Adam Rogers writes:

Imagine a billionaire with an abiding interest in science, but also in having sex with young girls. He’s famous, our billionaire, and he associates with what used to be called boldface names, some of whom know—they’d have to, right?—about his habits. But they let it go. And eventually the billionaire’s name gets associated with all sorts of do-gooderish public endeavors, before the truth gets told—mostly after the billionaire’s death under salacious and suspicious circumstances.

To be clear—not that billionaire. All the things I just said were true about Jeffrey Epstein, the financier, convicted sex trafficker, and accused child rapist whose decades of personal and financial connections to entire TED conferences’ worth of marquee scientists and intellectuals have at last begun to have consequences for his enablers (but not Epstein, who died in jail in early August). I was actually talking about Howard Hughes—aviator, film producer, mogul, creep … and vitally important philanthropist. The Howard Hughes Medical Institute has $20 billion in assets today and claims more than 2,000 employees; in 2018 alone it awarded $562 million in competitive, highly sought-after grants to fund biomedical research. In the middle of the 20th century, Hughes was a predator; today the institute with his name on the door is one of the most prestigious and robust supporters of lifesaving scientific innovation on earth. No scientist would dream of saying no to a grant from HHMI.

Association with Jeffrey Epstein, on the other hand, now turns research institutions into reputational superfund sites. Money corrupts—which, duh—but the Epstein episode tells an even bigger story. The entire system for metabolizing philanthropic gifts, particularly private ones, into academic research is a poorly illuminated pile of broken guardrails. Even if most institutions and foundations are cautious internally, even if the unfolding scandal with Epstein and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is an outlier, the system is essentially a pool of dark money. Its sources and goals are often unclear, or occult. But it’s money that research institutions need—or, at least, want. Stipulated, most donors want to help the world. Some also want to build a legacy. Most institutions want the same. But those desires are threaded through an ethical minefield. [Continue reading…]