Is that this an April Idiot’s publish? I’m unsure.
David Agus is the creator of a ebook that included “a minimum of 95 separate passages,” together with my private favourite (as reported by the LA Instances): “Lengthy sections of a chapter on the cardiac well being of giraffes seem to have been lifted from a 2016 weblog publish on the web site of a South African safari firm titled, “The Ten Craziest Info You Ought to Know About A Giraffe.”
It’s exhausting to know the place to start out with this. Possibly the very first thing to notice is that Agus is an oncologist and has no experience on the cardiac well being of giraffes. Who writes a ebook with a complete chapter on one thing he is aware of nothing about? Oh yeah, there have been these guys . . . however a minimum of once they had been writing about one thing they knew nothing about, they wrote it in their very own phrases.
I used to be significantly aggravated that Agus wrote, “I’m not pitching a tent to observe chimpanzees in Tanzania or digging by way of ant colonies to search out the long-lived queen, for instance . . . I went out and spoke to the wonderful scientists around the globe who do these sorts of experiments, and what I uncovered was astonishing.” Ummm, possibly that is the case with the ant colonies, however it clearly isn’t the case with the giraffes–I’m nonetheless surprised that he did a complete chapter on them! He didn’t communicate with any scientists, “wonderful” or in any other case. He simply ripped off the web site of a safari firm.
I’d say, “What a loser,” however within the standard scheme of issues this man’s a winner. He nonetheless seems to be employed by USC–he’s the “founding director and CEO of the Lawrence J. Ellison Institute for Transformative Medication”–regardless of clearly violating their ethics code:
However that was a pair years in the past. What’s the nice physician been as much as currently?
18 Sep 2024: He’s featured within the Princeton alumni journal, described as a “most cancers specialist, researcher, and wellness advocate.” They forgot “creator of a plagiarized ebook on giraffes”! Additionally this: “Typically he reminds sufferers that there isn’t any miraculous cure-all.” I don’t know: plagiarism is a miraculous cure-all to author’s block, is it not?
22 Oct 2024: He’s featured in Time Journal: “‘Interventions that may have an effect on consequence are what we want, and we want corporations to place the capital up entrance and do the research to point out they’ll have an effect on consequence,’ says Agus. ‘And as soon as we try this, these are the applied sciences that we should always all push and allow our sufferers to make use of, they usually should be accessible.’” And we should always imagine this, as a result of . . . why, precisely? As a result of a wealthy USC med college professor with a demonstrated willingness to lie has cash on the road? To be truthful, the Time article does establish Agus as “founding director and co-CEO of the Ellison Institute of Expertise.” However then I’d hope they’d take the following step and categorical a bit of skepticism about his motivations.
23 Feb 2025: TechCrunch studies: “Oracle co-founder [Larry Ellison] got down to reinvent agriculture on Hawaii’s Lāna’i Island, which he scooped up for $300 million again in 2012. . . . Ellison dreamed of AI-powered greenhouses and robotic harvesters feeding the world sustainably. As an alternative, Sensei has been tripped up by tech snarls . . . and rookie errors. . . . Sensei, co-founded by a medical physician [yup, David Agus, head of the “Lawrence J. Ellison Institute for Transformative Medicine”] and led at the moment by a tech exec who runs Sensei from Boston, has had small wins, studies the WSJ. Its lettuce and cherry tomatoes now seem on the island’s few native markets and eating places. However fixed delays, management shake-ups, and dear blunders, together with hashish develop homes that wanted to be gutted and rebuilt, spotlight a troublesome fact: even bottomless funding isn’t any match for the exhausting classes of a specialised business.”
Hmmm . . . I believe the actual lesson right here is that copy-and-pasting materials from an internet site on giraffes doesn’t qualify you to run an agriculture firm.
This was all a yr after “Ellison-backed med tech startup Challenge Ronin closes doorways . . . based by Dave Hodgson, a tech chief with a historical past in drugs; David Agus, the most cancers professional who handled Steve Jobs . . .; serial well being entrepreneur Rowan Chapman; and Larry Ellison, Oracle founder and CTO.” Agus additionally handled Madonna, so, certain, why not throw just a few million {dollars} on the man.
What’s humorous (truly not humorous) to me is that individuals like Agus who’re recognized liars nonetheless get trusted with cash and assets on this manner. The individuals in cost should assume that Agus solely lies to different individuals, by no means to them. Or possibly Agus is only a figurehead in these schemes: maybe Ellison and USC are paying for his celeb title, by which case they’ve a motivation to attenuate his moral transgressions.
So, to return to the primary line of this publish: Are USC and Larry Ellison fools for paying this man? Are Princeton College, Time Journal, Los Angeles journal, and the New Yorker journal fools for repeatedly selling him? Or is that this all transactional: they puff up his celeb, after which they get to bask within the celeb connection?
