Thread by @flypolitics

Public Safety vs Corporate Interests at the MIT Media Lab

MIT Media Lab’s Open Agriculture Initiative knowingly and repeatedly violated environmental regulations for the disposal of wastewater. I know because I was there.

I was present at the Media Lab in the summer of 2017 when it presented its first $250,000 Disobedience Award to the scientists who exposed the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, courageously unraveling a mystery that powerful interests would have preferred to keep under wraps.

Having recently joined the MIT Media Lab as a Research Scientist, I was deeply inspired and greatly impressed by the ethical commitment that the Disobedience Award seemed to encourage in scientists and activists.

How could one not be? I was therefore doubly indignant, and surprised and shocked at what I witnessed next.

The Open Agriculture Initiative, directed by Caleb Harper, is one of the Lab’s more prominent Initiatives. Rafael Reif, MIT President, is familiar with the Open Agriculture Initiative project.

So much so that President Reif invited Harper on one occasion to a dinner in London hosted by one of the world’s richest billionaires, the philanthropist Sir Mohammed Abdul Latif Jameel and one of MIT’s major donors.

My role in the Initiative was to ensure that the work would meet with scientific standards. I soon realized, however, that none of the projects under my purview were working properly.

Indeed, Harper’s presentations to sponsors and the press were chock-full of scientifically spurious projects, backed by fanciful, unsubstantiated scientific claims - ones that bore no relation to the realities that we were seeing in the Lab.

These misrepresentations were in clear violation of MIT policies and procedures.

This was not simply an instance of sloppy scientific research. I discovered that the Lab was violating the terms of its agreement with the Massachusetts’ Environmental Protection Drinking Water Program office.

So the very people who celebrated scientists and activists who exposed water contamination in Flint were themselves putting sources of drinking water at risk.

In other words, and with stunning hypocrisy, they were giving out rewards to scientists for exposing the wrongdoing of others, while committing the very same breaches themselves.

I was shocked to discover, too, that the Lab was in breach of the registration that Harper and Louis J. DiBerardinis, the director of MIT Health and Safety, had obtained from the Environmental Protection Drinking Water Program office.

In April 2018 I learned that the Open Agriculture Initiative had provided inaccurate information to the regulators about the amount of nitrogen and nitrates that were going into the wastewater.

The Open Agriculture Initiative lab in Middleton, is on the site of a “decommissioned” MIT nuclear accelerator, which is now called the Bates Research and Engineering Center.

Our team released thousands of gallons of toxic chemicals at the Bates Lab into the underground sources of drinking water in the North Shore in Middleton, Massachusetts.

Now, this may not sound terrible on the face of it, but scientists have shown that the nitrogen and nitrate levels in the team’s fertilizers are dangerous for infants and newborns.

I raised this issue with my team in a meeting, but Mr Harper’s response was that he would consider making an executive decision to continue the illegal release.

I was, and remain, very much concerned about the health and environmental ramifications of MIT’s decisions on the residents of Middleton and North Shore, Massachusetts.

As the most senior research scientist on staff, I reported concerns over the illegal discharge in an email, to the parties involved. In my email I recommended that we halt any future discharge.

Within minutes of me sending this email, Mr Harper proceeded to block my interactions with MIT Health and Safety staff if they lacked his explicit approval, and proceeded within days to hinder my ability to further carry out my work.

The Director of Human Resources at MIT Media Lab was instructed to separate me from my peer community, an escalation that seriously and finally tied my hands, and prevented me from intervening in any further misconduct on the part of the lab.

What horrified me the most was that Mr Harper, as director and operator of the permit, actively worked with senior staff at MIT Health & Safety to mislead the Environmental Protection Drinking Water Program officials about his team’s activities.

Since MIT deals with highly sensitive research, The wider consequences of the institution withholding information from the regulators, could be absolutely catastrophic.

Public Safety vs Corporate Interests at the MIT Media Lab

MIT Media Lab’s Open Agriculture Initiative knowingly and repeatedly violated environmental regulations for the disposal of wastewater. I know because I was there.

I was present at the Media Lab in the summer of 2017 when it presented its first $250,000 Disobedience Award to the scientists who exposed the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, courageously unraveling a mystery that powerful interests would have preferred to keep under wraps.

Having recently joined the MIT Media Lab as a Research Scientist, I was deeply inspired and greatly impressed by the ethical commitment that the Disobedience Award seemed to encourage in scientists and activists.

How could one not be? I was therefore doubly indignant, and surprised and shocked at what I witnessed next.

The Open Agriculture Initiative, directed by Caleb Harper, is one of the Lab’s more prominent Initiatives. Rafael Reif, MIT President, is familiar with the Open Agriculture Initiative project.

So much so that President Reif invited Harper on one occasion to a dinner in London hosted by one of the world’s richest billionaires, the philanthropist Sir Mohammed Abdul Latif Jameel and one of MIT’s major donors.

My role in the Initiative was to ensure that the work would meet with scientific standards. I soon realized, however, that none of the projects under my purview were working properly.

Indeed, Harper’s presentations to sponsors and the press were chock-full of scientifically spurious projects, backed by fanciful, unsubstantiated scientific claims - ones that bore no relation to the realities that we were seeing in the Lab.

These misrepresentations were in clear violation of MIT policies and procedures.

This was not simply an instance of sloppy scientific research. I discovered that the Lab was violating the terms of its agreement with the Massachusetts’ Environmental Protection Drinking Water Program office.

So the very people who celebrated scientists and activists who exposed water contamination in Flint were themselves putting sources of drinking water at risk.

In other words, and with stunning hypocrisy, they were giving out rewards to scientists for exposing the wrongdoing of others, while committing the very same breaches themselves.

I was shocked to discover, too, that the Lab was in breach of the registration that Harper and Louis J. DiBerardinis, the director of MIT Health and Safety, had obtained from the Environmental Protection Drinking Water Program office.

In April 2018 I learned that the Open Agriculture Initiative had provided inaccurate information to the regulators about the amount of nitrogen and nitrates that were going into the wastewater.

The Open Agriculture Initiative lab in Middleton, is on the site of a “decommissioned” MIT nuclear accelerator, which is now called the Bates Research and Engineering Center.

Our team released thousands of gallons of toxic chemicals at the Bates Lab into the underground sources of drinking water in the North Shore in Middleton, Massachusetts.

Now, this may not sound terrible on the face of it, but scientists have shown that the nitrogen and nitrate levels in the team’s fertilizers are dangerous for infants and newborns.

I raised this issue with my team in a meeting, but Mr Harper’s response was that he would consider making an executive decision to continue the illegal release.

I was, and remain, very much concerned about the health and environmental ramifications of MIT’s decisions on the residents of Middleton and North Shore, Massachusetts.

As the most senior research scientist on staff, I reported concerns over the illegal discharge in an email, to the parties involved. In my email I recommended that we halt any future discharge.

Within minutes of me sending this email, Mr Harper proceeded to block my interactions with MIT Health and Safety staff if they lacked his explicit approval, and proceeded within days to hinder my ability to further carry out my work.

The Director of Human Resources at MIT Media Lab was instructed to separate me from my peer community, an escalation that seriously and finally tied my hands, and prevented me from intervening in any further misconduct on the part of the lab.

Contrary to what the Institute claims in its press releases about corruption in its ranks, MIT administration is well informed about the Lab’s unethical practices.

Since the recent resignation of Joi Ito, Director of the Media Lab, while the administration is investigating the facts around MIT’s concealment of donations from the convicted sex-offender, Jeffrey Epstein,

there is a deeper ethical crisis that the Office of the President faces: its willingness to put corporate interests above academic integrity and public safety.