Yeah, it is the direct link that I find disturbing. That a logical progression of data leading to commercialization of a finished product(drug)...one knows that this will happen. It is actually proof that the work is beneficial right?
The problem is vertical integration...Pande running a non-profit, and a for profit that directly profits from the non-profit. That is a clear and obvious conflict of interest...you cannot possibly be fair to mutually exclusive interests.
He needs to turn over the project to someone who does not have the clear and obvious ethical conflict.
 
It cannot be more clear:
"We will not sell the data or make any money
off of it."
 
Obviously Dr. Pande leading a multi-million dollar venture capital firm is intending to make a shed load of money off of it. Great for him. Just remove yourself from the donor contribution process that you are not profiting from
 
 

Well, here is a very real possibility:
 
As director you have access in real time to the publishing of results.
Now this information would allow you to direct, influence, or otherwise encourage the start-up company to pursue a promising lead.
This "insider information" is subliminal...you really don't even have to make a conscious effort to exploit something out of order of the the publishing and general dissemination process...you merely pursue what you "know" is a promising area without necessarily thinking through how you "know" it.
 
The direct, indirect, and even unknowing potential for capitalizing on your position is huge...I could think of a 100 cases off the top of my head.
 
Access, process, and timing are everything in patent law...first to file, first to process...
 
Proving 10 years later that the information was misappropriated never undoes the damage. Billion dollar industries are built on such insider information. If you have followed technology for the last 40 years, you know this is the case with nearly every major company that exists today.
Who you know, and when you know it is just as important as what you know...perhaps a great deal more important.  
 
Insider information makes it impossible to have a level playing field even with pure "public information."

Well, I'm not certain it has gotten that bad yet.
What I am concerned is that the line between non profit and for profit work has been obliterated!
This is what Dr. Pande posted on the FF:
"This role is very compatible with my role at Andreessen Horowitz; in fact, it is very synergistic, as I benefit greatly from being at the center of cutting edge research in software eating biology (our primary investment thesis) with Folding@home and FAH benefits from my VC ties. Moreover, it’s common for Silicon Valley VC’s to have these sorts of ties"
 
Now we all know that ethical corruption is wide-spread in the business world, from banks and insurance companies buying off regulators and politicians to software companies stealing patents.
 
A defense of "everyone is doing it" hardly gives me a warm fuzzy feeling of assurance.
 

Well, the delete hammer is out on the reddit.
This post from foxnews777 was deleted:
Both are interested in environmental resources. EXXON has much greater resources to research environmental impact...sure the Sierra Club would benefit from the experts . It is an exact anology. Dr. Pande's interest in research is now entirely on what can be patented. ..or otherwise made exclusionary for profit...it is what venture capital does...total opposite of [link=mailto:folding@home]folding@home[/link]
 
So, I guess they have a different view of what venture capital is about?
You really have to be joking.
You think people put up $200 million and hire you to direct the investment...and they want the director to do what exactly?
Spend his time... what?...evenly split between non-profit and for profit?
Really? You really think that?
 

"Folding results have always been very open since the program started."
 
And they should stay that way!
However, there was always a process of publishing papers, the normal academic process of peer review and dissemination of results.
 
Dr. Pande in his speech specifically states his intention to by-pass that process, to allow data mining that goes around the usual process of peer review, clinical trials, etc. etc.
The reddit thread lists the source. You should definitely read it.
 
He gave a presentation on how cloud computing could be used by start-ups to avoid the delays and plodding of the standard research process.
 
One of the companies he has invested in promotes their software tool set to again, allow researchers to avoid using standard boring excel data sheets(that everyone uses and allows peer review) and instead use the cloud to speed their research directly to start-up companies(https://benchling.com/)...to immediately monetize the results. (I'm not making any of this up...I didn't know anything about it until I read his presentation)From his talk:
 
"Yeah, I think where this translates is the idea that right now, in the software side, we could give a bunch of smart grad students or young entrepreneurs $3 million and they can use that with cloud computing and so on and get to a product. And then, at later stages of investment, we can assess like how they are selling, how they’re building up the sales and basically, at each stage, we can think about funding based on data-driven metrics of their performance. It’s very different from biotech where you only have revenue at the very end and it’s very difficult to de-risk in those ways.
I think this levels the playing field in the sense that we’re going to see better startups that can be invested in and raise money like these software companies where along the way, they’ll be able to move much more quickly to product and proof of concept and even potentially to revenue very early. That’s something that would be very key to the health of the company, but also to the de-risking of the company going forward."
 
When you go around, when you make the process exclusionary (only people using your tools and software)...you are no longer being open in the classical sense that everyone agrees on.
 
Finally, I see nothing wrong with being a force of disruptive change...it is actually how most progress occurs, methods/business models that are a significant factor, rather than merely evolutionary or percentage, more efficient crowd out older models.
 
The point is that makes no sense to be in both places at once. Business capitalization at the greatest speed possible...and plodding, public, open research ....there is a clear conflict of interest. 
 
 
 

Drazhar
Now that they've added another mod to the reddit who appears to be quite happy to lock threads, I'm strongly considering abandoning this ****show of a project.

I've noticed that too along with a few deletions. My PC is currently down after the PSU failed and I had a blockage in my loop. I should be back up by Saturday but I won't be Folding again. These Mods are self employed, self appointed volunteer moderators that don't want any distractions from their source of income. Without us, the Folding community, they are nothing. I see more and more Folders dropping out because of the mismanagement of those forums. We deserve to be treated with dignity and respect and our voices have a right to be heard not censored. We have legitimate question, observations and concerns and all we get is a kick in the face for our efforts. Goodbye Stanford.

rjohnson11
Folding results have always been very open since the program started.

Hurray, a voice of reason and logic.
 
As noted above, this is one of the oldest FAH FAQ entries.
http://folding.stanford.edu/home/faq/#ntoc4
 
Who “owns” the results? What will happen to them?
Folding@home is run by an academic institution (specifically the Pande Group, at Stanford University’s Chemistry Department), which is a nonprofit institution dedicated to science research and education. We will not sell the data or make any money from it. Moreover, we will make the data available for others to use. In particular, the results from Folding@home will be made available on several levels. Most importantly, analysis of the simulations will be submitted to scientific journals for publication, and these journal articles will be posted on the web page after publication.
Following the publications of these scientific articles, we will make the raw data of the folding runs available to other researchers upon request. The data sets from some of our most prominent simulations are already publicly available. We’ve also striven to share our key technologies with other scientists, to assist their research as well. 
 
Synergistic benefit does not equal sizable bank account.  They are sharing ideas for mutual benefit, not for loading up their mutual funds.
 
With all of the fah data and results open and free to researchers, I don't see how one could possibly accuse Dr. Pande of trying to profit from something that is already FREE!  It would be like accusing him of trying to profit by selling people some California Air.    
Data mining these results is not going to turn up a golden nugget.  That is not the nature of this fah data.  It has already been well processed by [link=mailto:Folding@home]Folding@home[/link].  And even if they do find something interesting, it would still take millions of dollars of investment and years of development to bring anything to market, even by big pharma. 
 
A conflict of interest accusation can only be supported by someone with a very poor understanding of the FREE FAH research data and how all this really works.  The type of startups that Dr. Pande is promoting will not be running data mining on the fah data.  But if anyone wants to burn $3 million dollars on any kind of data mining, they are more than welcomed to keep whatever they find. Selling this conflict of interest story has about as much worth as the California Air that Dr. Pande is selling.  Stanford and Dr. Pande cannot profit in any way from FREE data, especially if anyone has to start $3 Million in the red.  Hey, at least the data was free.
 
 

"A conflict of interest accusation can only be supported by someone with a very poor understanding of the FREE FAH research data and how all this really works.  The type of startups that Dr. Pande is promoting will not be running data mining on the fah data.  But if anyone wants to burn $3 million dollars on any kind of data mining, they are more than welcomed to keep whatever they find. Selling this conflict of interest story has about as much worth as the California Air that Dr. Pande is selling.  Stanford and Dr. Pande cannot profit in any way from FREE data, especially if anyone has to start $3 Million in the red.  Hey, at least the data was free."
 
Again, you appear to not understand the "that was then and this is now" thing.
 
You describe the old system where peer review of research papers was a slow, evolutionary process.
 
Dr. Pande gave his speech specifically laying out a new paradigm. You may reject it, but that doesn't mean that Dr. Pande does not believe it. We should really take him at his word:
"And also, on the entrepreneurial side, I’ve been involved in several startups, one of the more recent ones, Globavir BioSciences, takes a lot of these concepts and applies it to therapeutics and infectious disease and imuno-oncology where we use computation to be able to very quickly identify new compounds, especially for drug repurposing and to move within months or under a year from having nothing to something that’s ready to go to Phase-II clinical trials.
What I want to talk to you about today though, is a particular trend that we’ve been observing, which we call Bio 2.0."
He see a great deal of money to be made and is managing investments to do just that. Will they all succeed? No. that is the nature of venture capital...However, the object remains crystal clear.
 
PROFIT.
 
 

Just to be clear, there are possible "right answers" in my opinion.
Conflicts of interest are not new, and there are ways to deal with them.

Dr. Pande simply has chosen to pretend that he is somehow exempt.

His statement is nearly identical to the old "what is good for GM is good for America" tone death statement.

He could have said:

yes, there are of course many inherent potentials for conflict of interest and possible exploitation of insider information. In response, Stanford and the PG lab have established the following ethics review board to provide a firewall between my non-profit and for profit activities. My disclosures can be found listed here....the non profit statements and disclosures for PG lab to the IRS are found here...our review board statements and updates are found here...etc. etc. etc.

Of course, the simplest thing would be to turn over directorship of the project to someone who did not have the complex and extensive vertical integration chain of investments and obvious potential to exploit the position for personal profit.

But to say there isn't any reason to do either...well, that falls into the category of just not even making a pretense of caring about ethics.
Does ethics have a place in research? Is it important for verifying, for the peer review process?

If you don't care about right and wrong, truth and fraud...well, where does that end.??????

I guess I am stopping folding for a while till the waters get clear.

More reason for me to not Fold again. 'Barnacle Bruce' has to go for starters. I'd call him a leech but leeches are easily removed while barnacles are securely attached. This man obviously doesn't like being distracted from his employment opportunuties and devote any time giving answers to a bunch of dumb contributors like us. Those forums are better off being staffed by students who are familiar with and active within the Folding program for extra college credits not by self-employed idiots like Bruce.

"I've been hired as the lead researcher by Pharmaco Industries. As a direct result, I've altered the charter for the Folding@Home program to make all of the results and research direct property of Pharmaco Industries."
 
Well, that is indeed a pretty low bar.
 
But I guess that is where we are with ethics and holding people accountable for avoiding conflicts of interest.
 
Reminds me of this quotation:
 
“The only way I can lose this election is if I’m caught in bed with either a dead girl or a live boy” – Edwin Edwards

PS RE:"I've been hired as the lead researcher by Pharmaco Industries....."
I just started 13107 WU which includes the following :
 
This project is being done in conjunction with Dr. Anton Sinitskiy of the Pande lab, as well as collaborators at Genentech, Inc.
 
This project is managed by Dr. Nathaniel Stanley at Stanford University & Genentech, Inc.
 
So, I will give him,Dr. Nathaniel Stanley, credit for being up front with the affiliation...and letting donors decide if they want to donate to a corporate research project.
 
If Dr. Pande were as direct and transparent...I would not see a problem.
 
However, after 3 years of confabulating stats and deception regarding donor participation, I fail to see any inclination on his part to communicate honestly with the donor community.

So, collaborating with a well known research corporation suddenly negates the potential good the program is doing?
 
What I want to know is how the inclusion of other researchers is first) A violation of ethics as as been implied several times and b) a conflict of interest.

Again, I'll be likely seen as naive, but without evidence of any wrong doing DIRECTLY by the program (Meaning the staff members of the Folding@Home program, not the volunteers we've had issues with) I'm continuing on supporting the effort as I always have.

I simply do not see an actual issue here. Everything is, so far, 100% above board and really is to be expected - It really was only a matter of time before larger dollar research labs came to the program looking to collaborate. If this collaboration means that at some point corporate dollars flow into the F@H program and bolster their efforts, I'm all for that, so long as the research results belong to the public.
 
On the other hand, if Pharmaco Industries decided that they wanted to release Pharmaco@Home to do their own corporate research, and don't try to steal work by tricking regular folders to instead do Pharmaco work units, that's up to Pharmaco.  They'd have every right to license the F@H software from Stanford just as Stanford would have every right to license the code to them.
 
Again, my $0.02 on that matter.
 
If you disagree with corporations collaborating with F@H? Beyond reaching out and voicing your displeasure to the program, I honestly have no suggestions, but dropping work like that is certainly an option. Just one that is likely to hurt the program as a whole, in my opinion.
 
d
 
d

Donors should be made aware of these profit making WU and either have the ability to 'opt out' of Folding them or be compensated with stock options. Just my current thoughts.