By Sheeva Azma
Luminaries in science should not be “too big to fail.” That’s not how science works at all. Let’s revisit our hypotheses about what it takes to succeed in science.
Readers, I’m still sitting down to write this blog with all the odds stacked against me. The chance that this story even makes it anywhere useful (read: helps toxic people who did who-knows-what leave science so that it can be more hospitable for women and others marginalized in science) makes me feel like David in the story of David and Goliath — I mean, before he takes down Goliath. I write this having already contributed to the firing of my former professor (when he taught at Harvard back in 2004) thanks, in part, to my now-viral reel that got more than 123,000+ views and elevated calls for the professor to step down. Tramo is now retiring in June, per the UCLA Daily Bruin.
Before UCLA announced his departure, my former professor stated that he had no idea about anything Epstein was doing, yet also emailed him to celebrate Epstein’s release from prison in 2009 (Instagram analysis from BusterToks).
Um…okay.
Don’t listen to what these people tell the media to attempt to clear their names — their actions speak louder than words.
I haven’t revisited the story of David and Goliath in a little while, but I know that David is smaller than Goliath and takes Goliath down anyway. I am also a very small person with a small readership. I mean, this isn’t exactly the New York Times that you’re reading (and I thank you for that). I know that writing about the misconduct of the world’s visionaries in neuroscience is not a pointless endeavor, but I wonder who is listening and whether the people who really should be, are.
The Goliaths of this story are all the toxic scientists I wrote about last week who enabled Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier, science philanthropist, and convicted trafficker. Epstein, who got his career start teaching physics and calculus at an elite prep school in Manhattan, and then got connections to work at Bear Stearns from one of the parents of the students he taught, sure canoodled with scientists a lot. I get it — scientists, and especially MIT and Harvard scientists — are cool people. I know because I am one. That doesn’t mean that being an uber-genius exempts you from basic morality.
This is not a controversial take — it’s just one that I have not seen stated anywhere yet — and that’s why Epstein was able to get away with what he did for so long.
Dr. Brian Keating, with 13 mentions in the Epstein files and zero excuses, wrote on his Medium to answer the question, “Why are so many scientists in the Epstein Files (including me)“? Keating, a cosmologist and current professor of physics at the University of California-San Diego, wrote of his implication in the files: “If MIT and Harvard accepted his money, it must be fine. If Harvard hosted him in his own office on campus, someone must have vetted him…surely the ethical due diligence was done.”
Excuses, excuses, excuses. It’s all excuses. Now that we’ve allowed these toxic people to persist in the scientific establishment for so long, the question is … do we really fire them, at this point?
Yes, we should.
Fire every single person who has talked to Jeffrey Epstein, from sending a quick fundraising email, to showering him with praise, to actually accepting money from him, traveling to his properties, dining with him, visiting his ranch (and lying about it), or even brainstorming science research together.
People who associate with a convicted sex trafficker do not belong in science, a field already inhospitable to women and historically marginalized communities.
Science is about finding truth, not hiding it.
Science is full of young people with good ideas who don’t always make it through the “pipeline” (as we like to call it). Could people like the following Epstein chums (who are super high profile and famous) be why?
(What ensues here is my attempt to summarize the most toxic people I can think of in the remaining 20 minutes I have to write this blog post…what a challenge! I’d love to tell you all the wild stuff I’ve found in the files about toxic people in science — and all the journalism publications implicated who are absolutely not reporting on this at all.)
- Ed Boyden is an MIT neuroscientist who is known as the founder of optogenetics (cool, but not cooler than being a good person). I casually discovered that he had lied about his association with Epstein in the MIT report on Epstein’s connections to the institute (which is also both his and my alma mater!). Namely, he visited Epstein’s ranch, which he apparently just omitted from his statements to the people who wrote the MIT report. So, now, imagine two MIT students: one who is grateful she left academic science due what I can only describe as all sorts of badness (me), and the other allowed to persevere and win awards (including some of the highest awards out there) despite canoodling with a convicted sex trafficker (Boyden). If this were not already how the rest of the world works when it comes to women’s contributions, it would be maddening. I mean, Boyden and I grew up only four hours from each other, and I skipped a grade and he skipped two (as did Jeffrey Epstein — in high school, apparently?). Then, we both went to MIT. So, I guess we had many similar opportunities until it got to me trying to make it in academia. Don’t get me wrong, I love being a journalist and looking into the Epstein files has helped me develop my investigative journalism chops, but here is where my rage starts bleeding into my work and I wonder, am I just really ragey about this, or is this an actual double-standard?
- Larry Krauss left the University of Arizona following a Buzzfeed article detailing his sexual misconduct. When challenged about these allegations, he brushed it all off “as a joke,” according to Buzzfeed. Was it? Oh, the best part of this, by far, was Krauss talking to Epstein about how best to portray himself in the face of a scandal. It reminded me of that political strategist that specializes in making veterans running against people look bad (yes, that’s an actual thing, apparently — remember John Kerry and his whole “Swift Boat” thing?). It’s almost like Epstein ran a PR strategy consultancy for the most toxic men in science, per their desperate emails to him about how to look as good as possible while continuing to behave awfully.
- Marc Hauser is a former Harvard professor who, the one time I saw him speak in person at Harvard (just a few years before he was fired), was openly sexist and just plain rude. He antagonized people who asked questions of him that even vaguely challenged him. He seemed like one of those people who hates to be told he is wrong. It’s, frankly, comical as someone who has worked in a slew of STEM-heavy odd jobs where I have not had the privilege of looking stereotypically “smart” and have had to prove myself over and over again…yet this man got so much of a free pass that he just started making up data (and asked Epstein for advice once it started to all go south).
- Larry Summers and Epstein are so financially and socially involved that it’s impossible to tease them apart. Summers famously commented on women’s aptitude in STEM back in the early 2000s, but that wasn’t even the comment that took him down, forcing him to resign from Harvard entirely — his Epstein ties did. Epstein worked really hard to maintain his image as one that was low-profile, even going so far as to work on projects such as the Bitcoin “designer babies” project I talked about on LinkedIn without any mention of him, so that when the project got profiled in MIT Tech Review, his name was not linked to it at all.
- Stephen Kosslyn is a Professor Emeritus at Harvard who contributed to Epstein’s birthday book and went so far as to recommend him to be a visiting professor in Harvard’s psych department in 2006. He is currently facing (and denying) claims of sexual assault. Why would you own up to being a terrible person when you could just deny it? Duh, that makes sense, and then you can keep doing science.
Well, that’s all the time I have to write about this today, but I hope I have convinced you that you cannot take these toxic scientists mentioned in the Epstein files at their word. Oh, what a tangled web they have spun, deceiving people just to be able to do science and make the playing field so much worse. I can’t imagine what it must have been like to be a grad student in one of these people’s labs, especially as a woman in science (if those opportunities were even available).
Luminaries in science should not be “too big to fail.” That’s not how science works at all. Let’s revisit our hypotheses about what it takes to succeed in science.
Scientists are smart people and they are afraid of losing their careers. They should not have associated with Epstein in the first place, and now they are doing anything they can to keep their jobs. Sadly, it’s too late to really provide justice to everyone involved in the Epstein case, as well as all of the historically underrepresented people in science who have been forced out of science, but we can at least try to do better…and that starts with actually looking into the evidence and not taking these people at their word.
Culturally, we have stated, by implicitly allowing these people in science, despite all the info that exists on them now, that we value science advances more than actually being a good person, and that is not the correct value hierarchy. The end benefit of science is to help people, after all.
So what can be done? Every scientist named in the Epstein files should be investigated. A scientist is not too big to fail. There are always tons of other people who can pick up the scientific slack.
Why am I publishing this on my blog instead of the New York Times? Well, I already pitched them, and got no response. But beyond that, I am tired of pitching to these outlets, who have themselves been part of Epstein’s PR scheme — Nautilus (saved from bankruptcy by Larry Summers and friends), Scientific American (whose editor gave Epstein control over what should be published there), MIT Tech Review (who published an article on a project Epstein funded without mentioning that he was a supporter).
Beyond that, the coverage of scientists in the Epstein files has been beyond uninspiring. It almost feels like the lack of detailed reporting has led to an information vacuum that has led to a disconnect with society. The Instagram comments on the post about this article about three scientists who said “no” to Epstein were all like, “what is the point of writing this?” but the phrasing from Science Magazine makes it sound like these scientists were going along, doing nothing wrong, and now just “facing consequences.”
Scientists have been like, “well, we can’t choose where we get funding” and it’s like, well, someone can. It was probably one of these luminaries (or even institutions turning a blind eye — there is a bit of that in the Epstein files!) that made it possible for you to do science on a convicted sex trafficker’s dime. Honestly, it makes me feel so happy to be free of it all as a journalist. We should not weight science advances over a healthy future for women and girls. Scientists are good at finding stuff. They are more than capable of doing their due diligence (and when they aren’t, we should be curious about whether they are intentionally hiding something, or feigning ignorance).
Fancy Comma, LLC 