MIT Moves to Intervene in Release of Aaron Swartz’s Secret Service File

The government has purposely set up the process in an adversarial manner (you must prove why you uniquely are positioned to make scientific advances here, better than anyone else), so it's not surprising that the process plays out in an adversarial manner. The government also encourages institutions to be entrepreneurial by doing things like patenting their results, or keeping them as trade secrets to hand to spinoff companies, so academia can prove its worth in the startup economy.

Is this the best way to make scientific advances? Probably not. But it's a systemic problem. There is at least one study (I believe Canadian, can't find a link currently) which found that it would be more efficient just to give every researcher in Canada some baseline funding, rather than spending all the money they currently do on the adversarial funding process.

That was actually somewhat closer to the traditional CS funding model in the U.S., though largely accidentally, through military funding. Why did someone like Richard Stallman (not an academic) get employed for decades in the MIT AI Lab? Because DARPA gave non-micromanaged block grants to the MIT AI Lab to fund a "center of excellence" for years at a time, which they were free to use to employ staff as they saw fit. Nowadays most grants are 3 years long and very specific, so it's all about positioning yourself for the next 3-year grant, if you want to keep the lights on and your staff paid.

Grant applications contain plans and guesses. If you're better positioned to capitalize on someone else's plan, they're screwed. Grant applications are submitted with at least a partial understanding of confidentiality. Because they're confidential, you can't cite them.

The first group to publish a new result gets the cookies.

"Isn't the entire rationale for providing government funding for academic research premised on the idea that scientific knowledge is a public good, to be shared freely?"

No it isn't, it's only a part of it, and only applicable in some cases. Other rationales include stimulating research on things that are considered too risky by the mainstream manufacturers, so as to facilitate radical innovations (in the Geoffrey Moore meaning of that concept). Under those circumstances, allowing patents on the results is required otherwise the people doing the research wouldn't have a reason to do it in the first place.

Plus, the grant money is only a part of the eventual results; the original ideas, the extra labor, outside financing, etc are equal contributors.

It has to do with competition for scarce grant resources, and some researchers being cutthroats. Some of them are surprisingly petty, too.

Sometimes people attempt to FOIA lab notebooks. If you're a patent lawyer, you've nothing to lose by tying up a research group in knots.

It's bad news when it happens.

"Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low." - Wallace Stanley Sayre. [aka Sayre's Law]

What gives you the impression that it is childish rather then just working with a system they can not change?

This is a ridiculous line of argument. Let me re-contextualize with a parallel scenario. Suppose you are the victim of any of crime. Suppose your teenage daughter is the one who actually called the police. Suppose the perpetrator of the crime was an animal rights activist with a large cohort of people with similar viewpoints who occasionally in a mob mentality anonymously engage in violence, or threats of violence. During the prosecution of the crime, the DoJ goes a little crazy and the accused commits suicide. The estate of the animal rights activist wants to release your daughter's bus route home from school, email address, and cell phone number.

Do you file to prevent this information to be released?

That seems likely, but I'm very disappointed that we haven't heard anything at all.

I remember that Hal Abelson was in charge of preparing the report, and he has taught ethics classes at MIT. I'm hoping that he makes some statement about the report at least.

...because they are guilty as hell?

So they are forced to choose the lesser of two embarrassments. I'm really curious what they are trying to hide.

I wonder what they must be trying to hide then, because this looks pretty bad itself. I wonder if the same person may be behind both unreasonably disproportionate reactions...

There are (at least) two ways to look at it:

1) They have no idea how it will be perceived from the "outside looking in."

2) They do know it will look bad, but they believe that it is worth it to protect the reputations of whomever might be revealed to have participated in the persecution.

>People are not going to stop going to MIT.

Well, actually... Let me provide a little insight. My daughter, a future engineer, has dropped MIT from her top choice to off the list. There are many schools that are nearly as good, and despite rankings, better than MIT.

Here's another cool little anecdote: I was in a meeting with director from NIST, along with another researcher and our director. He was in town to give a lecture as part of a regular lecture series we conduct through the school year, and I was meeting with him one-on-one to ask questions about the intersection of IT and power grid operations. He was relaying a story about some engineering project that they had asked MIT researchers for help on.

Suddenly our director burst out laughing. Said he couldn't contain it anymore. He says, "Yeah, we know about that project. We're the people MIT called when they couldn't figure it out."

The moral of the story: MIT is marketing machine. As a rule, they are over-ranked in nearly every category, and rely on a historical perspective rather than a current one.

Donations matter, I hope. But I don't know how many regularly-donating alumni will follow through on their pledge not to give until this case is resolved, and proper action is taken.

It's hard to do, and it feels lousy. The alumni who feel closest to this case are probably people who spent a lot of time making stuff. When they donate, they're more likely to target their money at helping other people make stuff, by donating to things like the Edgerton Center [1], MITERS [2], or SIPB [3], or even just giving money directly to dorm governments (my hall had a PIC burner sitting next to the toaster on our kitchen counter and a couple of oscilloscopes you could check out from the front desk, courtesy of some slush fund somewhere).

When these alumni donate, they're not doing it to get their name on a plaque, or out of some kind of broad-based affinity for the school, they're doing it to help current students have the same kind of experiences they were able to enjoy. And if they stop donating, it's pretty easy to see the culture of creation suffering. People will keep making stuff, but it'll be a little more difficult, require a little more dedication, and it'll wind up being fewer people. That's a significant price to pay to stand on a principle.

[1] http://web.mit.edu/edgerton/ [2] http://miters.mit.edu/ [3] http://sipb.mit.edu/

But MIT didn't get where it is by being careless about its public image. Association with that image is a nonzero part of the value of a degree from MIT. If they go about acting like bozos it affects current and future students as well as alumni.