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Research Alert: Martin Nowak is the same Harvard professor who invited a convicted child rapist by the name of Jeffrey Epstein onto the Harvard University camp

Research Alert: Martin Nowak is the same Harvard professor who invited a convicted child rapist by the name of Jeffrey Epstein onto the Harvard University campus and gave him an office and a flattering web page on his program's website for several years until victims of sexual abuse at Harvard forced him to take it down. This article was probably written to defend MIT president Rafael Reif's decision to mark Epstein's post-conviction donations to MIT as anonymous. While Epstein was still alive, he was paying Nowak to publish articles about how punishment usually serves "no noble purpose," presumably because Epstein was still scared that he could be re-indicted on sex-trafficking charges despite attorney Allen Dershowitz' heroic efforts to secure an immunity deal for Epstein that protected him from future prosecution ... as well as all of his co-conspirators (think all of the professors who visited him on "Pedophile Isle"). In light of Epstein's "facilitation" of the mega-donations from billionaires Glenn Dubin and Les Wexner to Harvard, this article certainly strikes a resonant chord: https://www.chicagojewishnews.com/2019/08/jeffrey-epsteins-jewish-enablers/ https://www.chicagojewishnews.com/2019/08/jeffrey-epsteins-j...

crowf 6y ago
So he is an immoral person That shouldn't effect his research abilities. I can still enjoying watching House of Cards or listening to Soviet music.
- CobrastanJorji 6y ago
  Ethics tie directly to the quality of research. Good acting is good acting regardless of whether the actor is acting morally, but research can be manipulated by an unethical actor in myriad ways. It's frankly quite disturbing how much trust there is in the research process and how little that trust is deserved. There's a broad spectrum of potential bad behavior impacting the results, ranging from straight up faking results on one end to p-hacking to just failing to publish relevant negative results or undesired results. An agenda can affect research in many, many ways, and it's absolutely relevant to whether you should trust a paper. It shouldn't be that way. Not needing trust is rather the point of the scientific process. But it is.
  - DharmaPolice 6y ago
    I agree with your points about trust in the process. However I think the ethics violation needs to be somewhat related to the research (or at least related to dishonesty generally). Getting drunk and beating up your spouse is certainly unethical but would not (by itself) mean your research is unsound.
    - ben_w 6y ago
      It would imply a lack of self-control, a lack of awareness of broader social norms, or both [0]. Either individually means they are at risk of breaking the conventions that good quality work relies on. [0] with caveats for convoluted circumstances such as a consensual BDSM scene where the drunkenness and the beating was negotiated and agreed to while sober, but didn’t seem to be the sort of thing you were talking about
      - eecc 6y ago
        Great, I guess you’re out of the businesses of programming and mathematics... after all Gerhard Gentzen was an enthusiastic Nazi. Let alone von Braun
        ben_w 6y ago
        Firstly: field != person. Secondly: There’s a reason why I wrote “social norms” — although I’ve honestly never heard of Gentzen, I knew someone would think of something along those lines. If one is part of a society that does or supports doing things which we consider to be evil, the social norm of that society is inclusive of that evil, and one who openly and enthusiastically supports that evil is still following their society’s social norms when they do so. Social norms are what keeps science healthy — without good social norms, people would’ve responded to p-hacking etc. by saying “great, let’s all do it!” rather than trying to fix anything. The importance of comparison with social norms is also sort of reason why people aren’t thrown into insane asylums for claiming that the literal creator of the universe has personally ordered them to eat each week a small token of unleavened bread which have been magically transformed into human flesh by a prayer in honour of the last meal the supreme being had with his mates that one time he took human form right before he prearranged his own temporary execution in order to give his non-mortal other self an excuse to not put people’s immortal souls into eternal damnation by default. Also the broad reason why Washington is not heavily criticised for owning slaves. None of this is to say that evil social norms are not to be challenged or fought against, just that it’s really really unusual to have someone who can both do that and avoid taking down Chesterton Fences.
- GauntletWizard 6y ago
  Immorality is a proxy of judgement and poor definitions. The most cogent definition of “Immoral” or argument that someone is “Immoral” would be contrasting how the subject’s definition of “Good” differs from your own or the common view. Very few people go out seeking to do evil. Most seek to do good, but by their own definition (which can be selfish, misguided, or outright vile). Some simply don’t care; Their absence of moral judgement (amorality) can lead to many immoral actions when their desires come into contact with others interests, but for the most part society is organized to promote the idea that your own best interests are best served by acting in the common good. If this sounds circular - It is. There’s no definition of morality from axiom[1]. Studies are (where possible) Double-Blind for a reason. The judgement of a researcher obviously affects study design. The goals of a researcher affect the way data is interpreted and presented in subtle and non-subtle ways. That’s not to mention the possibility of academic misconduct or outright fraud, which is axiomatically related to poor moral behavior. [1] In actuality, there are many, but most have obvious flaws and contradictions.
- polytely 6y ago
  You can, but I found it very helpful to know that upvoting this boosts the signal of someone who I despise. So now I can just skip reading this.
- MrRiddle 6y ago
  You mean: “I’ll toss him a few coins if I like his show, I don’t care if he’s a paedophile”?
  - PunchTornado 6y ago
    you mean you wouldn't read good research or watch good art because the creator does something bad in his private life?
    - MrRiddle 6y ago
      No, I mean I wouldn’t pay them. I would try to not benefit them in any way.
- alisonkisk 6y ago
  House of Cards is fiction. Is this research acceptable as a work of fiction? OK, sure.
  - mattkrause 6y ago
    Kevin Spacey is real though....
imgabe 6y ago
Research should be evaluated on its own merits, not on the character of the person who wrote it. It's the most basic logical fallacy there is: Ad Hominem.
- alisonkisk 6y ago
  There not what ad hominem means. Ad hominem is irrelevant attacks on character, not putting statements in context to assess credibility.
  - travisoneill1 6y ago
    There is no general "character". There is nothing stopping a nobel prize winning physicist from also being a pedophile. These things are just not related.
    - selfishgene 6y ago
      Are you suggesting that we should administer IQ tests to everyone currently serving time in prison in order to identify which "geniuses" should be released so that they can pursue nobel-prize winning careers in physics instead? "Punishment usually serves no noble purpose" is something that Martin Nowak has argued with members of the press, at a time when Mr. Epstein was scared that he could be re-indicted on the felony sex-trafficking charges, which in his case given the egregiousness of his misconduct would have almost certainly led to serving a life sentence in federal prison. From your comment, I'm now starting to wonder if the word "noble" was accidentally misspelled in the Science magazine interview quoted above.
      - imgabe 6y ago
        You realize people are more than just one thing right? If someone won a Nobel prize for physics, and then murdered someone, the murder doesn't make the physics wrong. You understand that, right? Like, if we discovered tomorrow that Isaac Newton was a pedophile, the theory of gravity is still something important and still works. You can hold people accountable for one action and still recognize that other things they did may have been correct. You don't have to hold an all-or-nothing approach like releasing murderers who might be physics geniuses.
Siira 6y ago
I don’t see how this article defends Epstein at all. It’s a simple observation that sometimes being modest with your good deeds pays off better than boasting.
- selfishgene 6y ago
  You may not be aware but the issue of anonymous donations has been a hot topic on the MIT campus after MIT president Rafael Reif refused to stop taking anonymous donations in response to students who made this demand during protests that were calling for his resignation. It has been said by the US Supreme Court that sunlight is the best disinfectant, and there are now a few international organizations out there which are fighting hard for increased transparency ... like GlobalWitness: https://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/corruption-and-money-laundering/anonymous-company-owners/dont-take-it-trust/ https://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/corruption-and-mo... Would not be surprised one day to learn that Alex Acosta received, for example, an unrecorded beneficial interest in real estate owned by Mr. Epstein in exchange for that "sweetheart deal," if the appointment by Trump to labor secretary was not reward enough.
  - alisonkisk 6y ago
    People are confusing terms here. If the recipient knows the donor but the pubic doesn't, that's confidential not anonymous.
    - selfishgene 6y ago
      That is definitely a useful distinction to make.
  - NoImmatureAdHom 6y ago
    MIT shouldn't stop taking anonymous donations, anonymous donations are great. It sounds like you are, or were, at MIT. Remember that being able to refuse free money is indicative of being in a position of great privilege relative to other universities. And that position of privilege is built on lots of money, much of it anonymous. Most people at most institutions would jump at free, anonymous cash to do science. And rightly so.
NoImmatureAdHom 6y ago
You seem driven by some personal interest rather than reason. I'm in the field. Nowak's research has been field-changing. The Hoffman et al. paper is an excellent paper. The assertion that this article "was written to defend MIT president Rafael Reif's decision..." is implausible to the point where it clearly indicates you have no idea what's going on. There is no payoff for making results go one way or another, for anyone here. It's not a study on whether red wine is good for you that's funded by donations from the alcohol industry. Nobody "pays" Nowak to publish anything, though they do fund his work--and to great effect. What's more, taking money from bad people isn't ipso facto a bad or dangerous thing. Taking Epstein's money is, on basically any reading of the situation, just fine. Epstein gets nothing from these anonymous donations, and the world gets more science. Though pedophiles are one of the last groups in our society it is A-OK to abuse without limits, I would point out that it is possible for Epstein to be both a pedophile and someone genuinely interested in advancing science for the benefit of all, or out of a sense of wonder.
- corey_moncure 6y ago
  >taking money from bad people isn't ipso facto a bad or dangerous thing What makes a 'bad person', in your view?
  - NoImmatureAdHom 6y ago
    Haha...I think that varies a lot with the circumstance and my emotional state! For the sake of the argument, it would more precisely be "taking money from anyone you or others might label a bad person". We don't need an objective standard, it can be conditional on a time and person.
- throwaway2245 6y ago
  Someone whose wikipedia page now reads: "Nowak played a role in substantiating Epstein's false claims to MIT administrators that he had given tens of millions of dollars to Harvard" shouldn't be cited as an impartial authority on anonymous donations. It's relevant.

crowf 6y ago

So he is an immoral person That shouldn't effect his research abilities. I can still enjoying watching House of Cards or listening to Soviet music.

CobrastanJorji 6y ago
Ethics tie directly to the quality of research. Good acting is good acting regardless of whether the actor is acting morally, but research can be manipulated by an unethical actor in myriad ways. It's frankly quite disturbing how much trust there is in the research process and how little that trust is deserved. There's a broad spectrum of potential bad behavior impacting the results, ranging from straight up faking results on one end to p-hacking to just failing to publish relevant negative results or undesired results. An agenda can affect research in many, many ways, and it's absolutely relevant to whether you should trust a paper. It shouldn't be that way. Not needing trust is rather the point of the scientific process. But it is.
- DharmaPolice 6y ago
  I agree with your points about trust in the process. However I think the ethics violation needs to be somewhat related to the research (or at least related to dishonesty generally). Getting drunk and beating up your spouse is certainly unethical but would not (by itself) mean your research is unsound.
  - ben_w 6y ago
    It would imply a lack of self-control, a lack of awareness of broader social norms, or both [0]. Either individually means they are at risk of breaking the conventions that good quality work relies on. [0] with caveats for convoluted circumstances such as a consensual BDSM scene where the drunkenness and the beating was negotiated and agreed to while sober, but didn’t seem to be the sort of thing you were talking about
    - eecc 6y ago
      Great, I guess you’re out of the businesses of programming and mathematics... after all Gerhard Gentzen was an enthusiastic Nazi. Let alone von Braun
      - ben_w 6y ago
        Firstly: field != person. Secondly: There’s a reason why I wrote “social norms” — although I’ve honestly never heard of Gentzen, I knew someone would think of something along those lines. If one is part of a society that does or supports doing things which we consider to be evil, the social norm of that society is inclusive of that evil, and one who openly and enthusiastically supports that evil is still following their society’s social norms when they do so. Social norms are what keeps science healthy — without good social norms, people would’ve responded to p-hacking etc. by saying “great, let’s all do it!” rather than trying to fix anything. The importance of comparison with social norms is also sort of reason why people aren’t thrown into insane asylums for claiming that the literal creator of the universe has personally ordered them to eat each week a small token of unleavened bread which have been magically transformed into human flesh by a prayer in honour of the last meal the supreme being had with his mates that one time he took human form right before he prearranged his own temporary execution in order to give his non-mortal other self an excuse to not put people’s immortal souls into eternal damnation by default. Also the broad reason why Washington is not heavily criticised for owning slaves. None of this is to say that evil social norms are not to be challenged or fought against, just that it’s really really unusual to have someone who can both do that and avoid taking down Chesterton Fences.
GauntletWizard 6y ago
Immorality is a proxy of judgement and poor definitions. The most cogent definition of “Immoral” or argument that someone is “Immoral” would be contrasting how the subject’s definition of “Good” differs from your own or the common view. Very few people go out seeking to do evil. Most seek to do good, but by their own definition (which can be selfish, misguided, or outright vile). Some simply don’t care; Their absence of moral judgement (amorality) can lead to many immoral actions when their desires come into contact with others interests, but for the most part society is organized to promote the idea that your own best interests are best served by acting in the common good. If this sounds circular - It is. There’s no definition of morality from axiom[1]. Studies are (where possible) Double-Blind for a reason. The judgement of a researcher obviously affects study design. The goals of a researcher affect the way data is interpreted and presented in subtle and non-subtle ways. That’s not to mention the possibility of academic misconduct or outright fraud, which is axiomatically related to poor moral behavior. [1] In actuality, there are many, but most have obvious flaws and contradictions.
polytely 6y ago
You can, but I found it very helpful to know that upvoting this boosts the signal of someone who I despise. So now I can just skip reading this.
MrRiddle 6y ago
You mean: “I’ll toss him a few coins if I like his show, I don’t care if he’s a paedophile”?
- PunchTornado 6y ago
  you mean you wouldn't read good research or watch good art because the creator does something bad in his private life?
  - MrRiddle 6y ago
    No, I mean I wouldn’t pay them. I would try to not benefit them in any way.
alisonkisk 6y ago
House of Cards is fiction. Is this research acceptable as a work of fiction? OK, sure.
- mattkrause 6y ago
  Kevin Spacey is real though....

imgabe 6y ago

Research should be evaluated on its own merits, not on the character of the person who wrote it. It's the most basic logical fallacy there is: Ad Hominem.

alisonkisk 6y ago
There not what ad hominem means. Ad hominem is irrelevant attacks on character, not putting statements in context to assess credibility.
- travisoneill1 6y ago
  There is no general "character". There is nothing stopping a nobel prize winning physicist from also being a pedophile. These things are just not related.
  - selfishgene 6y ago
    Are you suggesting that we should administer IQ tests to everyone currently serving time in prison in order to identify which "geniuses" should be released so that they can pursue nobel-prize winning careers in physics instead? "Punishment usually serves no noble purpose" is something that Martin Nowak has argued with members of the press, at a time when Mr. Epstein was scared that he could be re-indicted on the felony sex-trafficking charges, which in his case given the egregiousness of his misconduct would have almost certainly led to serving a life sentence in federal prison. From your comment, I'm now starting to wonder if the word "noble" was accidentally misspelled in the Science magazine interview quoted above.
    - imgabe 6y ago
      You realize people are more than just one thing right? If someone won a Nobel prize for physics, and then murdered someone, the murder doesn't make the physics wrong. You understand that, right? Like, if we discovered tomorrow that Isaac Newton was a pedophile, the theory of gravity is still something important and still works. You can hold people accountable for one action and still recognize that other things they did may have been correct. You don't have to hold an all-or-nothing approach like releasing murderers who might be physics geniuses.

Siira 6y ago

I don’t see how this article defends Epstein at all. It’s a simple observation that sometimes being modest with your good deeds pays off better than boasting.

selfishgene 6y ago
You may not be aware but the issue of anonymous donations has been a hot topic on the MIT campus after MIT president Rafael Reif refused to stop taking anonymous donations in response to students who made this demand during protests that were calling for his resignation. It has been said by the US Supreme Court that sunlight is the best disinfectant, and there are now a few international organizations out there which are fighting hard for increased transparency ... like GlobalWitness: https://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/corruption-and-money-laundering/anonymous-company-owners/dont-take-it-trust/ https://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/corruption-and-mo... Would not be surprised one day to learn that Alex Acosta received, for example, an unrecorded beneficial interest in real estate owned by Mr. Epstein in exchange for that "sweetheart deal," if the appointment by Trump to labor secretary was not reward enough.
- alisonkisk 6y ago
  People are confusing terms here. If the recipient knows the donor but the pubic doesn't, that's confidential not anonymous.
  - selfishgene 6y ago
    That is definitely a useful distinction to make.
- NoImmatureAdHom 6y ago
  MIT shouldn't stop taking anonymous donations, anonymous donations are great. It sounds like you are, or were, at MIT. Remember that being able to refuse free money is indicative of being in a position of great privilege relative to other universities. And that position of privilege is built on lots of money, much of it anonymous. Most people at most institutions would jump at free, anonymous cash to do science. And rightly so.

NoImmatureAdHom 6y ago

You seem driven by some personal interest rather than reason. I'm in the field. Nowak's research has been field-changing. The Hoffman et al. paper is an excellent paper. The assertion that this article "was written to defend MIT president Rafael Reif's decision..." is implausible to the point where it clearly indicates you have no idea what's going on. There is no payoff for making results go one way or another, for anyone here. It's not a study on whether red wine is good for you that's funded by donations from the alcohol industry. Nobody "pays" Nowak to publish anything, though they do fund his work--and to great effect. What's more, taking money from bad people isn't ipso facto a bad or dangerous thing. Taking Epstein's money is, on basically any reading of the situation, just fine. Epstein gets nothing from these anonymous donations, and the world gets more science. Though pedophiles are one of the last groups in our society it is A-OK to abuse without limits, I would point out that it is possible for Epstein to be both a pedophile and someone genuinely interested in advancing science for the benefit of all, or out of a sense of wonder.

corey_moncure 6y ago
>taking money from bad people isn't ipso facto a bad or dangerous thing What makes a 'bad person', in your view?
- NoImmatureAdHom 6y ago
  Haha...I think that varies a lot with the circumstance and my emotional state! For the sake of the argument, it would more precisely be "taking money from anyone you or others might label a bad person". We don't need an objective standard, it can be conditional on a time and person.
throwaway2245 6y ago
Someone whose wikipedia page now reads: "Nowak played a role in substantiating Epstein's false claims to MIT administrators that he had given tens of millions of dollars to Harvard" shouldn't be cited as an impartial authority on anonymous donations. It's relevant.