Subject: Re: Rimm's lack of PhDness

From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 20 Jul 95 00:28:44 -0400

>  I can confirm that I told Phil last November that Rimm was an
>  undergraduate. And, if I remember correctly, "principal investigator" is
>  a CMU academic rank equivalent to a post-doctorate position. (I'm sure
>  Dave can correct me if I'm wrong here.)

Okay, I'll correct you.  Here's a rundown on terminology.

In the November piece, Rimm was described as a "research associate".  At
CMU that is an official academic rank denoting a postdoctoral researcher,
which he most certainly was not.  But "research associate" can also have a
more generic meaning when applied outside a university.  For all I know, an
investigative reporter might refer to his gofers as research associates.
Didn't Jack Anderson do that?  But Rimm, of course, was at a university.

In the June piece, Rimm is described as a "researcher".  This is not an
official academic rank; the research faculty ranks are Research Scientist,
Senior Research Scientist, and Principal Research Scientist.  But at any
university the term "researcher," in the absence of other qualifiers (such
as "undergraduate"), denotes someone with a PhD, so calling Rimm a
"researcher" is still very misleading.

"Principal investigator" is not an academic rank.  To be principal
investigator on a research project means your name goes on the cover page
of the proposal, and you bear the responsibility for how the project is
conducted, including how money is spent, how university and funding agency
regulations are complied with, and how the results are published.  The PI
is the person the funding agency communicates with directly.  If things go
bad, he's the guy who will be held accountable.  When applying for external
funding (e.g., from NSF), only faculty members can be principal
investigators on grants; graduate students cannot be.

For Rimm to call himself "principal investigator" of a CMU-funded study is
just self-congratulatory fluff.  If it were externally funded (which is
considered far more prestigious) he could not have awarded himself that
title; Sirbu would have had to have been the PI.  I don't even know if
Marty could legitimately call himself PI on a SURG grant, since he is
required to have a faculty advisor.  Real PI's do not have advisors looking
over their shoulders.

Since Marty did seem to be playing a central role in the project, PED could
have legitimately described him as the "undergraduate leader of the
research team", which would not only remove any illusions about his status,
but also call attention to the fact that it is unusual for an undergraduate
to play such a role.  Of course, the massive research team Marty headed is
turning out to not be so massive after all; basically just Sirbu, Banks,
and a handful of Marty's undergrad buddies who did all the grunt work.
Plus whoever it was who wrote the legal footnotes; no one seems to know.

What about calling Marty an "undergraduate principal investigator"?  These
terms don't really fit together.  It's like saying "pre-teen chief
executive officer."  Sure, if an 8 year old opens a lemonade stand he can
name himself CEO and make Mom and Dad his vice presidents.  But you'd only
report the story that way for comic effect.  If you wrote about that eight
year old for, say, TIME, and referred to him only as "the CEO of a beverage
distribution concern," you would be a candidate for the next Phillip
Elmer-DeWitt bad journalism award.

In Phil's defense, Rimm refers to himself throught his paper as "principal
investigator", and calls his paper "the Carnegie Mellon study" 22 times in
the manuscript.  It is EXTREMELY unusual for a faculty advisor to allow a
student to act so improperly.  I certainly wouldn't let any of my charges
get away with that crap.  As a science reporter, PED should have known
enough about academia to pick up on how weird this was, but he didn't.  And
the fact that no one else was allowed to look at the manuscript prevented
him from getting competent help.

-- Dave