[Todos] Fwd: The Argentine chapter of the academic show (Third letter)

[fabio vicentini]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: fabio vicentini <fmvicent en gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Aug 29, 2013 at 4:40 AM
Subject: The Argentine chapter of the academic show (Third letter)
To: "presidencia en conicet.gov.ar" <presidencia en conicet.gov.ar>,
FulbrightNEXUS en iie.org, info en fundacionsadosky.org.ar, info en mincyt.gob.ar,
prensa en mincyt.gov.ar


Buenos Aires, June 17, 2012

 Dear Colleague:

 Subject: Raising funds

 It is clear that the garbage collector does an useful work, but as we
ascend the social pyramid it is not clear the usefulness of minds sailing
through the strastopheric altitude like academics studying mathematical
structures. Common people view those wearing the academic gown with respect
and admiration, they will certainly not imagine such a remarkable
personality stealing funds from ANPCYT, the government agency to promote
scientific research.

 I read the article "La red mafiosa en la ciencia y la universidad
argentina" listing 250 academics who were in charge of granting funds and,
at the same time, receiving the money. “Mafia" in the heading suggests that
they are wise guys stealing funds by invoking  Minerva, Roman
goddess<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_mythology>
 of wisdom.  http://quebec.indymedia.org/es/node/26184

 At that time I was living on a miserable pension, and when I read this* *piece
of mind I got sick - I decided to endeavor myself to investigate the
academic mafia. Here is a couple of hints :

 1) The Computer Science dept at FCEyN/UBA concocted "UBASoft" a project
they promised will obtain software for all the present, future and fancied
areas of Computer Science like Cryptography, Combinatorial Optimization,
Software Engineering, Paralell Computation, Image Processing, Computation
Biology and Data Mining. They were awarded 100,000 dollars to develop this
high-sounding pretension that never produced a thing for any of the
aforementioned areas. I denounced the project to the dean of the school,
but he disclaimed the charge. There is honor among thieves.

 2) ANPCYT called for projects in need of funds to retool equipments in
research labs (PME 2006). All the departments of my school discovered right
away the peremptory need for modernizing their equipments, so they asked
for grants, specifically


department

award

quimica bio

2790000

quimica bio

896578

geologia

2969526

geologia

299900

geologia

200992

geologia

1200

fisica

1509000

fisica

800200

fisio y bio

2309000

ecologia

1382278

ecologia

267000

ecologia

198931

biodiversidad

1047171

matematica

627360

industrias

458000

 I do not mean that all this money was wasted. However, I was a faculty
member in the math dept and $ 627,360 sounded fishy to me : What was it
for? Which math lab equipments they mean? - I asked the math chairwoman,
but I never received an answer.

 I worked as an operations researcher for Du Pont de Nemours and the
Techint Group. They paid me a salary but no grants or funds for doing my
job. These private enterprises stay alert that money is not spent uselessly
- but who is there to prevent thievery by the academic nomenklatura? There
is a rhetorical difference between aggravated assault and filling out an
ANPCYT form asking a grant for a phony project. ANPCYT had the money as a
loan from IDB, adding to Argentina's external debt that We the People have
to repay.

 So it happened that after reading the aforementioned article I started an
investigation on academic corruption at my alma mater. My first report "Los
subsidios de la investigación: Corrupción en Exactas - UBA"
http://www.freewebs.com/subsidios/  was greeted by insulting responses from
the school mafia.

 Fabio Vicentini
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