Hit piece
Re: “UW’s Challenge” (10/25/2018): I would not necessarily dispute the possibility that Marc Eisen raises that there may have been occasions when UW’s researchers were too bureaucratic in response to industry requests to hitchhike onto their work.
But, that said, Eisen’s jihad against the university, reeks of dangerous Trumpian know-nothingism.
It is difficult to understand how Isthmus, with its well-earned reputation for stripping off the bark of corporate malfeasance, is now featuring a hit piece that advocates putting industry in the catbird seat of one of the country’s premier labs. That is little different from handing a prescription to those with cha-ching in their eyes to twist test results for the next quarterly earnings report.
It is truly ironic for Eisen to champion short-term biotech industry profits over scientific integrity in the same month as this dangerous imbalance in our values led to the scandal at the once illustrious Memorial Sloan Kettering clinic. At Sloan Kettering, famous cancer researchers, like Dr. José Baselga, were exposed hiding big pharmaceutical payoffs, taking equity positions in profiteering startups, and compromising the very research that is essential to people’s lives and for true human progress.
— Peter Anderson, via email
Explanation requested
Attention Tenant Resource Center: As a regular donor, supporter and neighbor of your organization, I am shocked that the new board of directors would fire Brenda Konkel unceremoniously, immediately and without severance to “go in a new direction.”You had better come up with a clear plan for the future and a complete explanation why Brenda had to be dropped as if she did something wrong. Or TRC will risk losing support from the community. I will not be donating to TRC until the board explains its actions.
— Aaron Berry, via isthmus.com
Cruzin’ Cooler
Re: “A cool ride” (10/18/2018): Nice DIY high-speed cooler! I first saw a commercial version at a music festival in 2008 (cruzincooler.com).
— Jon Beers, via isthmus.com
Corrections: Last week’s cover story, “UW’s challenge,” incorrectly stated that UW-Madison endured a four-year decline in research spending that ended in fiscal year 2016, information that was noted in a news release from Chancellor Rebecca Blank. The decline lasted only for three years. And in a chart that accompanied the story, figures attributed to the University of Illinois Chicago/Urbana should have been for the entire University of Illinois system, a mistake that was carried over from the source, the Milken Institute. The chart also mistakenly listed the University of Pennsylvania as a Big Ten school. And in a story on the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council’s 40th anniversary, the founding date was incorrect. The organization was founded on Oct. 31, 1973.
