01
4 - Tuesday, November 24, 2009
C M Cig "Oati fallu
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the University of Michigan since 1890.
ELAINE MORTON I
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ROBERT SOAVE COURTNEY RATKOWIAK
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR MANAGING EDITOR
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GARY GRACA
EDITOR IN CHIEF
Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of the Daily's editorial board. All other signed articles
and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors.
Cut the bias
Researchers' conflicts of interest demand immediate action
With the slow collapse of the automobile industry in
the state of Michigan, researching new fields is more
important than ever. This point hasn't been lost on
the University, with President Mary Sue Coleman promising more
money, time and effort on spent on research in the upcomingyears
than ever before. But research can only have a positive result if
it's objective and credible. In a recent report by the Department
of Health and Human Services, though, 41 unnamed universi-
ties were shown to have potential biases that could corrupt their
research. These findings signal that the government and universi-
ties must mount a more substantive effort to facilitate an objective
Survival of the creationists
research climate on campuses.
The study, published on Wednesday,
displayed a shocking amount of bias with-
in the realm of research on college cam-
puses. According to the study, 90 percent
of universities have few regulations on
their researchers when it comes to finan-
cial conflicts, and many schools rely on
the researchers to report potential con-
flicts of interest. Many of the researchers
held stock or interests in companies that
would be affected by their own research,
and some even served as consultants to
businesses in their field of research. The
National Institutes of Health, which was
providing much of the grant money for
this research, has said it will be reform-
ing the system soon and this could change
future research financing.
Research is exceedingly important to
academia and economic stability, espe-
cially in the state of Michigan. New tech-
nologies create new economic activity and
jobs and drive the economy forward. To
protect the important process of research,
it's incumbent upon researchers to behave
in a fashion befitting their role of advanc-
ing knowledge about important topics in
an objective fashion.
The issue at hand is simple - researchers
must distance themselves from decisions
that are or could be construed as bias. The
danger that this study exposes comes from
potential conflict that may arise between
one's personal financial interests and the
integrity of research. Under the current
systems, medical 'researchers may face
pressure to produce findings that help a
specific company. And that's not okay.
Universities are to blame as well. The
lack of oversight at places of higher learn-
ing shows that universities aren't placing
the proper importance on the purity of
the research they produce. Choosing to
maintain careful oversight of potential
biases and requiring researchers to dis-
close financial interests relating to their
research are some ways in which universi-
ties can maintain their autonomy and still
continue to generate quality research.
While the NIH needs to pay closer atten-
tion to the funding it gives out, it shouldn't
make the rash decision to cut off funding
completely. Government funding is often
vital to research efforts, especially at pub-
lic institutions. Money should'continue to
go to researchers who do essential work.
Researchers, universities and the gov-
ernment must curb this problem. With
more regulations from the universities,
ethical behavior by the researchers and
a realistic response from the NIH, the
future of university and government spon-
sored research can continue in a respon-
sible and ethical fashion.
s I walked home from the
football game on Saturday,
preachers were out in full
force denounc-
ing the theory of
evolution. That's
because today is
the 150th anniver-
sary of the pub-
lishing of Charles
Darwin's famous
text on evolution,
"The Origin of
Species." To cel- BEN
ebrate, I'd like to CALECA
talk about a "Spe-
cial introduction"
by a man named
Roy Comfort who seems to think
Darwin is a very serious problem.
Roy Comfort is a creationist made
famous byhis appearance with actor-
turned-Christian-evangelist Kirk
Cameron, an appearance in which
he explained God's direct hand in all
things. His segment is now immor-
talized in a YouTube video, which
describes bananas as "atheists' worst
nightmare." He argued that bananas,
which are easy to open, change col-
ors to show ripeness and fit in his
hand well, demonstrating the truth
of God's direct hand on our lives.
He's partly right: The banana is an
example of intelligent design - but
we were the designers.
I hate to break it to Roy, but the
natural banana is full of seeds that
are tiny, hard to open and gener-
ally disgusting. Selective breeding of
bananas has led growers to use a tree
that can make delicious Cavendish
bananas. The trees all have identical
genetics and are reproduced asexu-
ally, which essentially makes them
clones. in fact, the choice by farmers
to make such an extreme case of a
monoculture renders them vulnera-
ble from an evolutionary standpoint:
These bananas have low disease
resistance. As a result, much of your
banana money goes into stopgap
measures to keep banana trees from
dying out by natural selection.
But when Comfort isn't claiming
God's mysterious way is evident in
potassium-rich fruits, he's publish-
ing copies of "The Origin of Species"
that come with a special introduc-
tion. His introduction is respectful
for about 10 pages before it goes into
page after page of incomplete accu-
sations and cherry-picked pot shots
directed at evolution. The introduc-
tion goes on to advance the most
ridiculous of arguments: that Hit-
ler was Darwin's "famous student."
For an added bonus, the publication
also features some reasons why the
Christian God is better than your
God or lack thereof.
Dozens of these publications were
passed around on campus last week
to promote criticism of evolution.
While the theological debate is still
raging, I'm surprised that after 150
years of advancement in the theory
of evolution - which has included
arguments, counterarguments, addi-
tional evidence, new complexities
such as the discovery of DNA and
overwhelming support of accredited
scientists - some continue to deny
the existence of evolution. Money
that could have gone to more noble
pursuits is spent to distribute books
that make (at best) incomplete and (at
worst) childish arguments about the
origin of species.
Mr. Comfort preaches about
purported dilemmas surround-
ing evolution, and his nuggets of
thought-provoking insight include
asking why evolution is not always a
logical, directed process. This ques-
tion comes from a misunderstanding
of how natural selection works. One
feature that was irrelevant before
and might be in any number of crea-
tures suddenly becomes helpful to
survival, it has a better chance of
propagating - this is natural selec-
tion in its most basic form.
He goes on to talk about the mis-
takes made over time in evolutionary
science. Examples such as the fake
fossil known as Piltdown Man and
cases of mistaken identities for spec-
imens have caused controversy. But
finding some evidence false cannot
discredit science on its own. Theo-
ries are.only dismantled when there
is freestanding evidence to the con-
trary - for example - evidence that
favorable mutations don't propagate
among species.
If we applied the logic of Comfort
and his ilk to all sciences at institu-
tions like the University, we would
have to "teach the controversy"
regarding General Relativity and
Quantum Mechanics. Oh, that USB
drive you used? It might use Quan-
tum Mechanics to erase data on it,
but some evidence used to bolster
the theory has since been disproven,
In 150 years,
Darwin's naysayers
haven't evolved.
so there might instead be gnomes
that burn your information on a
nanoscale when you click delete.
If you did happen to get a copy of
this edition of "The Origin of Spe-
cies," I'm not asking you to burn it
or to hide it. Freedom of speech is
important, and if you've taken biol-
ogy or history, you'll recognize that
the introduction is hilarious. But
look at the arguments, and then*
read for yourself about the debate on
evolution. As students and as future'
leaders and teachers, we should be
able to recognize the merits of scien-
tific theory in science, and keep the-
ories based on religious texts firmly
in the realm of theology. In the 150
years since Darwin's book, we've
come a long way toward describ-
ing just how clever and complex all
of creation really is. Let's celebrate
this theory of life instead oftryingto
argue whether the book of Genesis
in the Bible has more scientific merit
than "The Origin of Species."
- Ben Caleca can be reached
at calecab@umich.edu.
EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS:
Nina Amilineni, Emily Barton, Jamie Block, William Butler, Ben Caleca, Nicholas Clift,
Michelle DeWitt, Brian Flaherty, Emma Jeszke, Sutha K Kanagasingam, Erika Mayer,
Edward McPhee, Harsha Panduranga, Alex Schiff, Asa Smith, Brittany Smith,
Radhika Upadhyaya, Rachel Van Gilder, Laura Veith
ADAM GAGIIO|
The morals of health care reform
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LAUREN SQUIRESI
Defining Research Assistants'rights
With the House of Representatives passing
the health care bill earlier this month and the
Senate taking up the debate, it looks like govern-
ment-run health care may eventually be passed
into law. In recent months, conservatives have
opposed the Democratic health care agenda in a
variety of ways. Sarah Palin has attacked health
care legislation by claiming that it includes
"death panels." TV and radio host Sean Hannity
tried to sway Americans by showing universal
health care horror stories from Canada. The con-
servative Heritage Foundation published studies
that show the cost of accounting for Medicare is
actually higher than for private insurance. Rea-
son magazine, read by many conservatives and
libertarians, cites America's high murder rate to
explain our lower life expectancy.
Whether these objections to universal health
care are valid or not, they may slow the arrival of
socialized medicine. But they certainly will not
stop it. The conservative movement has stripped
itself of its most potent, available weapon in its
fight to halt and ultimately reverse government
involvement in our health care. The weapon con-
servatives have abandoned is morality.
When it comes to the health care debate, both
sides of the political spectrum.have accepted
altruism as the primary moral yardstick against
which we should measure various proposals for
reform. The popular definition of altruism says
that it.is moral to be consistently unselfish and
devoted to others. In the case of health care,
we are told that the truly virtuous and unself-'
ish thing to do would be to vote for the bill for
the sake of the uninsured. If you are really your
brother's keeper, as both the Christian right and
Michael Moore believe, then the moral course of
action is to sacrifice so that every American has
health care. Few Republican politicians today
would dare to claim thst providing everyone
with health care is immoral. Since they can only
muster arguments that are pragmatic in nature,
conservatives are dead in the water when con-
fronted with the more powerful moral argu-
ments of the left.
To the credit of conservatives, one often hears
them alluding to the greatness of our Founding
Fathers and the principles upon which America
was founded. But they fail to realize that the
political philosophy of our Founding Fathers was
created on the implicit premise of the morality of
rational self-interest. Rational self-interest says
means that each person has a right to his life, and
consequently must be free to take self-directed
actions that support his own existence, so long as
he does not violate the rights of other people. The
use of force destroys one's ability to act upon his
own conclusions and violates this morality. Forc-
ing someone to act "morally" is thus inherently
contradictory and evil.
On the other hand, altruism says that man's
ultimate moral worth is based upon his service
to others. The political philosophy that stems
from altruist ethics is collectivism. Karl Marx
famously summarized the moral underpin-
nings of communism in one statement: "From
each according to his ability, to each according
to his need." Many people don't realize that
this is more than just a political statement.
According to the ethics of altruism, it is the
moral ideal.
The currently proposed health care reform
bills put this ideal into practical form. Like any
other good or service, health care must be pro-
vided by individuals. By making health care a
right to which everyone is entitled, others are
forced to provide it for those who can't afford
it. This use of force is precisely why a right to
health care is a corruption of the concept of
rights in the first place. A right is a freedom of
action, not a guarantee to the product of some-
one else's work or thoughts. The rights secured
in the U.S. Constitution are the right to live your
life in a way that you see as proper, the right to
liberty or freedom from physical force and the
right to the pursuit of happiness. Exerting force
over those who can afford health care to pro-
vide it for those who can't negates our rights.
The purpose of morality is to provide a set of
values to guide man's actions and to help him live
his life. In any battle between morality and prag-
matism, it is morality that will ultimately win.
Those conservatives who try to integrate altru-
ism and freedom are embracing a fundamental
contradiction and in doing so, they are dooming
themselves and the country to a form of collec-
tivism. If the conservative movement embraces
rational self interest, it will have reason, prac-
ticality and morality on its side in the fight to
defeat socialized medicine and its attack on basic
freedom.
Adam Gaglio is the president of
Michigan Students of Objectivism.
In the whistleblower trial brought by a former Graduate
Student Research Assistant, Robert McGee, a Washtenaw
County jury ruled last week in favor of the University.
This former student and employee claimed that he was
terminated because he informed his department about
questionable actions performed by his supervisor. Cover-
age both in the Daily and on annarbor.com focused on the
trial itself and didn't explore the underlying issues in the
trial, namely the largely unregulated conditions under
which GSRAs are employed. But the importance of this
case goes beyond one employee's expefiences. The case
itself calls attention to the lack of workplace protections
for GSRAs at the Univetsity.
This trial raises questions about numerous aspects
of graduate employees' working conditions: job duties,
workload, supervisor responsibility, safety and, central
to this case, grievance procedures. According to the news
coverage, McGee claims that he was overworked, asked
to perform potentially hazardous actions and termi-
nated without prior warning. Unlike Graduate Student
Instructors or Graduate Student Staff Assistants, who
work under a contract negotiated between the Univer-
sity and the Graduate Employees' Organization, GSRAs
do not work under the terms of a collective bargaining
agreement. This means they lack rights, protections and
access to formal grievance procedures, which are tailored
to employees' work as research assistants rather than as
students.
Such employment-specific procedures are crucial for
all employees, especially for those who, like graduate stu-
dents, often maintain dual roles with their supervisors.
Graduate employees need assurances that their work as
students will not negatively affect their work as assis-
tants and that they will not be retaliated against in cases
of toxic employment situations. It's too often that GEO
hears of GSIs who are targets of supervisors' unreason-
able expectations, inflexible demands, threats, harass-
ment and altogether unprofessional treatment. GSIs may
sometimes be scared to pursue their grievances for fear
that they won't be re-hired, their department will move
them to the bottom of the list for fellowship consider-
ations or their academic reputation will be preemptively
tarnished by professors who don't sympathize with their
experiences. But because GEO has fought for a strong
contract, our members can be confident that the union
will advocate for their rights and fight against retaliation.
In his role as a GSRA, McGee didn't have this confidence
or the comfort it provides to graduate workers.
First-time GSRAs are often surprised to learn that they
are hot covered by GEO's contract - we at GEO often
hear concerns from GSRAs, and we must point out that
under our contract, we can offer no assistance. While
GSRAs used to be included in GEO's bargaining unit,
they have been excluded since the late 1970s following a
Michigan Employment Relations Committee ruling that
research assistants are only students, not "employees."
This contrasts with employment rules in many states,
where research assistants are considered workers. For
instance, New York, New Jersey and Florida have union-
ized research assistants, and in Wisconsin, research
assistants won collective bargaining rights just this sum-
mer. For GSRAs at the University, McGee's case shows*
that GSRAs sometimes work under the authority of oth-
ers and not always on projects directly advancing their
academic goals. GSRA work is subject to the demands of
supervisors, who are often their academic advisors. They
ought to have workers' rights that go beyond the Univer-
sity's basic appointment guidelines. Collective organiza-
tion and bargaining could help.GSRAs attain these rights.
When people ask why it's important for graduate
employees to have unions, they are often told about
increases in wages, tuition waivers, wage equity and
health insurance. These are some of the sexy economic
gains achievable through collective bargaining. It is
less sexy to talk about setting guidelines for job posting,
hiring and firing procedures, paths of communication
between employees and the University and parameters
for formal meetings with administrators. The details of
labor contracts don't make for exciting reading, but they
give employees incredibly important tools for when they
need to stand up to those who would take advantage of
them.
Conditions for GSRAs on campus are, like most things
on campus, probably fine most of the time - when advisors
have ample funds and treat their GSRAs respectfully. But
the whistleblower case shows that, when GSRAs are mis-
treated, they are alienated from sources of assistance. They
have no recourse short of expensive legal proceedings. In
this case, perhaps having an internal grievance procedure
would have saved the University a great deal of money in
defense funds as well. Regardless of the jury's decision, we
should take seriously the need to investigate GSRAs' work-
ing conditions and recognize their status as workers.
Lauren Squires is chair of the Grievance Committee
of the Graduate Employees' Organization.
i