Marvin Sirbu's Moral Mazes

Index:

Background
Allowed Rimm to call himself "Principal Investigator"
Allowed Rimm to use "Dean's" Account
Allowed Rimm to hide status in report

Sirbu's rights as a professor and advisor are circumscribed by his responsibilities to the administration, to his profession, and to his students, as well as by the values commonly understood to apply in academic research. For example, he has the right to advance his own career. But he also has the responsibility to uphold ethical and scientific standards by overseeing the research of his advisees. If the material is novel and interesting, he has the responsibility to help his advisees publish their work.

The National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research published a report entitled "Ethical Principles and Guidelines for the Protection of Human Subjects of Research," popularly called the Belmont Report. The report outlines three broad areas of responsibilities that should guide a researcher in the social sciences: respect for persons, beneficence, and justice. Rimm's study failed to meet those criteria, and Sirbu failed in his responsibility to ensure it did.

The reason for pairing a student with an advisor is that the student's understanding of scientific and ethical standards may be incomplete. The advisor's role is to demonstrate those standards by instruction and by example. Sirbu failed to fulfill this responsibility, and the consequences have been significant.

As Rimm's advisor, Marvin Sirbu participated in a demonstrably unethical series of actions designed to attract government funding, to further his career, and possibly even to help his corporate allies.

As the advisor, he should take responsibility for it.

Allowed Rimm to call himself `Principal Investigator'

Sirbu allowed Rimm to represent himself as the leader of a large interdisciplinary research team -- a representation that was nothing more than fantasy. Professor Jim Thomas wrote in an ethical analysis:

As Sirbu should know, "research team" has a special connotation among scholars. A research team is not a casual circle of people who may occasionally interact. Sirbu's professed close relationship with Rimm and involvement in Rimm's research would give him knowledge of whether a "research team," as the term is conventionally employed by reputable scholars, did in fact exist. Sirbu's claim (above) that some high-level faculty "collaborated" with Rimm adds credence to, and perpetuates the image of, an established group of professionals well-integrated into a research project directed by Rimm as "principal investigator."

Even though many members of Rimm's "research team" have disclaimed any substantial involvement with Sirbu or Rimm, Sirbu allowed his advisee to perpetuate this fiction. Sirbu also allowed an undergraduate to pass himself off to the national media as the "principal investigator" of his "research team." That is more than misleading; it is deceptive.

"Principal investigator" has a specific meaning in academia. As one researcher, who wished to remain anonymous, wrote:

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 with whom the funding agency communicates directly. He is the person accountable for the project. When applying for external funding (e.g., from NSF), only faculty members can be principal investigators on grants; graduate students cannot be.

If the project were externally funded -- which is considered far more prestigious -- Rimm could not have awarded himself the title of "principal investigator." Sirbu would have had to have been the PI. Rimm probably even can't legitimately call himself PI on a SURG grant, since he is required to have a faculty advisor. Real PIs do not have advisors looking over their shoulders.

For Rimm to call himself "principal investigator" of a CMU-funded study is self-congratulatory nonsense. For Sirbu to condone and perpetuate it is deceptive.

Allowed Rimm to use "Dean's" account

Rimm employed other devices to conceal his undergraduate status. When Rimm was a student, his computer account on CMU's Andrew system revealed his class status at Carnegie Mellon. A "finger" request directed at his Andrew account would have shown that Rimm was an undergraduate: a senior Electrical and Computer Engineering major.

To hide his true status, Rimm acquired another Andrew account that was labeled "CIT Dean's Office," meaning the Carnegie Institute of Technology. He used this account to communicate with researchers at other universities, often not revealing that he was an undergraduate student. Since CMU policies would have required that Sirbu sign the paperwork for Rimm's "Dean's Office" account, Sirbu should have ensured his student did not abuse it.

Rimm often used this account to lend the imprimatur of the Dean of CIT to his study. When Aaron Dickey from the Associated Press revealed on Usenet that the author of the "Carnegie Mellon study" was an undergraduate, Rimm replied from the Dean's office account, without signing the mail:

Date: Tue, 27 Jun 1995 07:59:02 -0400 (EDT)
From: CIT Dean's Office
To: Aaron L Dickey
Subject: Re: Time, Dewitt AWFUL article

More than two dozen members of the Carnegie Mellon community contributed to the project, including eleven faculty members and three graduate students.

Thank you for your interest.

Rimm also used the "Dean's Office" account to communicate with Seth Finkelstein of MIT:

Message-Id:
Date: Sat, 24 Jun 1995 22:37:29 -0400 (EDT)
From: "CIT Dean's Office"
To: sethf@MIT.EDU (Seth Finkelstein)
Subject: Re: EFF Analysis of Communications Decency Act as Passed by

We made the cover of TIME to hit the stands Monday. If you have a chance, you can watch me on Nightline Monday evening.

The "Case of the Two Cybersex Studies" reveals that Michael Mehta was a graduate student at York University in Ontario when Rimm called him in November 1994 to talk about Mehta's research. Rimm misrepresented his identity to Mehta, leading the Canadian to believe Rimm was a professor leading a large team of researchers. Mehta said afterwards: "I feel like a total fool now. I was under the impression that Rimm was a tenured faculty member. He never corrected me when I called him 'professor Rimm.'"

Here too, Sirbu knew or should have known what his advisee was doing. Advisors have a responsibility to oversee the actions of their students, especially when the students are acting on behalf of a "team of researchers" that includes their advisor.

Allowed Rimm to hide status in report

Even Rimm's paper clouded the issue of his own lack of credentials in social science research. To be sure, an advanced degree is not necessary or even sufficient to produce interesting research in a field. At the same time, its absence may make observers more skeptical about the quality of the research -- a skepticism Rimm went to great lengths to avoid.

Nowhere in the paper did Rimm mention his student status. The biographical footnote simply identified him as "Researcher and Principal Investigator, College of Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University." A few pages afterwards, Rimm says:

The principal investigator, an electrical engineer with a background in broadband communications, began with an interest in digital image manipulation and the transmission of multimedia applications over computer networks in real-time. Other interests include examining how computer networks challenge researchers to develop new methodologies to monitor consumption habits, marketing techniques, and reliability and validity methods for the analysis of vast quantities of data.

This wording implies that Rimm has a substantial background in developing "new methodologies" and in "marketing techniques." This is misleading and deceptive.

Still later in the study, Rimm writes:

More than two dozen faculty, staff, graduate and undergraduate students at Carnegie Mellon University contributed in some manner to this study. After a year of exploring the Internet, Usenet, World Wide Web, and computer Bulletin Board Systems (BBS), the research team discovered that one of the largest (if not the largest) recreational applications of users of computer networks was the distribution and consumption of sexually explicit imagery.

In the first sentence, Rimm credits over a score of Carnegie Mellon community members with contributing to this study, but in the second sentence, he switches to using the words "research team." This leads the reader to believe that all two dozen members were on the "research team," which is incorrect and misleading. Half of the "contributors" to his study have distanced themselves from it, saying they had nothing to do with the paper. Rimm was and remains the sole author.

Rimm also failed to follow Carnegie Mellon's published requirements for students receiving SURG funds:

Please acknowledege your award in any printed materials related to your project including any final reports or formal publications. Please use the following statement: "This project was funded [in part] by Carnegie Mellon's Undergraduate Research Initiative through the Small Undergraduate Research Grant program. This paper represents the views of the author[s] and not those of Carnegie Mellon University."

Rimm did not comply with the policy, choosing instead to conceal that he was an undergraduate, in this footnote: "This interdisciplinary project was made possible by four grants from Carnegie Mellon University."

On July 4, 1994, Professor Donna Hoffman of Vanderbilt University noticed that Rimm's web site featured a response to her critique authored by him alone but deceptively labeled as coming from "The Research Team":

But they don't have text behind them. Rimm previously signed this page as "The Research Team" but I wrote Sirbu to advise Rimm to change it and take responsibility for it and he did. It is now signed, "Marty Rimm, Principal Investigator."

There used to a an active link to "Conspiracies," which contained all the grafs from Elizabeth Corcoran's story in last week's Washington Post in which I was quoted. However, a letter to Sirbu suggesting this was a bad idea resulted in its hasty removal and an apology from Rimm (which I posted here).

Perhaps it is somehow conceivable that an advisor would decline to read their student's paper before it was published in a prominent law journal and featured on the cover of TIME magazine. But it is inconceivable that Sirbu wouldn't have realized by this time that Rimm was perpetuating the "principal investigator" fiction. Yet Sirbu allowed Rimm to continue.

After all, it had been going on for quite a while. On November 6, 1994, Rimm sent mail to Carl Kadie, a graduate student at the University of Illinois. In the mail that Kadie reposted to Usenet with permission, Rimm again perpetuated his "principal investigator" fabrication: You're a good guy, Carl. I'm the principle [sic] investigator of the study, "Marketing Pornography on the Information Superhighway."

And again on April 4, 1995, in mail sent to the EFF's Mike Godwin, Rimm used the misleading "principal investigator" title.

Since Sirbu's name was on the final draft of Rimm's "Marketing Pornography" paper, and since he was the faculty member who signed off on the SURG grant, Sirbu should have read the paper before it was published. He should have realized that nowhere in the paper was Rimm's undergraduate status mentioned. Instead, the paper was a masterpiece of deception and duplicity.

On January 9, 1996, Sirbu said in a post to Usenet that:

[I] never condoned or "allowed Marty to represent himself as a post-doctoral researcher" as you allege.

This is misleading. Sirbu knew or should have known about Rimm's misrepresentations and lies and stopped it. To do otherwise is gross negligence and an abdication of his fundamental responsibilities as a faculty member and a member of the Carnegie Mellon University research community.

Other Documents and Files

Boardwatch Magazine's article on Marvin Sirbu (Fall 1995)

Mike Godwin's exchange with Marvin Sirbu (6/95)

Sirbu's email to CMU administrators (9/94)

Declan McCullagh's reply to Marvin Sirbu (1/96)