Re Stanford and VJ Pande

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BillR

BillR

Born Again Cynic
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After a phone call to Stanford’s Provost and then being referred to one “Richard Zare” I am frankly a bit stunned. The reason for this call was to see if we could get some assistance with our F@H problems.

Within the chain of command at Stanford Professor Pande would be answerable to Professor Zare.

After a very polite phone call I learned a few things everyone should know and consider.

Pande is only responsible to Zare as far as “Ethics” are concerned.

Pande is totally autonomous within the structure of Stanford. Basically, he answers to know one.

All decisions regarding the Folding at home project are the sole responsibility of Pande.

Stanford University takes no responsibility for Pande and or his project, save he do something actually illegal for which they may or might become libel.

How Pande runs his program is of NO INTEREST to Professor Zare or Stanford University.

If the program should fail the entire responsibility will fall on Pande, not Professor Zare and not Stanford University.

Should the entire program fail do to mismanagement, it again falls on Pande, Stanford doesn’t care, and it is not their responsibility.

Professor Zare informed me, “I do know over one million people are involved”. My next question was, “what if they all quit?” The response from Zare was clear “then they quit”. I asked, “Wouldn’t this be a possible publicity nightmare for Stanford” the response “this is Professors Pande’s project and if it fails it fails I think you will find all universities are run this way”

I then commented that Pande had in essence told one of our members that was contributing over 800 computers to “go pound sand”. Professor Zare’s response to that was “exactly, it is Professor Pande’s project and he has that right”.

Keep this in mind; my question about “what if they all quit” was a spontaneous response from me born from my own incredulity because frankly I was a bit shocked. Professor Zare in no way took the question as a threat, he started laughing with me. In fact Professor Zare was a very polite gentleman and chuckled all through this entire conversation and thought at first I was calling about VJ’s forum.

Simply put, Stanford University as per Professor Richard Zare simply doesn’t care if the project works or not.

In the end while Professor Pande uses Stanford University’s name this project is VJ Pande’s project, not Stanford University’s project. This project from day one has belonged to VJ Pande.

This conversation took place today 12-03-08 at around 4:00 PM EST. I take full responsibility for the accuracy of everything I have said here.
 
Honestly I'm not sure why this would surprise anyone F@H is a research project run by Pande the fact that he works at Stanford by no means makes them responsible for anything regarding the project.
 
Damn, even Stanford denies knowing the guy. :D
 
Vijay told me in one of his PM's -
"In the end, FAH is my responsibility, which sometimes involves tough choices with important details that are not known to donors. While FAH has done reasonably well over the years, many decisions I have made have been unpopular in the past. There is no doubt I have made mistakes (eg some times we were to slow to act, some times too fast, some times we simply did the wrong thing), but since I am the parent of FAH, I have to look to the future, and do what I think is best, whether it's popular or not. When I do make a mistake, I also am pretty good about listening to people who disagree and in time fixing my mistakes (albeit not as fast as I or others would like in some cases)."
 
Razor_FX_II said:
Vijay told me in one of his PM's -
"In the end, FAH is my responsibility, which sometimes involves tough choices with important details that are not known to donors. While FAH has done reasonably well over the years, many decisions I have made have been unpopular in the past. There is no doubt I have made mistakes (eg some times we were to slow to act, some times too fast, some times we simply did the wrong thing), but since I am the parent of FAH, I have to look to the future, and do what I think is best, whether it's popular or not. When I do make a mistake, I also am pretty good about listening to people who disagree and in time fixing my mistakes (albeit not as fast as I or others would like in some cases)."
Click to expand...

I have that exact same email.
 
BillR, this is a interesting fact we learned about how labs is being run in universities. However, I'm not really surprised since Pr Vijay Pande is graduated so if he is still working for Stanford, he is doing it as a professor. It's his project so he's basically free to do what he think is good within the rules of ethics as outlined by answering to Mr. Zahn.

In the end, this thread is still not helping everyone beside the fact that if you have a issue to bring to the Pande Group, just send a email to Vijay. He will usually listen if you act politely and with good facts. The recent events surrounding 7im demise show that he does listen along with a few changes I noticed since the last time I got pissed at them.

If we truly care for the project and the possibility of finding a cure for diseases, we should let this thread die. However, I'm not posting this to ask everyone to give a blind faith to him and the project. If there is a concern, just email him or if you prefer, just ask me to do it on your behalf.
 
I'm a little surprised that Stanford has their name plastered all over the project and yet has no power over nor takes any responsibility for it. Hopefully Vijay will keep his head on straight. He seems to be taking more interest in the concerns of contributors lately, so hopefully he'll continue the trend.
 
Zero82z said:
I'm a little surprised that Stanford has their name plastered all over the project and yet has no power over nor takes any responsibility for it. Hopefully Vijay will keep his head on straight. He seems to be taking more interest in the concerns of contributors lately, so hopefully he'll continue the trend.
Click to expand...

You shouldn't be it's just how universities work, professors are expected to do research and if it's a big enough project the university will stick there name on it in hopes of getting even more grant money. I hate to say it but it really is all about the money.
 
This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. University professors in science gather funding for their own projects, recruit students (undergraduate and graduate), hire post doctoral students (again from their own funding). The university takes a cut of their funding for "overhead." The professor usually has some commitment to teach a little bit, but for the most part they set their own hours, work what ever projects they want and do what they want. It is a very plush gig. There are some issues. The pay stinks compared to what they can get in industry. There is also that nasty tenure process which is often completely unfair to the new faculty member. I have seen a lot of young scientists run out of universities (by being denied tenure) for the most lousy reasons. They were good teachers, they cared about there students they even did good research. It was just politics or egos from the older faculty (or sometimes not enough grants) and the young professor was out...with no recourse.

tkam knows what he is talking about! It really often does comes down to money.

 
Zero82z said:
I'm a little surprised that Stanford has their name plastered all over the project and yet has no power over nor takes any responsibility for it. Hopefully Vijay will keep his head on straight. He seems to be taking more interest in the concerns of contributors lately, so hopefully he'll continue the trend.
Click to expand...

Actualy Stanford does not have their name plastered anywhere. Pande is using their name to lend credability to HIS project.

From day one this project was being represented as a PART of Stanford,, which I now find it clearly is not.

It took the Provost secratary almost 6 hours just to figure out who VJ was and for whom he worked. Stanford Medical doesn't even know this guy exists.
 
It may not be all that uncommon for Universities to not be all that associated with a professors work, but it is highly strange that, in a project of this size, for them not to support the project and try, at the very least to use the project as a marketing tool. The school that I attended was much the same, the professors had their own research projects, etc, but the school was very supportive of their work, big or small. I couldnt have ever imagined that someone from the school would say that they aren't associated with Professor X and his work at all.

This is just icing on the cake for me. Giving a single forum mod an extended vacation isnt enough to make me all warm and fuzzy inside about fah. Someone over at PG should have taken a software engineering class in college. I know they are doing cutting edge stuff but if you release a client that doesn't work for 50%+ of their users that's just not good practice. This does explain a little why they have had such server issues. They probably arent getting any funding (equipment) from Standford. (Just a guess. I have no facts to back that up.)

I dont want to place any blame here or make anyone mad. I simply want to point out that there are a couple mottos I have herd in my time here in the DC subforum. "Hard for Humanity" - "[H]ard is a road, not a destination." I just want everyone to remember that there are alternatives that still very much support those mottos, should you not want to "Blindly follow VJ". WCG has several projects going on that are helping humanity, have much less drama, and are based on a much more stable platform.

Lets do what we can for humanity, but do it in a smart way. Im excited to try out GPUGRID.
 
I think it makes little difference in the end what structure the project has.

All I care about is the science. If there are a bunch of people who are jerks, I wont talk with them or put myself in contact with them.

There are mean/abusive people everywhere. I just simply remove myself from their presence best I can and continue on.
 
I know youtube stinks. I was doing some reading about the whole WCG and trying to gain knowledge and to test their credability etc. I stumbled onto quite a few videos on Rosetta@home, seti and many others with some good explanations of what their goals are and how the programs help accomplish this. It is the most enlightened I have been in forever concerning folding. The BIONC seems to also have support from the various universities as well. If you feel moved then do some googling and form your own opinions. I am not trying to sway, persuade, recruit or anything of the sort. Only saying after looking around I feel a lot better about what about my decision to GPUGRID and WCG (conquer cancer). Also less pressure for more D, hell I was gonna get plowed, hehe.

WTH, disregard this post, someone may come over and plow me there.

 
Wow!

Lots of excitement in the world of folding this week!
 
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