Colleges and universities may be on good, bad, or neutral terms
with each others depending upon history, current relationships, and,
of course, whenever shiploads of money are involved. Apparently,
the University of Southern California (USC) "attracted" a researcher
in Alzheimer's disease -- and his $55 million grant -- from the
University
of California at San Diego (UCSD). UCSD, of course, has done
what any respected research institution of higher education would do:
they are screaming bloody hell and suing USC for a variety of
"crimes". A brief account of this situation is reported on the
website of "The Scientist"; see:
http://www.the-scientist.com//?articles.view/articleNo/43477/title/Bad-Blood-Between-California-Universities/
It appears that the Scientist article is based on an article in the
newspaper "Los Angeles Times" which can be accessed here:
http://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-ucsd-lawsuit-20150706-story.html
The website "Insider Higher Education" also has brief article which
is based on the "Los Angeles Times" but the interesting thing here
are the comments; see:
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2015/07/06/uc-san-diego-sues-u-southern-california
As one of the people points out in the comments, grants go to the
university not the researcher, so it would appear that UCSD would
be glad to give the "turncoat" researcher to USC as long as it
kept his $55 million grant and lab.
True Story: During the late 1960s, early 1970s a world renowned
neuroscientist moved his lab from NYU to the State University of
New York at Stony (he was still there when I started graduate
studies at Stony Brook and I remember that during a one hour
per week course for first graduate students, he "presented his
research" but admitted that he was just killing time before he
had lunch with his stock broker -- the most memorable question
he asked the first year students was "Who drinks vodka martinis?"
which I remember because I think I was the only one who raised
his hand). However, this faculty member had also taken a Digital
Equipment Corp (DEC) PDP computer with him from NYU
(I forget the number but it might have been an PDF-8). The
chairman of NYU's psychology dept at that time (who is emeritus
now and still doing research at NYU) had to remind the neuroscientist
that the equipment was bought by NYU with federal grant money
and belonged to NYU. If said computer was not returned to NYU,
he would be sued to get it back. Ultimately, the neuroscientist
relented and sent back the computer. I do not know if Stony
Brook bought him a new PDP computer and, if they did, whether
he took it with him to Cornel Medical School (he did not stay
very long at Stony Brook).
Addendum to above story: another detail that I remember from
the neuroscientist's "presentation" was that he started his talk
by telling us that he just came back from meeting with his TAs
for his Intro Psych course and had gone over the grades for the
first exam. He was somewhat bummed out and puzzled by the
number of students who respond BELOW chance levels on the
multiple choice exam. Especially since he was co-author on the
textbook he was using.
Ah, academics! ;-)
-Mike Palij
New York University
[email protected]
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