• Rules of the New York State Ethics Commission http://www.dos.state.ny.us/ethc/eisg.html (redirects to http://www.jcope.ny.gov )
• Research Foundation Conflict of Interest statement http://www.rfsuny.org/tto/conflict.pdf
• Office for Sponsored Programs http://www.albany.edu/research/osp/ (had a slow redirect to http://www.albany.edu/research/OSPindex.htm but now goes to http://www.albany.edu/osp/index.php )
• University’s Policy and Procedures on Misconduct in Research and Scholarship http://www.albany.edu/senate/Misconduct_draft_version_Sept_2004.htm (works - but still only a draft after almost ten years?)
• Research Safety and Compliance http://www.albany.edu/researchcompliance/contact.htm
• Research Involving Human Subjects http://www.albany.edu/researchcompliance/IRB/IRB.htm
• Research Involving Animal Subjects http://www.albany.edu/researchcompliance/IACUC/IACUC.htm
• Research Involving Radioactive Materials http://www.albany.edu/researchcompliance/IBC/IBC.htm
• Research Involving Recombinant DNA http://www.albany.edu/researchcompliance/contact.htm
I reported it to SUNY system administration on November 2, 2012. SUNY system administration, predictably, didn't care. Worse - they like things being the way they are: wrong.
Nedra Abbruzzese-Werling, [Non-]Compliance Administrator and "Special" Assistant to the Senior Vice Chancellor and General Consigliere, State University of New York: "You have no idea Marti!!! Here is his response to my short, sweet 'thank you for your e-mail … I have referred it to the campus.'" Her e-mail was not short and sweet but curt, dismissive, and dishonest: as supposed Compliance Administrator she was complaining I was bringing matters of non-compliance to her attention - essentially doing part of her job for her, without pay. Why would anyone in their right mind complain about that?
Marti Anne Ellermann, Deputy General Consigliere, Office of General Consigliere, State University of New York: "I suggest no response."
From the other side of the mouth: "Ensuring the protection and welfare of living things is critical to the integrity of good science and research."
"SUNY and [Research Foundation] RF Best Practices for Human Subjects and Animal Subjects." August 2013. http://portal.rfsuny.org/portal/page/portal/The%20Research%20Foundation%20of%20SUNY/home/info_researchers_administrators/human_animal_subjects/files/human_animal_subjects_memo.pdf
Ensuring the protection and welfare of living things IS critical to the integrity of good science and research. Wouldn't it be nice, therefore, for SUNY Albany to acknowledge that and finally see that The University at Albany Handbook stops returning "404 Page Not Found" for "Research Involving Human Subjects," "Research Involving Animal Subjects," and so on? Not in Ellermann or Abbruzzese-Werling's minds.
Either Barney Fife or Cletus Hogg would make a better Deputy General Counsel than Ellermann. Could she really have graduated from the Columbia University School of Law?
That human subject research policies would be given so little proper attention at SUNY Albany is disturbing (though again, unsurprising).
"The State Health Department begins hearings today on whether Albany State University should be fined for violating state law on experiments using human subjects. [...] State Health Commissioner, Robert Whale, charged that not all human subjects had been properly warned about possible side effects of the tests.""Albany Psychogical Experiment Hearings Begin." Statesman [Stony Brook, NY] October 7, 1977: 3. http://dspace.sunyconnect.suny.edu/bitstream/handle/1951/28257/Statesman,%20V.21,%20n.%207.pdf
“The first case to arise under New York's 1974 law governing research with human subjects has been settled, with university researchers admitting 35 violations involving 'at least 975 subjects.
"Experiments were not properly authorized or supervised, and some subjects were endangered by faulty equipment such as an electric shock machine, officials of Albany State University admitted yesterday. […]
“The case at Albany came to light because of complaints by a psychology graduate student."
"SUNY Albany Admits Violations, Health Department Settles Case." Statesman [Stony Brook, NY]. October 28, 1977: 2.
"Research Involving Human Subjects." October 17 1977. http://old.suny.edu/provost/MTP/mtp77-18.pdf
"Smith, R. Jeffery. 'SUNY at Albany Admits Research Violations,' Science 198 (18 November 1977), pp. 708.
"This is a brief statement of Albany's owning up to violations of the rights of human subjects. Specifically, Science reports that this University was guilty of: 1) not obtaining the voluntary, informed, and written consent of the research participants; 2) failing to make a fair explanation to each participant of the risks involved; 3) failing to have the experiments reviewed by an approved institutional review board; and, 4) failing to supervise the experiments properly.
"It is reported here that Albany could have been fined $975,000. Whalen suspended the $100,000 fine which was imposed.
"What is interesting is that the reporter deals only with the superficial facts of the case. For example, there is not a suggestion of what actually went on at the school, what the research involved, how that work was done, who had been hurt. There is not a word about Brock Kilbourne and yet he is one of the few who was really injured in all of this. The reporter seems to have decided the 'important' facts of this case. This is illustrative of how much of any deviance story gets told."
http://www.albany.edu/~scifraud/data/sci_fraud_0479.html
"Assurances of Compliance with Human Subjects Research Regulations." August 20, 1981. http://old.suny.edu/provost/MTP/mtp81-10.pdf
SUNY Albany isn't one to learn from its mistakes. (And, as I've found, it is willing - even eager - to turn to terrorism to deal with whistleblowers, even backing threats with their armed, corrupt so-called police department.)"The case of Brock Kilbourne and the University at Albany is still, to me, outrageous. Brock as a graduate student was a TA to a senior professor in his department. That senior professor had been engaged in research involving student subjects and, according to Brock, had endangered the lives of those students. Young Brock "blew the whistle" on his professor. The department involved stood behind the professor and the University at Albany tried to stonewall the investigation by the NY State Health Department, the agency charged with investigating the charges. The heroic behavior of the whistle-blower in this case was completely ignored: what has never been forgotten was that he had been a whistle-blower.
"Eventually, the University was found to be guilty of abuse of students and severely fined. Brock, as whistle-blower, got nothing: nothing from his department, nothing from the University. He was forced out of the graduate program. The idealist who did what he thought was right slipped between the cracks and was ignored by the University and the department. Far from helping him, the University and the department tried to weasel their ways out of their difficulties and, as they saw it, Brock Kilbourne was one of their difficulties: he was no hero to the department and no hero to the NY State Department of Health. Brock, for blowing the whistle, was at best forgotten, at worst, as he learned later, to continue to pay for his whistle-blowing.
"I was able, through friends, to get Brock another graduate appointment and he did finish his Ph.D. He went on to marry Maria. They left for the other school [University of Nevada Reno http://www.leg.state.nv.us/Division/Research/Library/LegHistory/Minutes/1979/Senate/HumResFac/4-24-79.pdf] and were told, several months after their acceptance into that program: 'If we had known what you did back at Albany, we never would have accepted you here.' Then, as now, Brock's whistle-blowing continues to cost him dearly: he has been unable to find work in his chosen field."
Higgins, A. C. "Science's Dark Side." Discussion of Fraud in Science listserv. April 11, 1992.
"Last week, university spokeswoman Mary Fiess released this statement on the matter: 'The university imposed the suspension because of serious concerns that the experiment did not meet the standards governing such projects on campus. While we're working to gather all the facts in this case, we cannot comment further.'Why is it that students have to bring such crimes to the public's attention? Why aren't there members of the faculty, staff, administration who will do so?A memo sent to all psychology professors and graduate students last week instructed them to refer calls 'looking for information on any psychological research conducted in our department' to the university's public relations office.
"According to three sources -- two faculty members and a graduate student -- the school's Institutional Review Board, which monitors human research, closed the project when a student complained late last spring. The student, sources said, was not allowed to leave a lecture that was part of Kelley's experiment. Refusal to allow a subject to leave an experiment violates National Science Foundation guidelines.
"Despite the inquiry, Kelley, a fully tenured professor who earned $67,000 last year, is slated to teach two graduate courses in the fall."
Brownstein, Andrew. "UAlbany suspends implants research." Albany Times Union. August 25, 1999: B1.albarchive.merlinone.net/mweb/wmsql.wm.request?oneimage&imageid=5943057Brownstein, Andrew. "Implant researcher goes on paid leave." Albany Times Union. November 12, 1999: B1. http://albarchive.merlinone.net/mweb/wmsql.wm.request?oneimage&imageid=5956759
"As vice president for student success, James Anderson [...] has stepped down from that job in a shake-up he won't discuss. It's more high level turnover at a 17,000-student state school that has seen plenty of it.Under both Anderson and Bouchard, UAlbany submitted false Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act reports. Under both Anderson and Bouchard, UAlbany did not properly maintain its sexual offender registry. Etc."That includes the recent departure of Officer in Charge Susan Herbst , who was running the school in the wake of President Kermit Hall's death.
"Philip announced the student affairs leadership change in this Nov. 1 e-mail to faculty and staff obtained by Campus Notebook:
"'After due deliberation and subsequent discussions with VP Anderson, it was mutually agreed that he would step down from his administrative post to return to the faculty where he is tenured in the Department of Psychology.'
"Philip didn't say what prompted the move - or whether others might be coming. Christine Bouchard, a UAlbany veteran who was associate vice president, is now the interim vice president for student success. Also, the Office of Diversity and Affirmative Action will now report directly to the president, among other structural changes.
"The $230,000 salary Anderson was earning as of March made him one of UAlbany's top-paid employees. Philip credited the administrator - a protege of the late Hall's - with working on a diversity plan and a sexual assault task force.
"Asked by Campus Notebook about his move, Anderson would say only this: 'It was a mutual agreement.'
Parry, Marc. "Another administrative change at UAlbany." Albany Times Union. November 8, 2007: D3. http://albarchive.merlinone.net/mweb/wmsql.wm.request?oneimage&imageid=6427675
When I reported the deranged Michael Barberich's inappropriate “joke” about how “we [the class] could hook up [one of his minority teaching assistants he named] to electrodes and shock her until she screams”, Communication Department chair Jeanette "Mengele" Altarriba didn't reply. When I wrote again to note my disapproval of her dismissive attitude, she claimed she'd addressed matters through internal mechanisms to do so. Her claim seems to have been a lie. I asked how she "addressed" things when they kept getting worse and what "internal mechanisms" she used, but she refused to reply. Perhaps on the basis of her sociopathy she subsequently became the Psychology Department chair and then Vice Provost and Dean for Undergraduate Education.
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