpot theories of racial eugenics due to his wealth. Do you have more information on this? Is there evidence that funding recipients Martin Nowak and George Church actually had their area of study directed by Epstein, or that the science was fundamentally flawed. On a conceptual level, there is no reason that evil people cant use dirty money to fund good academics researchers that they happen to find interesting.
  - stainforth 6y ago
    Yes, yes there is. Corrupt people should not be able to buy legitimacy.
    - unishark 6y ago
      So hypothetically, people are dying from some easily-cured disease (this part is not the hypothetical), and a corrupt person wants to save their lives in order to "buy legitimacy". We must righteously prevent that person from doing good in the world, because it will complicate people's view of the person? Basically you're proposing to do an evil thing for a "greater good".
      - grugagag 6y ago
        Hypothetically that corrupt person might want to engage in eugenics of some sort. Let’s simply keep dirty money out of legit spaces or we might find mafia as a benefactor in some cases. As some mentioned here, the money Epstein donated was a drop in the bucket and insignificant but to him the ifluence he got in exchange was priceless
      - 6y ago
nlosti 6y ago
Sure, okay, agreed that 6 million is not much on a global scale. But you can't be serious if you think 6 million in the hands of one person can't be used for some serious damage. You won't be able to buy a country but you could, i dont know, buy a really nice lab, and then use it to research eugenics or something. Not a big fan of these 'drop in the bucket' arguments. A breakthrough scientific idea can cost anywhere between 0 dollars and a billion dollars. We don't want that breakthrough to be in the field of eugenics.
- gojomo 6y ago
  Of course $6 million can do a lot of damage in the wrong hands. But here, it was already in the wrong hands. Was there actual damage done by transferring it to a legitimate research group, doing real research, that had to pass many levels of review (whatever its funding)? If not given to a Harvard research lab, might that $6 million not have done even worse damage elsewhere?
- auntienomen 6y ago
  You can't buy a really nice lab for $6M. You can buy a small, underfunded one, and run it for a couple years. $6M is the equivalent of a few McDonald's franchises.
- tigerbelt 6y ago
  You are all naive as babes if you think you can trust that Epstein wasn’t directing research unrelated to the topics announced to the public. We are talking about a billionaire EVIL villain. The labs were absolutely compiling supplemental research or other dirty deeds. Hands are 10x dirtier than public will ever know. This is state intelligence not psycho playboy.
Ar-Curunir 6y ago
Reputation-laundering is a thing, you know?
biophysboy 6y ago
For those unfamiliar with academic research budgets, my lab's NIH budget was recently renewed and totaled to 2 million. So in the same ballpark as this. 2 million is not that much. When you add up research assistantship labor costs, scientific equipment and consumable reagents/materials, it depletes faster than you'd like. And our lab is quite small (~5 students); large ivy league research labs often have a couple dozen people.
joe_the_user 6y ago
Epstein funded his pet research areas, yes. But all sources of funding including government grants do the same, one way or another Some grant-making-organization and state and private foundations now may have degenerated to the point that they are nothing but schemes for financing someone's pet ideas. But I will claim that at their best, they are better than that. It seems like it's fashionable to dump on bureaucracies making decisions based on ostensibly objective criteria and assume that their decisions are no better than the pet of ideas of utterly vile people. But I'll stand against fashion and claim that isn't true.
atq2119 6y ago
$10 million may not be a lot for Harvard, but it's still a lot of money for the individual researcher it research group.

by gojomo 6y ago

teachrdan 6y ago

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_case_and_conviction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Stewart#Stock_trading_c... https://www.google.com/search?q=harvard+endowment&oq=harvard+endowment https://www.google.com/search?q=harvard+endowment&oq=harvard...

alexryan 6y ago
if "Humans are known to compromise their ethics for relatively small amounts of money", how does transferring the ability to choose how money is spent from "humans who have money" to "humans who do not" solve the ethics problem?
s1artibartfast 6y ago
>getting world-renowned researchers to validate his crackpot theories of racial eugenics due to his wealth. Do you have more information on this? Is there evidence that funding recipients Martin Nowak and George Church actually had their area of study directed by Epstein, or that the science was fundamentally flawed. On a conceptual level, there is no reason that evil people cant use dirty money to fund good academics researchers that they happen to find interesting.
- stainforth 6y ago
  Yes, yes there is. Corrupt people should not be able to buy legitimacy.
  - unishark 6y ago
    So hypothetically, people are dying from some easily-cured disease (this part is not the hypothetical), and a corrupt person wants to save their lives in order to "buy legitimacy". We must righteously prevent that person from doing good in the world, because it will complicate people's view of the person? Basically you're proposing to do an evil thing for a "greater good".
    - grugagag 6y ago
      Hypothetically that corrupt person might want to engage in eugenics of some sort. Let’s simply keep dirty money out of legit spaces or we might find mafia as a benefactor in some cases. As some mentioned here, the money Epstein donated was a drop in the bucket and insignificant but to him the ifluence he got in exchange was priceless
    - 6y ago

nlosti 6y ago

Sure, okay, agreed that 6 million is not much on a global scale. But you can't be serious if you think 6 million in the hands of one person can't be used for some serious damage. You won't be able to buy a country but you could, i dont know, buy a really nice lab, and then use it to research eugenics or something. Not a big fan of these 'drop in the bucket' arguments. A breakthrough scientific idea can cost anywhere between 0 dollars and a billion dollars. We don't want that breakthrough to be in the field of eugenics.

gojomo 6y ago
Of course $6 million can do a lot of damage in the wrong hands. But here, it was already in the wrong hands. Was there actual damage done by transferring it to a legitimate research group, doing real research, that had to pass many levels of review (whatever its funding)? If not given to a Harvard research lab, might that $6 million not have done even worse damage elsewhere?
auntienomen 6y ago
You can't buy a really nice lab for $6M. You can buy a small, underfunded one, and run it for a couple years. $6M is the equivalent of a few McDonald's franchises.
tigerbelt 6y ago
You are all naive as babes if you think you can trust that Epstein wasn’t directing research unrelated to the topics announced to the public. We are talking about a billionaire EVIL villain. The labs were absolutely compiling supplemental research or other dirty deeds. Hands are 10x dirtier than public will ever know. This is state intelligence not psycho playboy.

Ar-Curunir 6y ago

Reputation-laundering is a thing, you know?

biophysboy 6y ago

For those unfamiliar with academic research budgets, my lab's NIH budget was recently renewed and totaled to 2 million. So in the same ballpark as this. 2 million is not that much. When you add up research assistantship labor costs, scientific equipment and consumable reagents/materials, it depletes faster than you'd like. And our lab is quite small (~5 students); large ivy league research labs often have a couple dozen people.

joe_the_user 6y ago

Epstein funded his pet research areas, yes. But all sources of funding including government grants do the same, one way or another Some grant-making-organization and state and private foundations now may have degenerated to the point that they are nothing but schemes for financing someone's pet ideas. But I will claim that at their best, they are better than that. It seems like it's fashionable to dump on bureaucracies making decisions based on ostensibly objective criteria and assume that their decisions are no better than the pet of ideas of utterly vile people. But I'll stand against fashion and claim that isn't true.

atq2119 6y ago

$10 million may not be a lot for Harvard, but it's still a lot of money for the individual researcher it research group.