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Marshall Brain died hours after alleging retaliation at NC State
- gnabgib 2y agoRelated Marshall Brain has died (322 points, 2 days ago, 157 points) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42228759 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42228759
- HappyKasper 2y agoYes - at that time, the ethics complaint and retaliation allegations weren't public yet. This new article adds a lot to the story.
- Terr_ 2y agoThat's weird, the link to wral.com now redirects to 404 page.
- genter 2y agoFrom what I remember, it didn't say much.
- tedunangst 2y agoPrevious submission link is dead, too. After two days.
- khazhoux 2y agoIt disappeared from HN front page within a couple of hours, even with over 150 points, and I couldn't find it again in first 5 pages before I gave up. HN ranking algo is really weird that way. You'd expect things to slide downwards, but they just teleport to page 10 or whatever.
- dang 2y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42228759 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42228759 spent 9 hours on HN's front page. The reasons why posts drop in rank are explained at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html.
- neonate 2y agohttps://web.archive.org/web/20241124180243/https://www.wral.com/news/local/nc-state-marshall-brain-dies-november-2024/ https://web.archive.org/web/20241124180243/https://www.wral....
- walterbell 2y agoWRAL TV deleted both their web page and Youtube video clip? Supposedly the video transcript quoted a student saying that it was the second shooting on campus that night. Did WRAL have an update on the story?
- BJones12 2y ago> Brain’s complaint contained allegations of wrongdoing... regarding repurposing the Engineering Entrepreneurs Program meeting space to accommodate a new hire.. “What came back was a sickening nuclear bomb of retaliation the likes of which could not be believed” "Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre's_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre's_law
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- angled 2y agoMy thoughts exactly. It was all about campus real estate! A room with a view.
- dgfitz 2y agoI don’t understand how it escalated to this?
- Clubber 2y agoThis is funny because it's so accurate. I worked a year or two in college doing IT support for the College of Business in my final years of school. The prior boss who had actual experience in running IT departments was run out (fired) and replaced by an economics professor who had no idea what he was doing. The economics professor lead the charge in running out his predecessor. I don't know the reason but it was pretty ugly and everyone in IT support had zero respect for the economics professor. I came in after the fact so I had no skin in that game. As an aside, every professor got a brand new $4000 Dell every year because if the college didn't spend its budget, it would get less money the next year. Most of these professors just used Office to do their lesson plans and that's it. This was in the 1990s and it was a huge waste of money. I would imagine it's much worse now. That probably had something to do with it. I recently read a quote that paraphrased went like, "bureaucracies care about following procedure over outcomes." I hope US universities get fixed. Their current state is a great disservice to the future of the country.
- wyldfire 2y ago> “My career has been destroyed by multiple administrators at NCSU who united together and completely ignored the EthicsPoint System and its promises to employees,” Brain wrote. Well, lesson learned. Take your ethical concerns to the public/press instead. The retaliation would be just as swift as it is with The Process. Or: abandon ship and leave the system to consume itself.
- emmelaich 2y ago> lesson learned I get your (good) point but it could be better put considering he's dead.
- wyldfire 2y agoThis is a lesson that everyone at this university just learned. Maybe it's even a lesson for other workplaces with similar reporting programs too.
- dmix 2y agoHe probably cared more about losing a job he loved, the startup community he was fostering in NC, and his https://ecoprt.com/ https://ecoprt.com/ project than about publicly fighting a battle over a minor ethical complaint about a shady hire... at least in the early days before it snowballed.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> Take your ethical concerns to the public/press instead Or at least above the heads of the people who are fucking around. Press might be seen as vindictive. But a sharp letter to the trustees of the university, possibly even some political offices, would not be out of place.
- xeeeeeeeeeeenu 2y agoThe website is geoblocked in the EU. Mirror: https://archive.ph/R39hz https://archive.ph/R39hz
- stego-tech 2y ago> Kashani said Brain submitted numerous complaints through the EthicsPoint system and said tensions arose because Brain didn’t “play the political game” through his questioning of higher-ranking administrators. This right here is why I scoff at “anonymous reporting systems” or stuff like EthicsPoint, for the simple reason that the only ethics that ultimately matter in an organization are those of everyone above you, and those individuals have a vested interest in preserving their political capital over acting or behaving ethically. It’s disgusting and reprehensible if true, but it’s sadly not surprising. Those of us who behave ethically are little more than prey to those whose moral compasses are fungible.
- dmix 2y agoIt doesn't sound like the process was anonymous, as it implies she found out it was him pretty quickly and worked to close ranks against him. Kinda defeats the purpose but I guess in any small organization it's probably easy to figure out who it is.
- dreamcompiler 2y agoThere's no such thing as an anonymous reporting system in a company that owns the reporting infrastructure. Some companies contract out such systems to a third party to reinforce the illusion of anonymity. But what do you think happens when the CEO says to the contractor "Tell me who wrote this or we won't hire you again"?
- dreamcompiler 2y agoOrganizations create these reporting systems to make themselves look good to outsiders, but they will punish you severely if you actually try to use them. It's kind of like your grandmother's good china: Look at it all you want but don't you dare use it. Stuff like this is incredibly confusing to people on the autism spectrum.
- stego-tech 2y ago> Stuff like this is incredibly confusing to people on the autism spectrum. Upvoted for this alone. We thrive in clearly defined systems, but the powers that be are careful to hide the actual systems of power from us. It’s infuriating to find out we’ve been playing the wrong “game”.
- StableAlkyne 2y agoI don't know why so many people want to go into academia these days. Tenure is a multi-year rat race with worse hours than a seed stage startup (to be fair to the startup, at least you have feedback in the form of sales and VC fundraising). The pay is bad and the politics are incredibly petty. Tick off the wrong person and your career is torched.
- vrosas 2y agoHaving worked with some ex-academia people I can feel this. They often seem to bring that bitterness (and in all honesty a certain level of masochism) with them to the workplace even after escaping.
- simpaticoder 2y agoHis story is a cautionary tale about real life vs idealism. The two come into conflict frequently, and sometimes violently. Nothing is more difficult or dangerous than holding power to account; the mechanisms we imagine are in place to hold power accountable exist purely in that imagination. The personal feelings of shame, guilt, or ethical responsibility we imagine there to be, or the social pressure brought to bear on those who demonstrate a lack of those qualities, is missing when push comes to shove. Being an idealist, really believing in these things, is the setup for great tragedy. The fundamental mistake is to believe that others think like you do or value the same things you value. Of course I know nothing of this particular situation, but the shape of it is all too familiar - an idealistic, inspirational collegue forced out after speaking truth to power. How many tens of such people do we know? How many of them do not actually get back on their feet? How many of them did we speak up for?
- danlugo92 2y ago[flagged]
- dang 2y agoEschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- s5300 2y agodang do you normally edit w/o leaving history of it? feels like this is the first time i’ve noticed.
- dang 2y agoI'm not punctilious about it; I usually add "Edit:" if the information materially changes the meaning of the comment. (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20%22edit%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...) In the case of the GP I changed my wording to be softer and refer directly to the site guidelines. (Originally it said "Please don't take HN threads on political flamewar tangents. Nothing good's going to come of it, whichever way you lean.")
- gdjskshh 2y agoIt's sad to see a group of engineering professors having political squabbles involving unethical behavior in response to an ethics complaint. Ethics are supposed to be a core part of engineering, not too dissimilar from medicine. Good thing those folks are in academia where they can't hurt the rest of us.
- fwipsy 2y agoOn the contrary, in academia they can do lots of damage by encouraging the same behavior in new engineers.
- Onavo 2y agoEngineering ethics is completely different from classroom ethics. Engineering ethics is all about compliance. If you build a missile to kill people, you better make sure it works as described. Who it kills is none of your business but if it doesn't work as described then it's a breach of "engineering ethics". It's funny when people on HN call for the "professionalisation" of software engineering. The only person who benefits is management who will happily throw the poor engineers under the bus the moment a self driving car hits somebody. Hold the entire organization responsible, starting from the top, not the lowly engineer.
- runnr_az 2y agoSounds like there’s a lot more to this story…
- knowitnone 2y agosounds like typical high school bullying except by adults and so-called professionals. how does a disagreement between two turn into multiple departments jumping in for one side?
- greenavocado 2y agoNepotism is a well documented phenomenon
- fracus 2y agoI wish he took more time to heal emotionally. He might have seen this was not a place he wanted to work.
- SuperNinKenDo 2y agoI've been in two situations like this where I eventually "WON". You don't simply heal. You don't accept that that just wasn't the place for you and move on. What you do is have your perspective on other humans permanently and irrevocably changed. If you are a certain kind of person who values truth and personal responsibility, you come to understand that the world is fundamentally incompatible with you, and are faced with the choice of living a meaningful life where you are constantly preyed upon and abused, or living a meaningless existence in which you betray everything you ever valued about yourself.
- fracus 2y ago"If you are a certain kind of person who values truth and personal responsibility, you come to understand that the world is fundamentally incompatible with you" This logic is flawed in that you are assuming no one else shares the same values as you do.
- selimthegrim 2y agoAnd how long have you spent in academia? What do you think research universities produce at scale to keep their Carnegie category?
- patrickhogan1 2y agoThis story really hits home for me. My dad was a physics teacher, and these complaints sound all too familiar—especially this part: "I did what the University told me to do, and then these administrators ruined my life for it." It’s frustrating how often dedicated educators are forced to navigate politics instead of focusing on teaching. The best educators are usually the least political, while those who thrive in politics often end up as administrators.
- dmix 2y ago> The best educators are usually the least political, while those who thrive in politics often end up as administrators. The lady he accused of ethics violations was named Dept Head around the same time he made the complaint. An "old head" raising an issue against a new rising star...
- complexworld 2y agoMy Dad was a university professor in mathematics. He loved his field! But the math department he worked in was taken over by someone who loved playing politics and maintaining power by playing favorites. My Dad refused to kiss the ring, and paid the price for that in his career advancement. He had tenure so it was never as bad as what happened to Marshal Brain. Now we have n == 2, this could be a pattern. Of course it's a similar situation outside of academia too.
- SoftTalker 2y agoWorkplace HR “ethics” or “whistleblower” policies and processes are set up to protect the organization, not the person making the complaint. It’s you against the power structure in these situations, so you better have all your ducks in a row. Consulting with a very trusted advisor or attorney is probably a good idea.
- m463 2y agoI think university politics is just horrendous. I don't know the factors that lead to it though. Meanwhile in the business world, I think market forces tend to balance a lot of this stuff out.
- addcn 2y agoI met Marshall a few times. He was a good teacher and someone who had a positive impact on several successive classes of students who wanted to start companies and build meaningful products + technologies on that campus. And I trust (quite a bit) that whatever he brought to light should be followed up on - if no other reason than to respect his memory. I hope it is taken seriously and those who retaliated find themselves w/o their positions of responsibility and power over other faculty.
- RachelF 2y agohowstuffworks.com in the 1990's was an amazing website I just went to it and had a look. Turned to junk now by the looks of things.
- panoply220 2y agoHere’s a fun story about HSW and Marshall in the 90s https://www.linkedin.com/posts/kpwebb_like-scot-wingo-ive-spent-the-last-week-activity-7267213441109561344-7g_R https://www.linkedin.com/posts/kpwebb_like-scot-wingo-ive-sp...
- jim-jim-jim 2y agoWonder if he ever read Stoner.
- aaron695 2y ago[dead]
- aithrowawaycomm 2y agoThe article suggests he was let go for "submitting numerous ethical complaints" but it is utterly unclear to me what these ethical complaints could have possibly been about, and the only source in this article is a starry-eyed protege. I am wondering if Brain was (perhaps unintentionally) abusing the complaint system as a way of adjudicating political disputes: "this person is stubborn and wrong" elevates to "this person is behaving unethically." My suspicion is that the numerous ethical complaints evidenced a pattern of unstable behavior. I don't like speaking ill of the recently deceased. But I also don't like jumping into conspiracy theories based on platitudes about "the system," when there are more obvious explanations: his last email is a work of unhinged paranoia and resentment, not truth-telling in the face of oppression. It is obvious that Brain was mentally unwell in his last few hours; I wonder how long that was going on.
- mistercheph 2y agoThere is a stark divide emerging between the sorts of people that in my view speak truth to power, even if they speak poorly or strangely or are entirely unable to read the room, and the kinds of people that have internalized the ideology that nothing is wrong and anyone that complains, especially more than once, is most likely mentally unstable, paranoid, delusional, and so on.
- kbelder 2y agoThat was my immediate takeaway as well, although it's important to remember that we don't have any certainty either way.
- foul 2y agoEvery character in this story used mostly internal tools plus I don't know the rules in NCSU, but the reactions around his issues look like weirdly huge. "Retired" at 63?
- greenavocado 2y agoLink to ethics complaints?
- Animats 2y agoWas he murdered?
- thimkerbell 2y agoIs there anyone here on HN who has non-news-article knowledge of what the situation was, around him, at NCSU?
- thimkerbell 2y agoThere's a year-old TedX talk allegedly by Marshall Brain in which he talks about climate change and proposes making NCSU, ASAP, into a carbon-neutral exemplar. Did he have support on moving forward on this endeavor? Is the talk video genuine? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ua6IUZKN58 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ua6IUZKN58
- eitally 2y agoI received my engineering masters from NC State, but not this department (I was in the Industrial & Systems Eng. dept, in the IMSE program: https://imsei.ncsu.edu/ https://imsei.ncsu.edu/). That said, my program was intentionally broad & flexible because students seeking higher ed in manufacturing engineering might be EEs, MEs, CS undergrads, or something entirely different and could be pursuing any sort of leadership role in a manufacturing environment. Because of that, the program often referred students to Brain's program, and it was always common knowledge that one of the bigger differentiators at NCSU's engineering school was the focus on entrepreneurialism (especially compared to most other regional unis in the southeast, except perhaps GATech and maybe UFlorida). Even if the loss of Brain and/or the scandal around the circumstances seem fairly inconsequential to most of you, it's a big deal for NC State's engineering program and the students there. It's also likely going to be a big deal for large donors like John Sall (co-founder of the SAS Institute, which is HQ'd in Raleigh).
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- walterbell 2y agoOther funders too. 2022, https://ece.ncsu.edu/2022/misra-named-to-darpa-microsystems-exploratory-council/ https://ece.ncsu.edu/2022/misra-named-to-darpa-microsystems-... & https://ece.ncsu.edu/2022/veena-misra-awarded-alexander-quarles-holladay-medal-for-excellence/ https://ece.ncsu.edu/2022/veena-misra-awarded-alexander-quar... > (DARPA) has named Dr. Veena Misra to the Microsystems Exploratory Council (MEC) for a three-year term.. total funding with Misra either as a PI or a mission-critical Co-PI exceeds $59 million. 2023, https://ece.ncsu.edu/2023/department-head-dan-stancil-to-step-down-remain-on-faculty/ https://ece.ncsu.edu/2023/department-head-dan-stancil-to-ste... & https://engr.ncsu.edu/news/2024/05/10/misra-named-head-of-department-of-electrical-and-computer-engineering/ https://engr.ncsu.edu/news/2024/05/10/misra-named-head-of-de... > After 14 years of outstanding leadership as head of our Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), Dan Stancil will be stepping down from his position.. Veena Misra.. named Interim Head.. [May 2024] Veena Misra has been named as the permanent head of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at North Carolina State University.
- blindriver 2y agoMy son wants to be a mathematician. I told him never go into academia because it's a pit of poisonous vipers, administrators and professors both. I'm going to send him this article to hopefully re-indoctrinate him in case he forgot my previous message.
- KPGv2 2y agoWould you consider sending him the seemingly thousands of academics who aren't poisonous vipers who are quite happy to be in academia?
- mongol 2y agoThe site doesn't let me in because of GDPR.
- flocciput 2y agoLots of people in this thread alluding to similar experiences "speaking truth to power" or "failing to read a room" or "not playing politics" and suffering the fallout from it. But as someone at the start of their career I'm kind of interested in the specifics--what kinds of ethical concerns? What forms of retaliation? Everyone's being pointedly vague and I guess that's necessary to an extent to preserve internet anonymity (or maintain a reputation, if your professional work is tied to your HN account) but it is frustrating as someone trying to figure out how to "read the room."
- mu53 2y agoNever criticize anything. Do your best to blend into walls. Let other speak up and support them. "48 laws of power" is a book that everyone should read to understand politics. Its all ego and narcissism.
- xyzzy123 2y agoCommon patterns of behaviour are: 1. Generalised nepotism: heads-of favouring their buddies / installing crony networks, hiring/promoting only people of certain races or ethnic backgrounds, influencing supplier relationships for their own benefit (controlled by their family / friends / network), etc. 2. Toxic personality / power / ego and the political games, bullying and power plays that go along with that (to the detriment of the organisation). 3. Dangerous levels of incompetence (from the perspective of their reports), when people who shouldn't be allowed to operate a stapler are put in charge of major business units. Often everyone is fine with this if they don't touch anything, it only becomes a problem when they are influenced to make sweeping changes. Sometimes you get the whole package in 1 person. Of course, one person's nepotistic incompetent bully is another person's charming and shrewd nephew. Usually they got into their position through the strength of their network(s) so if you go at them you're likely to have a bad day.
- salawat 2y ago>Everyone's being pointedly vague and I guess that's necessary to an extent to preserve internet anonymity (or maintain a reputation, if your professional work is tied to your HN account) but it is frustrating as someone trying to figure out how to "read the room." Allpw me to possibly explain a bit about why there is a degree of cagey-ness/intentional vagueness. A lot of the startup world focuses around exploiting opportunities where there are profits to be realized in areas of mercantile endeavor that can ne in a bit of a grey zone, as it were. Areas the big boys won't touch because it's too risky, but that can have a large payoff with just a relatively small infusion of capital. So when you're talking a lot of these places, there is certainly room for a bait-n-switch to occur. Circumstances may be wildly different from instance to instance; but in general the same threads and warning signs are there. Going into specific details, as you point out, is a great way to out yourself. Sometimes it's just enough to tell someone to look hard, and generally with the prompting they'll figure it out. Now as far as reading the room goes... The sapd truth is this. If you didn't fund raise, you ultimately don't get to call the shots. Just how it works. Now it's best to listen to the folks you hire; don't get me wrong, but in most cases, an org does everything it can to make sure it is only steered from the top down by edict. It's not perfectly so, and there are ways to manage up (techniques no one who knows em is going to discuss in public), but at the end of the day, with power concentrated in the guy at the top, it comes down to how much trust you confer unto that person as a human being. If you're bringing up an ethics concern, and you're pretty sure it's not going to be taken well, or you've seen it ignored... Well... Adjust your trust levels accordingly.
- wellthisisgreat 2y agoReading the names of people who targeted him it seems like a case of cronyism in academia
- itsdrewmiller 2y agoWhat about their names makes you think that?
- acjohnson55 2y agoThis is so sad. HowStuffWorks had a huge impact on me as a teenager.
- readthenotes1 2y ago" 451: Unavailable due to legal reasons We recognize you are attempting to access this website from a country belonging to the European Economic Area (EEA) including the EU which enforces the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and therefore access cannot be granted at this time. For any issues, contact technician-editor@ncsu.edu or call 919-515-2411. " Must be a skeevy website to just rather not have me than not spy on me
- magic_smoke_ee 2y agoI consulted at a Stanford biomedical department that openly used age discrimination to displace older full-time employees. They also were biased in hiring researchers and staff who tended to be of the same ethnicity and characteristics as PIs, and they abused part-time workers for years to deny them benefits, organization-wide.