Thursday
May052011
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Climate consultancy
May 5, 2011 Climate: other FOI Journals On the subject of conflicted panels, I was thinking about Sarah Muckherjee's statement that NGOs were paying for climate research. I'm pretty sure that nobody has come across universities paid anything by NGOs in relation to climate research, but a comment by Richard Tol suggested that consultancy payments often go straight into academics' bank accounts rather than university coffers. This would make it impossible to trace them, even via FOI.
In medical science similar situations arise, and the journals have put in place a requirement for scientists to make positive declarations regarding conflict of interest. Do any climate journals carry such a requirement?
Reader Comments (18)
The EU must be conflicted. At the same time it is demanding that Portugal reduce those wasteful feed-in tariffs and stop raising electricty costs with renewables, as a condition of the bail out, it is demanding from others, such as the UK, that they should do the opposite.
http://notrickszone.com/2011/05/05/wmf-ecb-and-eu-certify-that-energy-sustainability-fiscal-non-sustainability/
"...straight into academics' bank accounts rather than university coffers. This would make it impossible to trace them, even via FOI."
Difficult, but not impossible.
Ah good ol fashioned bribes!
It happens all the time and it is a scam. academics getting paid directly to do 'consulting' which they do on University time for which they are also being paid by the taxpayer. Sometimes their work is unpaid which they do during their working hours, but rarely is the taxpayer compensated for the loss of productivity (if that's the right word) when an academic is being paid but not working on his/her job. This is a way the taxpayer subsidises various pressure and green groups - lending them free-of-charge academics we pay for!
I heard that the BBC are also at it. BBC Employee has a generous salary. He goes off to make a documentary/prog for which he is paid extra at the same time as drawing his regular salary. then he writes a book, based on research carried out by bbc staff and himself in bbc time and keeps all the advances and profits for himself!
Getting paid twice. Nice if you can get away with it/
And the Realclimate scam too, blogging in company paid time.
Sorry, I'm a bit slow on specifics sometimes - could someone direct me to the comment by Prof. Tol? I can't see it in related posts.
FergalR
Under the post - Procuring a short but fleshy paper.
"If my recollection is correct, this job landed on my desk but was never completed because the economic impact assessment would involve putting a value on people dying. That's hard enough to stomach for WWF, but in this case there was a lot of "harvesting" (i.e., in the heat wave, people died who would have died a few weeks later).
May 2, 2011 at 9:12 AM | Richard Tol"
Most academics will have contracts that permit them to do a limited amount of paid "consultancy" work for third parties. I think I am allowed to do up to six hours consultancy a week without loss of earnings. Above that I would need permission from the university, who would normally either refuse permission or convert me to a part time contract. I am required to make an annual return on my consultancy activities, but as they are well below the six hour limit I can just make a nil return.
Income from sale of textbooks or other books would not be considered consultancy, but fees for writing reports or giving lectures to commercial organisations would be. There are special arrangements for spin out companies etc, and in a few cases it can get quite complicated - but most academics would be like me, with a few tens of pounds income a year from book sales and the occasional lecture or appearance fee (I used to give occasional popular lectures on information security for VISA).
My income of this kind would be difficult or impossible for the university to trace, but this is true of many aspects of academic appointments. My contract specifies certain teaching duties and some generalities about what I should achieve in research, but says nothing about when or how I should undertake my research or what detailed form it should take.
This is particularly clear during strikes called by the AUT - in the event of a strike the university writes to its academic staff asking them to inform the finance office if they have been on strike so that salary can be deducted! As I have no defined hours or place of work they would in principle have no other way of telling this unless I had scheduled lectures or university classes that day. Of course the University will be able to tell if somebody is missing for very large fractions of the time, but minor activities or absences are essentially impossible to trace.
When I publish papers I am required to declare any conflicts of interest, but in practice this is entirely self assessed. To date I have never considered that any of my (tiny!) commercial income constitutes a conflict, but that is in essence a matter of personal judgement.
Why would one expect CAGW cult members to disclose private payments directly into their bank accounts when they so blatantly refuse to respond to FOIA requests for public payments? Disclosure of money sources directly damages their assault on any and all skeptics re oil company payments and carbon stooges.
Disclosing their personal and corporate interests in 'green' activities funded by taxpayers and ratepayers would subject them to personal ridicule, and also likely attract unwanted attention from revenuers.
If I'm interpreting the following DOE related email concerning Jones correctly, Jones was making around $10,000 per year in 'consulting' from US taxpayers:
http://climateaudit.org/2011/03/14/doe-and-jones-delete-request
for the record, there are numerous examples of NGOs commissioning research in Universities. That would be payment directly to the university.
There is also a separate issue, whether academics get consultancy from an NGO. Unless that tracks through a university account, and even if, it is very difficult to establish whether this has happened. Likely to be confidential information.
I think it is a longstanding problem that academics are sometimes not as accurate about disclosure on Conflicts of Interest as they might be.
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/laws/environment/docs/NI_report.pdf
Jonathan Jones' observations are very helpful. If I were a researcher who received funding for my work from outside sources, would I consider such support the basis of a conflict of interest? My view would be that they were supporting my work, not buying my conclusions.
So it might be better to require disclosure of all outside income sources, but does anyone think that will happen? Or should?
j ferguson
I think these things are usually framed in terms of "anything that could be perceived as a conflict of interest". If there is a possibility that it could be perceived as such then it should be disclosed.
Steve
What's the significance of the link you posted?
The NGOs themselves will often make clear that they commissioned such research, such as in this example: http://celp.org.uk/projects/foe/
After some decades observing how many social and employment systems actually function from both the inside and the outside, I have formalised my views into two broad rules which are loosely governed by the size of any 'grey area' where money and ethics collide and are modified by the seniority of the staff members involved, thus my first general rule is that
'the more seniority a staff member has, the more he can claim for himself'.
The second rule and a corollary to the first is that
'Junior staff in any large enterprise are bound to be utterly loyal to that enterprise and any form of payment in cash or kind for work in any way connected with the employing entity automatically belongs to said employing entity'.
:-)
Bish, from page 5
I am very grateful to my sponsors both for supporting this project and providing advice throughout the research period.
Nevertheless, the final analysis and recommendations stem from my own independent assessment of the key options for
the future of environmental governance in Northern Ireland, and any errors or omissions are my own responsibility. My
own direct experience with various forms of governmental environment bodies has provided me with insights on how
these sorts of organisation can best work in practice, but again the report was conducted in my personal capacity rather
than on behalf of any of these bodies.
Richard Macrory
University College, London
February 2004
TRANSPARENCY AND TRUST: RESHAPING ENVIRONMENTAL GOVERNANCE IN NORTHERN IRELAND
PREFACE
Looks like it was an example of 'Consultancy'