[open-science] more fox researches hen research - this time in hen's clothing
Steve Cookson
it at sca-uk.com
Sun Apr 7 12:59:50 UTC 2013
Student-led is not a guarantee of impartiality, openness and good practice.
Students like dressing up and pretending to be other people and adopting
other roles.
And it's all good, clean fun.
Unless it isn't.
Regards
Steve.
_____
From: open-science-bounces at lists.okfn.org
[mailto:open-science-bounces at lists.okfn.org] On Behalf Of Peter Murray-Rust
Sent: 07 April 2013 05:13
To: Heather Morrison
Cc: open-science; Daniel Perez
Subject: Re: [open-science] more fox researches hen research - this time in
hen's clothing
I think that this discussion should terminate here. It is not in the
intended spirit of this list which IMO is to develop a constructive approach
to Open Science. I am disappointed that there has been a public accusation
of lying - I have met some of the OBR people and they are not dissembling -
they are undergraduates/postgraduates who are setting up science-based
businesses. I am sorry to see them leaving the list.
This list is deliberately unmoderated and relies on constructive discussion.
Peter
(OKFN Advisory Board)
On Sun, Apr 7, 2013 at 2:08 AM, Heather Morrison <hgmorris at sfu.ca> wrote:
Daniel,
Facts - on the survey it says:
Preamble:
"Thank you very much for taking part in this study on European trends in
Open Access Publishing by the Oxbridge Biotech Roundtable, a UK-based
student-led organisation. It should take ~7 minutes to complete. Your
answers will help us to gain valuable insight into the Open Access use among
academics in your field."
Fine print at the bottom:
"Our sponsors pay a fee to OBR for gathering, aggregating and collecting the
data as well as for preparation of a Summary Report of the data compiled. In
participating in this survey, the participant recognizes that the
information provided in this survey will be used in an industry aggregate
report and therefore grants OBR unrestricted use of this information".
The preamble says that this research is being conducted by a student-led
organization for its own purposes "help us to gain valuable insight..."
while the fine print makes it clear that you are conducting this research on
behalf of industry.
This is not paranoia; this is an industry survey disguised as a student-led
survey. This proves my original point, that this is a deceptive survey -
industry (fox) pretending to be the group studied (hen).
I encourage you to change the preamble to reflect the nature of the study.
This is a small matter for an opinion study like this. However, since your
group is in biotech (and you are the CEO), I am hoping that it is obvious to
you how problematic it would be to take this approach with medical research
(take money from industry to do research which is then conducted as a
student-led organization but without bothering with things like research
ethics).
Thank you for the information about the students involved in the study - I
fully support well-paid student and graduate employment! I'd still very much
like to know who commissioned the research.
best,
Heather Morrison
On 6-Apr-13, at 3:23 PM, Daniel Perez wrote:
Heather:
I am disappointed that you appear to have an inability to read or comprehend
even rudimentary facts and arguments. And that you continue this process of
innuendo.
1) In your first email and blog post you quite flippantly accused OBR of
being some kind of front-organization, suspiciously asking: "so who is OBR?"
and suggesting there were "smoke and mirrors". You could have deduced who
we are by looking at our website. I responded to your paranoid and
unfounded arguments. Instead of apologizing for your rumors and correcting
your errors, you asked more "questions" and tried to spin this as simply
questioning our academic scholarship. (ahem?)
2) RE: "Research Ethics": Again, alas, you haven't researched your facts.
Who said we were doing this as part of a student's normal research project?
You need to chillout and (as mentioned in step 1 below, remove the tin foil)
Look: There are two student teams working on this project, one at Oxford
and one at Cambridge. Each are composed of 4 life science PhD students that
are aiming to take their academic talents into industry (management
consultancy is a popular destination) and as such are honing their
professional and transferrable skills before graduating. As Tom Morris
correctly pointed out, the survey clearly indicated it was industry
sponsored.
Honestly, Heather - please, for the sake of the group: think before you
spout, email, or blog any accusations, and try to look up your facts.
For a crash course on innuendo please watch this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch? <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSA4ItcezAA>
v=tSA4ItcezAA
Tom: I don't really have any interest at all in open access. I only joined
this list today to defend OBR from baseless attacks. I'll be unsubscribing
now to focus exclusively on plotting lucrative new paywalls around taxpayer
funded research articles ;)
But, since you asked: yes, we were contracted by a publishing company to
look into Open Access and how that will affect the industry. We weren't
looking to construct a flawed or biased survey - that disappoints me Our
client (who are themselves a non-profit) wanted to understand these rapidly
fluid industry trends better. and the students involved were all themselves
interested in building real-world skills while becoming more informed around
OA. (They've done a great job and have learned a bunch!)
In terms of OBR overall: this survey was small component of a small project.
The project represents maybe 1% of OBR's revenue this year. (though
probably even less than that.)
Our overriding goals are educational - and to spark an on-campus
conversation between academics and industry.
best, Dan
ps. I think I've made my point(s), so I'm unsubscribing
pps. Heather, OBR is not yet in Canada, but fear not, we're coming to a
Paywall near you.
On Sat, Apr 6, 2013 at 10:39 PM, Tom Morris <tfmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
Heather - It says right on the survey page that it's paid for by sponsors,
so I don't think there's much mystery as to whether it's a commercial or
academic survey. You can find their corporate registrations here:
http://opencorporates.com/
<http://opencorporates.com/companies?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=oxbridge++roundtable&c
ommit=Go> companies?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=oxbridge++roundtable&commit=Go
Daniel - Congratulations on building your company to this scale at such a
young age. Since the focus of this thread is open access, can you tell
who's paying for the survey? That should help provide insight into it's
construction and administration.
I'd be lying if I said I wasn't curious about your funding in overall, so if
you'd like to share a more general revenue picture, that'd be awesome.
Tom
On Sat, Apr 6, 2013 at 6:18 AM, Daniel Perez <dan at oxbridgebiotech.com>
wrote:
Dear Heather - I just read your paranoid notes below (and blog) about the
Oxbridge Biotech Roundtable (OBR), a student led organization - instigated
by our act of conducting a survey into Open Access Publishing (how dare we?)
and not living up to Paul Zuma's standards of scholarship?
Heather: you asked: "Who are you really, OBR?" (In what appeared to be a
McCarthy-esqe tone.)
Look, if you were capable of even the bare minimum of research into OBR and
looked at our executive committee you would see we're led entirely of PhD
students and post-docs: http://www.oxbridgebiotech.
<http://www.oxbridgebiotech.com/about-obr/executive-committee/>
com/about-obr/executive-committee/
As the founder and President of OBR (and PhD student at Oxford) I do not
take exception towards Zuma for finding our survey methodology imperfect
(when it comes to OA he's beyond biased, but obviously raised good points).
I do, however, take exception that you then pursue some whisper campaign
maligning our character and even claiming we're not really student led.
We were founded in Oxford in June 2011, then opened a chapter in Cambridge,
then London and since we've grown to nearly 8,000 members with additional
chapters in Manchester, Glasgow (Scotland), and San Diego, Los Angeles and
SF-Bay. Our goal is to foster a conversation between academics (from across
disciplines) and industry experts. Look Heather, we actually don't think
"industry" is an ugly word. We welcome commerce, the commercialization of
science, and the jobs and innovative products that comes from it. For you
to suggest we're just "smoke and mirrors" is border-line slanderous and I
highly encourage you to avoid these Holier Than Thou witch-hunt campaigns.
But as OBR's mission is to educate, here are two simple steps to avoid
repeat episodes like this:
1) Research your facts
2) Remove the tin-foil from around your head
ps. Ok I'll admit it: we have some post-docs on our exec committee. We
really are out to get to you.
best, Dan
--
Daniel A. Perez
CEO & Founder, Oxbridge Biotech Roundtable
+4407583873540 <tel:%2B4407583873540> | @danperez610
DPhil Student, Biochemistry, University of Oxford
Register HERE to join OBR for FREE and receive the Roundup, OBR's weekly
e-mail newsletter.
Follow us on: Twitter (@OxbridgeBiotech) - LinkedIn -
Facebook
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Heather Morrison <hgmorris at sfu.ca>
Date: Fri, Apr 5, 2013 at 2:41 PM
Subject: [open-science] more fox researches hen research - this time in
hen's clothing
To: open-science <open-science at lists.okfn.org>
A curious case of open access "research" from "Oxford Biotech Roundtable":
Thanks to Peter Suber for the tip about yet another misleading open access
survey. Following are my comments. In brief, this appears to be a curious
case of two layers of smoke and mirrors about who is behind the survey that
could make for an interesting question for a research methods class. The
survey preamble says that this is a student-led organization. The about page
claims that this is the health care and life sciences industry. The
description of gold and green OA reflect the biases of the toll access
scholarly publishing industry, which are at odds with those of the health
care and life sciences industry. Who are you really, OBR?
Details:
http://poeticeconomics.
<http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.ca/2013/04/industry-pretends-to-be-student-
led-or.html> blogspot.ca/2013/04/industry-pretends-to-be-student-led-or.html
Heather G. Morrison
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--
Daniel A. Perez
CEO & Founder, Oxbridge Biotech Roundtable
+4407583873540 <tel:%2B4407583873540> | @danperez610
DPhil Student, Biochemistry, University of Oxford
Register HERE to join OBR for FREE and receive the Roundup, OBR's weekly
e-mail newsletter.
Follow us on: Twitter (@OxbridgeBiotech) - LinkedIn -
Facebook
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--
Peter Murray-Rust
Reader in Molecular Informatics
Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
University of Cambridge
CB2 1EW, UK
+44-1223-763069
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