Tim Schwab has written several articles about the Gates Foundation and its negative effect on freedom of the press, education, and every other arena where it exercises an outsize influence because of its disproportionate power. When Melinda and Bill Gates make mistakes, they seldom apologize or make amends. They usually blame someone else or simply double down. In education, we have certainly seen this as Gates doubled down on using test scores to judge teacher quality, invested in charter schools, and funded the single biggest effort to standardize education: the Common Core.
In Schwab’s latest report on Gates’ follies, he reports that Gates has distorted knowledge about the pandemic by pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into one data-gathering project.
Schwab begins:
A perennial feature of the Covid-19 pandemic has been the guessing game of whether things are getting better or worse—and how policy approaches (masks, shutdowns) and changes in the weather will affect the coronavirus. Dozens of research institutes have published educated guesses about what’s coming next, but none have had the impact or reach of the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.
In the early days of the pandemic, the IHME projected a far less severe outbreak than other models, which drew the attention of Donald Trump, who was eager to downplay the danger. At a March 31 press briefing, the White House’s coronavirus response coordinator, Debbie Birx, with the president at her side, used IHME charts to show that the pandemic was rapidly winding down.
““Throughout April, millions of Americans were falsely led to believe that the epidemic would be over by June because of IHME’s projections,” the data scientist Youyang Gu noted in his review of the institute’s work. “I think that a lot of states reopened based on their modeling.”
The IHME brushed aside the widespread criticism that emerged—“Many people do not understand how modeling works,” its director, Chris Murray, explained in a Los Angeles Times op-ed—and continued to push headline-grabbing projections that drew alarm from its peers. For example, while many researchers limit their projections to a few weeks into the future, Murray used his regular appearances on CNN to chart the course of the pandemic many months in advance, putting the IHME’s highly contested estimates in a position to guide policy-making ahead of other models.
“It seems to be a version of the playbook Trump follows,” says Sam Clark, a demographer at Ohio State University. “Absolutely nothing negative sticks, and the more exposure you get, the better, no matter what. It’s really stunning, and I don’t know any other scientific personality or organization that is able to pull it off quite like IHME.”
The institute’s uncanny resilience, unconventional methods, and media savvy have long made it controversial in the global health community, where scholars have watched its meteoric rise over the past decade with a mix of awe and concern. Years before Covid, the IHME gained outsize influence by tracking hundreds of diseases across the planet and producing some of the most cited studies in all of science.
But it has also spawned a legion of detractors who call the IHME a monopoly and a juggernaut and charge the group has surrounded itself with a constellation of high-profile allies that have made it too big to peer review, the traditional method of self-regulation in science. Fueled by more than $600 million in funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation—a virtually unheard-of sum for an academic research institute—the IHME has outgrown and overwhelmed its peers, most notably the World Health Organization (WHO), which previously acted as the global authority for health estimates.
With Gates’ funding, IHME has become the go-to source for public health data. Schwab explains the unfortunate consequences of this global hegemony.
It’s not just Gates, but at least he doesn’t have a publicly funded goon squad:
https://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/2020/12/07/agents-raid-home-fired-florida-data-scientist-who-built-covid-19-dashboard-rebekah-jones/6482817002/
Deep down DeSantis is a libertarian with fascist tendencies. Months ago he made a “bleeding heart” speech about the failed unemployment system in Florida, and he vowed to fix it. He has done nothing, He has no intention of fixing the problem because he rejects the idea of social safety nets.
Libertarian with Fascist tendencies?
Maybe it’s a distinction without a difference, but based on his sending in a heavily armed SWAT team to confiscate the computer of someone legally gathering data on covid , I’d say he’s a Fascist with Libertarian tendencies.
These billionaires are way, way, way too powerful. It always amazes me there isn’t more pushback against their buying up everything in sight.
It disappoints me, frankly. I always assumed people who are “academics” would ask more questions and not simply defer to these hugely wealthy people, but there’s almost no criticism of or dissent from Gates at all.
I still can’t believe the United States spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the crackpot “teacher measuring schemes” ed reformers all pushed, lockstep. Bill Gates and one Harvard economist led us to spend hundreds of millions in sorely needed education dollars on these ridiculous schemes. Where were the dissenters? Why wasn’t there any debate?
The billionaires quite literally buy the “academics ” and even their colleagues who are not bought are silent because they don’t wish to get involved.
One reason for silence from academics: they hope someday to get a grant from Gates
John Arnold too. He bought Vinay Prasad, a bright young doc who’s big on social media. When I challenged him on that, he responded with a “he doesn’t care where the money comes from, it doesn’t affect his views or research.”
That’s what the Center for Public Integrity said about John Arnold’s donation. I think it was David Sirota who questioned why Arnold’s name ended up on the cutting room floor instead of in a posted article. The magazine’s reply, space constraints not bias.
Thanks for the effort required to ask questions of Vinay Prasad.
too often space constraints ARE bias
Yep.
One of the most corrosive aspects of the billionaire dominance in the US has been what it does to the public.
We’re constantly scolded that we must be “grateful” to these people. They’ve turned us all into charity cases, begging 11 incredibly rich people to contribute to our communities. It’s a horrible, powerless role for citizens.
Couldn’t we just tax them at a reasonable rate and then run our own country? Why do they so dominate public policy? I mean, we all know the reason why- they have huge piles of money and they buy advocates and universities and school systems.
Gates uses his wealth to put his thumb on the scale of public policy. Anything he endorses is accepted as fact. In this case data collection experts are not immunologists. Their predictive models should not influence public policy.
In this strange scenario Gates’ bean counters helped to unseat the worst President in US history. Unfortunately, people died because they believed the misinformation from the data scientists.
People see him as a technical genius, but Gates has always been basically an advertising guy. And he has made lots of claims over the years about MS software that were “exaggerated” (to put it mildly). But in most cases, it didn’t really matter. (It just meant people had to put up with crappy software like MS Word that did not work as advertised.)
But when it comes to public health and safety, it is a different story entirely.
As Richard Feynman noted on the report on the Challenger disaster, “For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled”
A self-promoting couple- Melinda and Bill.
It’s justice that Gates finds himself in the crosshairs of the right wing loons and goons.
Bill and Melinda constantly insist on recognition for their greatness. Their neeed for praise is pathetic.
I think you meant their need for prai$e
The need for prai$e
For billion rai$e
Ain’t just a pha$e
It’s Gate$ly way$
Diane and Poet-
Both of your observations are true.
The argument that Bill Gates is holding up the truth sounds remarkably like the argument that the mainstream press is hiding the truth about the election. I do not doubt the facts presented above, but my conservative friends would allow the truth in this story to undermine the truth in the story of the election and any one of several other public issues that give them hives.
So we see the problem with private funding of education: If a person is wealthy enough he can create his own version of the truth. Public funding is fraught with difficulties as well, as was demonstrated when German academics caved in during Hitler’s rise to the combination of funding for their projects and intimidation.
Any way you go at it, freedom of information and public discourse is essential to a free society.
Gates Scott!
Gates is like Atlas
Holding the Truth
Knows what the facts is
Herd it, forsoothe
Election fraud is a conspiracy theory. Bill Gates is one man, not a secret cabal. The outsize influence of IHME is a fact, not a theory. That there are important data being neglected is an observable fact. Gates’ desire to profit from his “philanthropy” is a stated fact. He said it. Bill Gates is a jerk; that’s an opinion — but a truthy one. (Sorry for borrowing your coinage, Stephen Colbert.) Any conspiracy theorists who want to include all these facts in their conspiracies are welcome to do so, not on social media. Bill Gates must be stopped and conspiracy theories get in the way of that. “There ought to be a law.” There needs to be regulation and Gates needs to pay taxes instead of doing what government is supposed to do minus the profit motive.
I’m with LCT on that, Roy. Conspiracy theory merely imitates the framework of an investigative piece like this, supporting it with lies, libel, and misquotes instead of facts, figures, and pertinent interviews with named involved parties of repute.
What is the truth in this article that could be used to undermine the truth in the story of the election?
“The Gates Foundation and the IHME refused multiple interview requests and did not respond to most questions sent by e-mail.”
That quote tells you that neither of these operations require a “goon squad.” They just control who generates and gets information and who gets to shape it for public consumption. In the full article, did you notice that the IHME scoops up information from private health insurers?
If you have not recently seen what data-gathering “campaigns” the Gates Foundation has conjured for early childhood, K-12, and postsecondary education, including workplace tracking of students, you might be amazed
.
–The Early Childhood Data Collaborative (ECDC), is organized as Child Trends, the central hub for the ECDC. The “Partners” for this effort are the Gates funded Data Quality Campaign, and three promoters of the Gates funded Common Core–Council of Chief School Officers, National Governors Association for Best Practices, National Conference of State Legislatures. Last but not least, the ECDC has a partnership with The Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at UC Berkeley. The Center works on public policy to improve how early childhood educators are prepared, supported, and rewarded.
The Child Trends Data Bank is online and it includes about 100 population-based measures–health and safety, child care, education, and behaviors linked to positive and negative well-being. This data gathering operation is funded by 30 private foundations, with 19 state and federal agencies both funding and supplying data, in addition to various interest groups (adoption, heart health), and incubators for entrepreneurs such as New Profit. The Early Childhood Data Collaborative says this about the value of childhood data. Note the infamous “college and career”meme.
“All parents, teachers, and policymakers want children to reach their maximum potential in school and in life. But a wave of research over the last few decades has shown that college and career readiness begins long before students even enter a classroom. Disparities in children’s abilities appear as early as the first year of life, and targeted interventions during the early childhood years can narrow the “school readiness gap.” https://www.childtrends.org/about-integrated-early-childhood-data
–The original Data Quality Campaign was designed to shape state and federal data collection for pre-K-12 education. The Campaign promoted data for longitudinal records of student performance (standardized tests) and with all of those student records tied to a “teacher of record” for each student, nested in a school level database, then district and state databases. That operation was complemented by funds from USDE under Arne Duncan for statewide and longitudinal data-collection. Gates is not the only funder of the Data Quality Campaign now. Other major funders are: Bloomberg Philanthropies, Carnegie Corporation of New York, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, Wallace Foundation, and Walton Family Foundation.
–The Workforce Data Collection Campaign (WDQC), active since 2012, is said to be “a non-profit, non-partisan initiative that advocates for inclusive, aligned and market-relevant data systems used for advancing the nation’s skilled workforce and helping U.S. industries compete in a changing economy.” According to the website, WDQC was developed in 2012 “by stakeholders from across the education and workforce development spectrum. This organization encourages Congress and federal agencies to strengthen support for strategic data collection, management and usage that protects individual privacy while enabling analysis and research.” http://www.ihep.org/about-ihep/partners/networks-and-coalitions/workforce-data-quality-campaign
–The Gates funded the PostsecData Collaborative. This group has worked under the Gates funded Institute of Higher Education Policy (IHEP). Since 2016, IHEP has produced academic papers, not peer reviewed, calling for detailed tracking of postsecondary education outcomes. Among these papers is “Toward Convergence: A Technical Guide for the Postsecondary Metrics Framework.” This paper offers definitions for 31 metrics ”to advance student success.” The paper was preceded by by fabricated “calls” for better data embedded in other Gates-funded papers. https://postsecondary.gatesfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/AnsweringtheCall.pdf
–The big effort of the Gates Foundation now is getting rid of a 2008 federal law that bans the formation of a student unit record. Since 2017, Gates and now with many others want to have outcomes-only accountability in postsecondary education. This eliminates all pretense that student privacy matters. The basic concept is that a national data system must put existing data streams together in one record for each student.
For example, a unit record system for every postsecondary student might include data from: The National Student Loan Data System (NSLDS), the Internal Revenue Service, Department of Defense and Department of Veterans’ Affairs. Because most of the systems have personally identifiable information, including birth dates and social security numbers, connecting these systems eliminates student privacy.
There can be little doubt if that the “student unit record system” becomes a feature of instructional and cost management systems in postsecondary education, it will also be used in recruiting schemes for jobs, debt collection, and a host of policies base on cost effectiveness and efficiency…all beginning in early childhood and including preK-12 data.
In other words, the United States is well on the way to creating a Gates-inspired and well funded data gathering operation aimed at getting the most bank for the buck, and doing a triage on programs that fail to produce outcomes judged to be of little documented economic value.
Concurrently, the big tech giants are less concerned with these efforts than with maximizing profits from fine-grained analyses of our use of online social and commercial websites. That privately held data is not just “telling” and “showing” us what content we like in a feedback loop, but also suggesting what else we should pay attention to, with those nudges/decisions made by patented algorithms. BIG Data is with us, and very hard to escape from. We must learn to ask whether it is trustworthy.
The Gates couple think that children and education are problems that can be solved by data.
They believe that children ARE data.
Data driven
Children are data
To have and to hold
Ain’t nothing greata
By Gates, we are told
So, drive them to test
And drive them to sigh
And last, but not least
Just drive them to buy
The children of the rich aren’t data.
It;’s obvious that the conservative churches enable America’s colonialism. (Melinda and Bill belong to and participate in one.)
The GOP religious are a threat to America. There are only two ways to diminish their political impact. (1) Build opposition within the churches. It’s evident there is no sustained will nor money for that effort. (2) Reduce the number of congregants/members.
Charles Koch is not religious. He is driven by the Libertarian ideology. I think ideologies are the real powers that drive these people.
I bet Bill considers his kids data.
Even his wife Melidata.
Melindata
Is that like Melaniadata?
Dondata and Melaniadata will be erased from memory forever after Jan 20.
He prolly backs up her brain contents on the cloud every day.
Máté
In a political race, there aren’t a sufficient number of libertarians to elect their politicians which explains the alliance between the Koch network and Catholic organizations, the church hierarchy and conservative church members.
“The big effort of the Gates Foundation now is getting rid of a 2008 federal law that bans the formation of a student unit record… For example, a unit record system for every postsecondary student might include data from: The National Student Loan Data System (NSLDS), the Internal Revenue Service, Department of Defense and Department of Veterans’ Affairs. Because most of the systems have personally identifiable information, including birth dates and social security numbers, connecting these systems eliminates student privacy.”
This particular effort is obviously motivated by completely different goals than those espoused for the IHME, or even the Child Trends Data Bank. With billionaire non-profits running the show – meanwhile operating data-gathering-associated corporations [hw, sw]—anything seems possible. Clearly that 2008 law is the place to hold the line.
But, devil’s advocate: how credible is it that individual loan, tax, and military service records could be willy-nilly swept into such profiles? The systems you list here, like many potential sources of data, break down at some point to identifiable individual data, yet they’re used every day to come up with data reports to be considered in policy decisions.
Yes. However a “student unit record data system” would connect data points about individual students now present in many state and federal data bases.
Proponents claim that the current law prevents “stakeholders who are seeking information about the true costs of postsecondary education.
That case is presented in College Blackout: How the Higher Education Lobby Fought to Keep Students in the Dark a narrative funded by the Bill and Melina Gates Foundation and the Lumina Foundation, published under the auspices of the New America PPolicy Program, an organization funded by: the Annie E. Casey Foundation; Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; Joyce Foundation; Lumina Foundation; William and Flora Hewlett Foundation; among others active in pushing big data in order to determine the cost effectiveness of higher education. https://s3.amazonaws.com/www.newamerica.org/downloads/CollegeBlackoutFINAL.pdf
There is much more here than this PR campaign.
I just got a letter from Kaiser Permanente saying their HIPPA Notice of Privacy Practices has changed: “We may use and disclose your Protected Health Information.”
Bill Gates’ carefully crafted image is a work of fiction much like that of another beloved American, Walt Disney. (Neil Gabler in his biography said; “In retrospect, Disney’s greatest creation was Walt Disney”). Both were ruthless autocrats who understood and used the power of public relations to manufacture these admirable personae “His entire philanthropic vision, exemplified by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is predicated on the idea that rich people and technocrats know best how to manage the levers of society.”
https://www.salon.com/2017/11/14/bill-gates-is-building-his-own-city-no-democracy-required/
It’s very bad news that the academic community cannot effectively fight back. The public trusts less and less our researchers due to thin kind of influence of money on campuses.
It’s not just the ones who have been bought that are the problem.
Many members of academia are simply afraid to say anything that it is the least bit outside the mainstream view.
And peer review has become a gatekeeper to keep out any ideas that are different.
This is even true in sciences like physics where novel ideas are rejected out of hand if they don’t fit the predominant paradigm.
The latter is particularly bad because it means dead end ideas can prevail for decades.
“Philanthropy has also delivered a public relations coup for Bill Gates, dramatically transforming his reputation as one of the most cutthroat CEOs to one of the most admired people on earth. And his model of charity, influence, and absolution is inspiring a new era of controversial tech billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos, who have begun giving away their billions, sometimes working directly with Gates.”
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/bill-gates-foundation-philanthropy/
Gates and Zuck, as individuals, not their foundations, are investors in the largest for-profit seller of schools-in-a-box. The anticipated Bridge International Academies’ ROI was 20%.
https://americansfortaxfairness.org/issue/net-worth-u-s-billionaires-soared-1-trillion-total-4-trillion-since-pandemic-began/