Johns Hopkins gets a lot of money from vested interests to push whatever suits them.

CaptWillard 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The early nod to Agora Institute mission of “building stronger global democracy” Followed by bemoaning USAID cuts makes me wonder if the author is deliberately missing one of the most glaring examples of this.

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cucumber3732842 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Exactly.

The author's electricity bill went up and his cat got stolen in part because his colleagues working under the university incentive systems (i.e. don't publish stuff that pisses off the interests that fund your lab) created work that legitimized those policy decisions so that those decisions could be made and the funding interests, whatever they may be, could benefit from them.

One wonders if there are similar incentives in the university ranking, administration and consulting that legitimize the university's otherwise questionable decision to engage in these seemingly irresponsible ventures.

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irishcoffee 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

s/gets/accepts

Nobody is waterboarding the money down their throat. They can say no. The actual question is: why don't they?

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bpt3 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Why would they not accept money to do something they are interested in doing?

What is the downside to the school of a nicer student union or a public policy/international relations campus in the nation's capital?

	▲	hunterpayne 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Because that's not what the GP was talking about. For example, say there is some controversial economic policy passed by one of the parties. Then a researcher goes out to research if the policy is working or not. But when they do the research, they find out that the policy doesn't work and has bad side effects too. However, the majority of the university votes and supports the party that passed the policy. So the researcher intentionally changes some of the ways the data is collected and poof, it looks like the policy works. Extra funding comes your way but now you have committed academic fraud. Not that anything will happen to you for this, but still, you know you did it. That's what the GP is talking about and it happens quite a bit in the humanities and economics. Its why private economists and public economists almost seem like different species.