… Ms. Hunter told investigators that Mr. Hughes had become distressed about one particular subject — discord between his sister and their stepmother, Carol Hughes. The two women have quarreled in recent years over the estate of Ted Hughes. Neither Ms. Hunter nor Frieda Hughes, herself a poet, painter and author in England, responded to requests for comment.

The girlfriend of Nicholas Hughes reports on a possible element of his depression.

You know how, new to a house, you creep about checking out family photos, books, cds?

I got to cds this morning – there’s a player in the kitchen – and DAMNED if the owners don’t have TWO Henry Purcells, one of which features Music for a While.

UD‘s already happily reading Gore Vidal’s Palimpsest from the owners’ library (Vidal was in Key West a few weeks ago, for the literary seminar); now – just now – she put down Vidal and picked up Purcell and slipped him in and put the sound up high and wailed along with Alfred Deller. Twice. And it wasn’t easy onaccounta he’s a guy. But she did it. Boy oh boy.

… [B]y December 2008, college endowments had suffered estimated average six-month losses of 24.1 percent. It is now expected that by the end of the fiscal year (June ’09), full-year losses will be even greater. Already the widespread carnage is being rationalized by comparing results to similar or greater losses in the broader equity markets. But the fact remains that epic losses have no precedent in endowment management. For example, Harvard’s endowment actually grew during ’29-’32–the most devastating years of the Great Depression.

Will endowment managers, who in recent years sought to juice returns by leveraging endowment monies into hedge funds and other corners of the shadow banking system now be held accountable? And can we expect them to give back any of the lavish investment-banker level bonuses they were paid during the go-go years?

We’ll surely be waiting a long time for this kind of accountability…

People keep saying that, you know… Universities paid their managers tens of millions of dollars in bonuses, and now that the shit’s hit the fan because of their arrant fiscal disregard, they should return the bonuses. But no one’s doing anything toward that end.

So… Let’s start here:

In the fiscal year ended June 2004, the two top paid managers at Harvard Management, David Mittelman and Maurice Samuels, each received about $25 million. In the prior year they earned more than $35 million each.

Write to David and Maurice. I think they both still work here, at Convexity Capital Management:

200 Clarendon Street
Boston MA 02116

There’s a phone number and a company email address on the Convexity home page too.

How much should you suggest they give back to Harvard?

Well, think of it this way. Over two years at Harvard (let’s stick with the two years mentioned in this article), each earned over fifty million dollars in bonuses. Remember – that’s bonuses, on top of their salary. Both have been making similar – higher? – bonuses since their time, and probably before their time, at Harvard.

So let’s put anxiety about their grocery budgets aside as we think about a reasonable figure to suggest to David and Maurice, okay?

Of course it’s up to you what you suggest to Mittelman and Samuels.

UD‘s thinking 45 million apiece.

… secession from the United States is reenacted every year at the Conch Republic Independence Celebration, and UD will be covering the event … perhaps… a little… for this blog.

Just as intriguing, though, is the lawsuit raging around the event:

Two competing Conch Republic festivals will begin a week from today – one in Key West and one in Key Largo – despite an ongoing lawsuit over ownership of Conch Republic as a festival brand name.

… [The] suit was filed by the Upper Keys group in December 2008, after two years of talks with [Peter] Anderson to co-produce an Upper Keys Conch Republic festival failed.

… Anderson, who was named secretary general of the Conch Republic by former Key West Mayor Capt. Tony Tarracino, makes his living from the annual Key West festival and by selling Conch Republic passports, flags and other merchandise. He says he owns the sole rights to market and promote the Conch Republic based on his years of use…

Got an email a moment ago telling me students have occupied the graduate building at the New School in New York, barricading themselves in until the president and vice-president of the school resign.

Background here.

*****************
Update: Police have ejected the protesters.

Outrageous sums of money, and protesters.

…pours aromas into the air. Its sweetness is almost too much, part of the almost too muchness of Key West altogether. Almost too many palms, shedding their skins along the sidewalk; almost too many orchids on the deck of UD‘s new home on her beloved Elizabeth Street.

Key West: Lush isle of lushes.

For a few weeks before she goes home to ‘thesda, UD has a house here.

The weather’s gone utopian again, so if you’re reading this from Fargo, forgive me. I’m in the best of all possible whirls, sitting in the breeze on a mild bright evening in the state of Florida.

Who is like unto thee, Florida? No one at all. A singular state.

My house borders Nancy Forrester’s Secret Garden, with its mad parrots, so until Nancy puts them to bed, I hear their wild cries behind my (her?) enormous wall of palms. Outside the secret garden, dusty roosters crow and crow and crow. A lush loud aromatic jungle is where I’m writing from.

When I was younger, my sister – the Morrissey fanatic – had an iguana, Fester. Fester creeped me out.

Yet here, ringed by little Festers, I’m enthralled.

So – animals and plants… But also the lazy intermittent sounds of humanoids home from work, relaxing into their own little gardens. It’s odd to think of people living routine lives in Key West, working in computer stores and shopping malls, manning the smoothie machines on Duval Street. Too poetic a kingdom for the prosaic.

UD, like her lonely betters, works too, writing the prosaic and the poetic.

… to my new house on the island.  Hence very few posts so far today.  Want to describe my digs, and have been wanting to write about Edmund Blunden’s poem, The Midnight Skaters.  Will do that after I get something to eat …

Three years ago, a Harvard professor confessed to David White, his mentor, that he fabricated “as much as half of the data he used on a Harvard study of sleep apnea.”

Harvard’s investigation, says White, “moved glacially.”

Well, yes. Here we are 2009, and the Crimson is finally able to describe the paltry consequences of this man’s behavior.

First, he’s in a far better place now. Merck.

Second, for three years he can’t advise the Public Health Service, and they’ll supervise his research.

That’s it.

A Harvard medical school spokesman “declined to comment on the investigation.”

Right. You wouldn’t a spokesman to talk to the press about an associate professor at the university, the co-director of a Harvard-affiliated program in sleep medicine, whose lying precipitated what White calls a “massive investigation,” involving many retracted papers, etc.

I mean, the results of the investigation have just come out. Give the spokesman another three years to gather his thoughts.

An honest appraisal of conflict of interest, and a suggestion for one thing that might mitigate it.

First point: Conflict of interest is virtually unavoidable, for social and psychological reasons. The author recalls his dealings, as a young researcher, with a medical device manufacturer.

As we developed content, I soon found myself advocating the use of studies that featured the manufacturer’s product as the best illustrations. My experiences at the pleasant luncheon and in the scientific discussions made me feel as if the other consultants and I had a kind of social duty to reciprocate both the kindness and the investment made by the sponsor in the slide set. Accordingly, I spoke out about the importance of using some of the sponsor’s studies as examples.

At the time, I failed to recognize that this sense of duty might be in conflict with an intention to create an unbiased presentation about the risks and benefits of [their product]. It turns out that I am not alone. In a study of medical residents, 61% were confident that drug company promotions did not influence their practice, but only 16% were equally confident that their colleagues were not influenced by those same drug company promotions.

How is this possible? Self-interest simply distorts the way we render judgments about ourselves. As Katz and colleagues describe the problem, “When a gift or gesture of any size is bestowed, it imposes on the recipient a sense of indebtedness. The obligation to directly reciprocate, whether or not the recipient is directly conscious of it, tends to influence behavior. . . . Feelings of obligation are not related to the size of the gift.” Precisely my experience.

Other interesting social science insights have emerged from the field of behavioral economics. For instance, Ariely conducted a series of experiments in which study participants were rewarded financially for the number of correct answers on tests. The experiments were designed so that cheating was possible. On the basis of the results of these experiments, Ariely concluded that many individuals cheat when they have a chance, but only by a small amount; they know that they are overclaiming the number of correct answers; but this low-level cheating does not cause them to view themselves as dishonest. When I recently used a university envelope to mail a letter to my daughter, I too did not view myself as dishonest, perhaps because I used my own postage stamp.

Two: However small, gifts influence behavior.

These minor dilemmas fail to cross key moral boundaries with the result that they are not experienced as a conscious and deliberate choice between the size of the reward and the potential cost to credibility or reputation. The frequently expressed view that industry gifts or consulting fees are too small to influence behavior simply misses the point that, regardless of their size, they influence behavior, and a self-serving bias distorts the way that individuals perceive themselves. As a result, industry gifts, fees, or funding have become culturally acceptable even though service in a profession does not itself provide immunity from potential conflicts of interest or from the appearance of conflicts of interest.

Point Three: We ought to be ashamed.

Recent high-profile failures to disclose financial relationships with industry have been major embarrassments to the profession. Several professors who promoted the use of atypical antipsychotics for bipolar illness in children had received hundreds of thousands of dollars that went unreported to their institutions. The new guidelines from the
Association of American Medical Colleges on the efforts to manage the relationships between academic scientists and industry sponsors emphasize transparency. Senators Chuck Grassley (R, Iowa) and Herb Kohl (D, Wisconsin) have introduced the Sunshine Act, which would require the public posting of information about all industry payments or transfers of value worth $100 or more. This act, if passed, will help ensure the transparency that the profession on its own has not yet been able muster.

The author concludes:

The bias of conflict of interest is a behavioral phenomenon. Under the assumption of an accurate report, the design of the trial, the conduct of the study, and the interpretation of the results are perhaps the best measures that clinicians, researchers, and other readers have to assess the possibility of such a bias among their scientific colleagues and themselves.

It’s a fine irony that the worst conflict of interest offenders come from the psychiatrists who are supposed to be experts in these sorts of human motivations.

The article is from JAMA. You need to subscribe or pay $15 to read it in full.

UD thanks Bill.

Une trentaine d’étudiants ont séquestré pendant quelques heures mardi le président de l’université d’Orléans, Gérald Guillaumet, dans son bureau. Réunis en assemblée générale, étudiants et professeurs ont décidé par vote de mettre fin à cette action. Il s’agissait du second cas de séquestration d’un président d’université en deux jours, après celui lundi de Marc Gontard, président de Rennes-II. Mardi, le directeur du Crous (centre régional des œuvres universitaires et scolaires) de Paris a également été brièvement retenu par un groupe de cinquante personnes.

They’re taking university presidents hostage in France.

My referral log tells me that many Vanderbilt people are reading UD on the insult of your university having rewarded a plagiarist with a medal and the keynote speech on Senior Class Day.

Know that you are not alone. When the University of Virginia gave her a high-profile appointment, people there were also outraged.

As Randy Newman reminds us, it’s a great big dirty world.

But it’s incredibly important to kick against that world. Keep it up.

… Art dealers should rejoice at the perfect storm on the horizon: cash-rich collectors desperate to invest devalued currency into artworks by the dead and aged, coming face-to-face with a slew of soon-to-be indicted moneybaggers, forced by either the law or necessity to sell their art collections. Like bookies in Vegas, these dealers need only match up both sides of the client equation and collect the vigorish.

What this means for the art market is simple: a steep drop in prices for the work of younger blue chip artists awash in inventory both present and future, and an expanding universe of price appreciation for the limited set of artworks created by those gone by…

Half the people asked at Southern Illinois University’s Edwardsville campus think it would be a good idea if it split way from the flagship Carbondale campus, according to a year-long study by the SIUE Faculty Senate.

A task force formed to examine the issue of campus separation, a proposal that has previously been the subject of state legislation by Metro East lawmakers, surveyed 1,838 faculty, students and staff at SIUE, including an interview with Edwardsville Chancellor Vaughn Vandegrift.

English professor Joel Hardman, chairman of the task force, said faculty on campus generally supported separating from Carbondale but the overall number showed thoughts were evenly split.

Vandegrift has been openly opposed to separation, as have SIU President Glenn Poshard and other top administrators of the university system.

The SIUE Faculty Senate has been critical of Poshard since allegation of plagiarism arose in 2007 about his doctoral dissertation. When the board cleared Poshard of the charges, the faculty senate called for his resignation.

The survey report also suggested other actions that could be taken instead of separation, such as changing wording on the SIU system Web site to better reflect each university’s individuality and moving the university’s system office from Carbondale to Springfield to enhance lobbying efforts and quell a perception of favoritism of SIUC.

Glenn Poshard is one of the few authentic political hacks running an American university system.

UD sympathizes with SIUE’s faculty. How would you like to live every day of your life embarrassed?

Maybe a name change is part of the solution. Southern Illinois Edwardsville In No Way Associated With Glenn Poshard.

… why not just ban the stuff? Everybody’s doing it.

“There will come a day of reckoning, when projects are due and exams are taken, and I will have virtually no sympathy for a student who I know is (not paying attention to lecture), who performs poorly. It’s his own fault,” [University of Florida professor Carl] Barfield said.

A nursing student at UF gets points for honesty.

“I’d rather be on my phone than listening to the professor.”