Letter to the editor:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Conflicts of interest are best avoided under any circumstance but that has not stopped top administrators at TTU from involving themselves in a relationship that comes with a possible double conflict of interest.\u00a0 A local Crossville trucking firm, Fitzgerald Glider Kits, recently sponsored–as in paid for\u2014research involving a TTU professor and students that measured emissions from truck engines that had been rebuilt with Fitzgerald \u2018glider kits\u2019.\u00a0 Fitzgerald was keen to find evidence that would overturn rules left by the Obama administration that would require Fitzgerald to abide by stricter and more costly emission standards in order to reduce excessive emissions thought to originate with rebuilt engines.\u00a0 From the Fitzgerald engines\u2019 sampled in the TTU-directed study it was determined that emissions were not only not higher but were perhaps lower that emissions from new engines, thus permitting a challenge to the EPA rule change under consideration.<\/p>\n
The first, possible and troubling conflict of interest arises from the fact that the research, until now, has remained undisclosed to public scrutiny since such \u2018sponsored\u2019 research is by law the property of the sponsor.\u00a0 That Fitzgerald stands to gain from such research would seem to demand the release of the study in order to determine if the sampling procedure and testing methodology are appropriate.\u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s all the more important that the study be released since the TTU professor who directed the research is a Civil Engineer with a background in concrete and not a Mechanical Engineer specializing in internal combustion engines.\u00a0 My efforts to obtain a report of the study from Fitzgerald have been unsuccessful.<\/p>\n
The second possible conflict of interest arises from the fact that TTU was recently granted physical space at Fitzgerald\u2019s plant to open something called the \u2018Center for Intelligent Mobility\u2019.\u00a0 The opening of this Center staffed by a TTU administrator came shortly before the release of the study.\u00a0 As the Herald Citizen reported on July 17, 2017: \u00a0\u201cA new partnership with Tennessee Tech University emerged out of [the \u2018fight\u2019 between Fitzgerald and the proposed EPA regulations].\u201d\u00a0 The possibility of a quid pro quo and compromised research under these circumstances is painfully obvious.\u00a0 In order to put aside doubts, Fitzgerald should release the details of the study and TTU should reconsider its interest in such \u2018sponsored\u2019 research.\u00a0 And it might be time for the Herald Citizen to revisit this issue with some investigative journalism.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Jon Jonakin, Emeritus Professor of Economics, TTU<\/p>\n
1345 Inglewood Drive, Cookeville<\/p>\n
526-3399<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Letter to the editor: Conflicts of interest are best avoided under any circumstance but that has not stopped top administrators at TTU from involving themselves in a relationship that comes with a possible double conflict of interest.\u00a0 A local Crossville trucking firm, Fitzgerald Glider Kits, recently sponsored–as in paid for\u2014research involving a TTU professor … Continue reading Jon Jonakin letter to the editor, Dec. 6 2017<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":53,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.tntech.edu\/aaup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.tntech.edu\/aaup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.tntech.edu\/aaup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.tntech.edu\/aaup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/53"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.tntech.edu\/aaup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.tntech.edu\/aaup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":141,"href":"https:\/\/sites.tntech.edu\/aaup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140\/revisions\/141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.tntech.edu\/aaup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.tntech.edu\/aaup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.tntech.edu\/aaup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}