Ex-student vs University!
Science vs Religion!
Can an ongoing dispute be turned into a social experiment?
Follow the ongoing developments in the Diary.
The stage has already been set.
It began with a bizarre evaluation of an honours thesis at Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia, that stopped my academic progress in its tracks, back in 1999. Still, the original project was successfully completed in 2003. Since then any attempt to resolve the dispute was met with opposition - police was called to remove me from campus, records were destroyed, and it seems no-one wants to get involved. The question is: what does it take for this university to come to the table? The experiment consists of creating a scenario which permits an analysis of what is necessary under the given conditions to force the issue to a conclusion. As each of the players makes their move, the scenario opens itself to analysis from any direction.
The players:
On one side - Griffith University, in particular two examiners, their names so far unknown (the third, Terry Dartnall, has since died); the then supervisor, Grigoris Antoniou, currently working at a university in Greece; and Griffith's vice chancellor, Ian O'Connor, who uses police to keep out complainants and destroys incriminating records and does the things someone with such status and a $640,000 salary can do.
What most people don't know: Australian universities enjoy an autonomy that is not available to anyone else (diplomats etc possibly excepted). What they decide to do within the context of academic pursuits cannot be touched by law. Since no-one else has that kind of protection a staff member can purposely destroy one's life through something like vicious marking while at the same time the victim has no legal standing. The only option for the victim lies, ipso facto, outside the law. There have been cases where the existence of evidence in the student's favour has been blandly denied, where responses were drawn out for such a long time by the university that the litigants where left despondent, and where all the judges could do was politely await the university's next gracious decision. It is a nasty situation and from my experience not even students have any idea how precarious their status actually is.
Surrounding that group are various individuals in government departments and organisations who refuse to have anything to do with the matter.
On the other side - myself, the ex-student who during his life has completed several projects (flying military jets, searching for diamonds in South America, travelling on a sailing yacht through most of the world's oceans, writing a book on thought structures in society, and developing a working model of the mind plus a prototype of an artificial mind - both a world-first).
To resolve the dispute is good for me on a personal level and in a wider sense it is good for society because the mind model gets the usage it deserves. The stakes are high in any case.
The experiment:
Most research is done under controlled conditions; sample pools are carefully selected, tests are configured and formatted, and the results are statistically evaluated.
This, however, is an open experiment. None of the participants have been pre-selected; there is no formal framework; no hypothesis exists. Instead, there are the social dynamics, as open-ended and as unpredictable as any large-scale human activity system can be; there is the culture of Queensland, Australia, a Western sub-set with considerable religious and parochial overtones; and last but not least, there is the university itself with its own inertia, financial and operational needs and self-preservation, not to mention its already demonstrated readiness to do secret deals (in this case with the Saudis). There is also that one individual and his research and all the potential and worth it represents (and as every good scientist you experiment on yourself first).
A quote comes to mind, sometimes attributed to Thomas Jefferson: "When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty".
Who would be interested:
Psychologists, cognitive scientists, in fact any serious student of human behaviour. Also investigative journalists who want a ring-side seat in order to observe a developing situation that is unusual and unique.
The groundwork has already been done (see the diary, earliest entry). Regardless of the outcome, the information value contained in whatever eventuates is assured.
Please note: since this is an uncontrolled experiment the possibility exists that some observer influences the final result. Given the open-ended nature of the experiment it is a feature that makes the entire endeavour that much more interesting!
The progress of the affair will be fully described in the diary as it unfolds.
To become familiar with the background see the opposition on this website as well as the posts on the blog, listed under Blog Topics > Dispute with Griffith University. Outside investigations are welcome.
The rest of the Otoom website is concerned with the mind model (including the main work On the origin of Mind, related papers and articles, the computer programs, sound outputs, FAQs, confirmations of the model and a CV). It goes without saying that anything mentioned here or on the blog can be substantiated. This should be kept in mind, especially when there is an inclination to think, "Surely, this can't happen in a university!".
Comments and suggestions are invited at any time via the contact page.
