The LANL PAD Alan Bishop has suddenly stepped down. Very odd, lots of crazy speculation as to why since the reason he gave is so bizarre that no one understands it.
Tri-Valley Cares needs to be on this if they aren't already. We need to make sure that NNSA and LLNL does not make good on promises to pursue such stupid ideas as doing Plutonium experiments on NIF. The stupidity arises from the fact that a huge population is placed at risk in the short and long term. Why do this kind of experiment in a heavily populated area? Only a moron would push that kind of imbecile area. Do it somewhere else in the god forsaken hills of Los Alamos. Why should the communities in the Bay Area be subjected to such increased risk just because the lab's NIF has failed twice and is trying the Hail Mary pass of doing an SNM experiment just to justify their existence? Those Laser EoS techniques and the people analyzing the raw data are all just BAD anyways. You know what comes next after they do the experiment. They'll figure out that they need larger samples. More risk for the local population. Stop this imbecilic pursuit. They wan...
Comments
April 7, 2018 at 9:30 PM
This is true about Wallace. He is more about loyalty than Trump but did Bishop give a reason? Anybody hear?
In other words, Alan has finally gotten a taste of his own medicine. After all, this is exactly what he did for decades to anyone in T-division who so much as dared to express an independent opinion. Shortly after LANS came into power, Alan instructed his henchman Tony Redondo to get rid of any group leader who was perceived as a potential challenger. This was done under the guise of "reorganization", but in fact led to complete decimation of basic research in the division. Entire research areas disappeared.
Even though Tony was finally disposed of in 2015, having served his purpose, none of the harm has since been repaired. If anything, the damage appears irreversible.
I don't know if this realization ever occurred to Alan, or if he was caught up in his short-term scheming. Perhaps the calculation was just that: to stay on for as long as possible, climb up as high as possible, and collect the largest salary and the largest management bonus possible. And it's conceivable that he was also encouraged by the example of Nanos: no matter how much damage one caused, there would be no real accountability. Worst comes to worst, one can just retire at some point.
So Alan is pretty much "exhibit A" of how things operated under LANS.
I have also heard it was just Wallace settling some old scores. Wallace my not be in very long but he he wants to leave a mark. I am not sure why Wallace had an issue with Bishop but from what I have heard over the years is that Wallace just did not get along with very many people so he has many scores to settle.
That cannot be Alan, I have never known him to have any positions whatsoever, of course that could be seen as having a position.
April 8, 2018 at 11:03 PM
Wallace got his first upper management position based on his Mommy's position in the NM State Legislature. That pissed off a large number of better-qualified candidates, as well as some honest upper managers who hated the corrupt political patronage system in NM. His credibility has been zero as well as his qualifications.
There's actually a good point in the original post. While Bishop and Nanos could not be more different in their manners, they are very similar in their substance. Both are bullies, who could not stand any challenge or free expression. Any perceived competition had to be eliminated. Nanos did this by yelling and abusing people to their faces, Bishop by hiring minions like Redondo and having them to do the dirty work. The effect is the same. The legacy of Nanos is long-term damage to the Lab. The legacy of Bishop is the decimation of basic research in T-division.
Also, April 10, 2018 at 9:44 AM is right. In certain groups, the condition for conversion from postdoc to staff was to start putting Bishop's name on one's papers. You can check the publication records of those who were converted: before their promotion they all suddenly discovered the urge to "work with Alan". As a result, Alan's publication record is spectacular. People would always wonder what fraction of these papers he actually bothered to read.
To be fair he also did lots of damage to CCS as well.
On another note, exchangemonitor says he is now LANL Chief Scientist. This must be a position created for him. https://www.exchangemonitor.com/sarrao-bishop-head-lanl-science-programs/?printmode=1
Is this how he gets around the contract change? Will this let him stay on no matter who wins the new contract? And does this imply that it is known in upper management circles who has won?
"In certain groups, the condition for conversion from postdoc to staff was to start putting Bishop's name on one's papers."
I call BS. Name one or more specific instances or face a fiery eternity in Liar's Hell.
April 14, 2018 at 3:29 PM
All you have to do is look up Alans publication record, the rest is rather obvious.
"All you have to do is look up Alans publication record, the rest is rather obvious."
What's obvious is that another poor soul will be spending eternity in Liar's Hell.
April 15, 2018 at 11:39 AM
Oh please, everyone knows this about Alan, EVERYONE. In fact if you look on the internet you find a official story on ethics of authorship.
https://www.salon.com/1999/06/14/scientific_authorship/An offending survey
When junior physicists decide who deserves to share authorship on their scientific papers, sometimes politics is more important than work.
" One investigation by Swazey, Anderson and Lewis published in American Scientist found that inappropriate authorship among science faculty is as common as plagiarism among students. The message is loud and clear: If you are young, know your place. If you are old, you deserve some "generosity."
Sometimes the profession seems to extend this generosity beyond belief. A junior physicist, on the average, authors two papers a year. Some senior physicists are able to be authors on many more papers. Particularly prolific are K.H.J. Buschow and F.R. de Boer at the University of Amsterdam, who in a single year published 54 and 37 papers respectively. This proliferation was matched by A.R. Bishop at Los Alamos National Laboratory, who in addition to his busy publication schedule also has considerable administrative duties. No comments were received from these prolific authors after requests by fax and e-mail."
Burn baby burn.
The lack of ethics has damaged LANL beyond measure. I regularly sat on national and international review committees where the rules are strict: funding is based on rankings from peer review, conflicts of interest are not allowed. LDRD among other things has been deeply tainted by becoming patronage from the management. Much money is thrown away because of manager convenience or predjudice. Early money is what gets new things going and maintains vitality in an organization. Spending on projects that aren’t going to work in preference to those that will (often because the better projects are thought to be able to get outside money) has been a mighty contributor to the death of scienc at LANL.
One can hope for better under a new contract but remember it has always been: same monkeys different trees.
Since we are on the whole scientific ethics slant and Alan Bishop perhaps we should roll out some the "issues" with one of Alans picks non other than Tony Redondo. The old blog had a whole discussion on what happaned and it was not pretty. Below is the link to get the story.
http://lanl-the-rest-of-the-story.blogspot.com/2008/11/comment-of-week.html
Comment of the Week
Things are really heating up in the recent Terry Wallace post. Just take a look at the comment below!
If you haven't been following this controversy it begins here. In later comments the charges become quite specific and there are links to download the relevant documents.
Anyone want to predict how this will play out?
Anonymous said...
The posters here are correct. Redondo's case = clear-cut plagiarism. Simple homework: read his "paper" & the "Comment" then follow refs therein.
At any half-decent institution, this sort of gross misconduct would've meant the end of one's scientific career. Not at LANL though where up is down and down is up. The guy stopped doing science, moved into management and years later was made Theoretical Division Leader!
Ask yourself: how can a plagiarist become a leader of a premier division at a major natl lab? The story of corruption actually goes deep here and makes for an interesting investigation. (Hint: Bishop really wanted to install a yes man to do dirty work for him. Redondo fit the bill perfectly: dumb and loyal. Bishop and Terry W. knew very well that Redondo had scientific fraud in his past, but hid that info from the committee. )
This kind of rotten culture permeates LANL. A good investigative journalist only needs to dig a bit -- it's a treasure trove.
11/17/08 12:42 AM
It also suits LANS very well to have Alan as their Chief Scientist.