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The Internet is indeed a wonder of our age. Why, just last night, while watching the DVD of Inherit the Wind (it's Darwin's bicentennial birthday week as I write), I was able to simultaskically discover that Fredric March and Florence Eldridge, who play Matthew and Sarah Brady, were married in real life and often performed together in movies and on stage. (Inherit the Wind, by the way, is actually a bombastically bad movie. But it's fun.) My research was over before Matthew, a character based on William Jennings Bryan, could finish one of his long-winded speeches.
Of course, easy access to such tantalizing data has the potential for misuse. Which clearly was the case at the National Science Foundation (NSF), where an employee spent a significant amount of time at work perusing pornography. At least that's the official report if he claimed he was investigating grant applications from researchers investigating human reproduction, well, it didn't fly.
The incident, and some other porn-related surfing by a handful of other NSF employees, was revealed in the foundation's semiannual report issued by its inspector general. The primary porn culprit lost his job based on the misuse of time and resources that was estimated to have wasted some $58,000. And the foundation installed filters, just as countless other employers in the U.S. have done when faced with exactly this same kind of abuse of company resources. NSF employees looking for dirty pictures will henceforth have to be content with medical journals.
With the audit having been published, the NSF got back to work supporting and promoting scientific research. That is until Iowa senator Charles Grassley noticed the foundation's report. The waste wasn't just playing computer solitaire or Freecell, or instant-messaging friends or searching the Internet for movie trivia. This was porn.
At first, Grassley was mildly intrigued. Perhaps he gently caressed the hard copy of the internal audit, its creamy white pages glistening under the gentle light of a desk lamp. As the senator read about a government-funded employee viewing lascivious images in the workplace, his heart must have pounded. When he reached the mention of the $58,000, his pulse no doubt shot up and he might have softly moaned. Then he and the NSF semiannual report became one. And his outrage exploded like a volcano that could no longer contain the roiling molten lava within. "The semiannual report," Grassley said in a press release, "raises real questions about how the National Science Foundation manages its resources, and Congress ought to demand a full accounting before it gives the agency another $3 billion in the stimulus bill."
Grassley then joined with Senators Barbara Mikulski of Maryland and Richard Shelby of Alabama to share their indignation at the waste of the taxpayers' money. (Again, the porn addict was already gone, despite the fact that a federally funded worker who loses only $58,000 in this economy should probably be nominated for employee of the month.) The three senators introduced an amendment to the roughly $800-billion stimulus bill that would freeze $3 million in operating funds for the NSF unless the foundation took further steps to ensure that no pornography ever sullied its computer screens again.
Much of this information came to me from a source at the Senate Finance Committee, of which Grassley is the ranking member. I made repeated requests of the source to assure me that the senatorial threats against the NSF would not cost any scientists their funding. The answers were inconclusive and then stopped altogether. While this tempest in a D-cup made news, the former NSF employee was joined by 598,000 other Americans who lost their jobs in January.
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18 Comments
Add CommentWhat a fantastic non-issue this is. Almost every job in the world has some spare time built into it, and what the employee decides to do with it is not very important. If these employees are actually failing to complete their duties, then that is the problem, not the porn. Fire them for that, by all means. But I have not heard word one about not getting their jobs done, which should have been the main complaint. I sincerely doubt that the figure of $58,000 wasted would stand close scrutiny. People like to throw out large figures to make a story more interesting and to justify their exaggerated response, but this number was pulled out of someone's rear exit.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI get the impression that the only real consequence of the porn surfing is that it makes the company look bad. Would this story have been so widely reported if the employee had been reading news websites (or sciam.com)? Very unlikely, even though ethically it's the same exact thing.
LOL. Non-issue or not, that fifth paragraph is a stitch!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBoobs on the 'net, the SciAm web site that is.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWho says that Science is no fun? *giggle* Wonder if there were any sticky spots on the report? LOL!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisuhhh, is this necessary? SciAm running out of topics to discuss?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSteve Mirsky,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWell, many of humans those are involved on the internet do watch porns and those who claims "NO", is just not speaking the truth. Anyways, While working and when on job, I do not know if they really watch porno and it is also not good idea to generalize for the entire human race.
Anyways, As Freud said, 'what's on man's mind?' Certainly, he claimed that there is a picture of naked women... Well, the headline for any organization for the employees watching porn or not is not an issue. The main issue is do you get your work done or not?
Maybe oneday, all of us will watch porn and do not give damn about anything....
I am not legalizing porn on jobs but it is another research question to find out- "What is the behavior of humans while using the Interent?"
Alright, ,,, should stop now...
God bless you all ! :)
S.K.
The writer of this story surely watches porn as his family eats dinner. To bad mouth porn opens one to be labeled a homophpbic, racist or a christian. Its cool to be anti moral. Sen. Grassley is a good and decent man..
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAbusing time on the computer at work is like driving on the interstates, its hard to stay within the limits..Dont tell me you never drive over the speed limit...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWatching porn on the boss's time is a waste of the boss's resources. The agency fired the porn surfer and installed filters, as they should have. The two Senators over reacted, but what can you expect from politicians. I recomend avoiding government funding to save yourself from such nonsense.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am not suggesting that watching porn at work is a good use of company time and money, but it's just porn. Scientific American should be one of the first sources to point out that what he was watching was two animals copulating....this is afterall what porn is. But for some reason, we place such a stigma on porn. The author rightly points out a far greater waste of money that no one seems to care about; the $100,000 spent to discredit evolution.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI see a pattern here, 100k for creationism and tryiing to block 3 million dollars for NSF, maybe I'm being paranoid but that is a standard guerrilla tactic, live off the land (that is taxes), and block the enemy's logistics.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOn the other hand, let's see the 58000...
An average porn site costs somewhere from 20 to 70 USD accoirding to hardness, so an average of 45. an hour internet on a cafe is in the 10 USD range, that means either he used federal funding to pay for a lot of sites, he downloaded smut day and night, while using an abacus to do his job, he did it on an hour a day time for a long long period, or he used a supercomputer to hack the site(s),
If we assume a one year period, it is 5800 hours (just the bandwith), and that sums up to about 725 work days (8 hour periods) or 241 natural days, if he used funding to subscribe, and we asume one porn site, then we have 718.25 workdays or 239 natural days, clearly, he either was a porn junkie who used a dozen subscriptions, downloaded porn every day, or he used one fancy supercomputer to bootleg a site, hard to believe.
Finally I recall that it was a dozen workers or something like that, again, that falls to less than 1% of the workers on NSF, and those will be controlled by a pink check, and a footprint just below their coxis.
The NSF definitely does not deserve this overbearing and overcontrolling , overreactions from the politicians. This is a collective punishment to others who work seriously in NSF. While politicians think they deserved to spend time in a paid emergency retreat or vacations, I am quite sure nothing of such benefit is provided for NSF employees. The threat of withdrawing or withholding NSF funds is contrary to its objective. It must exist in a stable environment.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRule number one in Amerika - it must pay to be rich...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMahagonny rules!
Oh show us the way to the next little dollar...
i bet if he was surfing news sites he wouldn't have been fired
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisstill, you shouldn't waste paid time--if they pay you to do something then do it
surf porn at home, do job at work. He didn't so he got fired.
the religious right people and the old generation are the ones who think porn is ruining America
religious politicians like David Vitter try to earmark $100,000 for the Louisiana Family Forum
I believe that Inherit the Wind was a great movie, not a "bombastically bad" one (unless Steve was just trying to conspicuously display his alliterative skills.) I guess we all have an opinion, however wrong it may be.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere was a study released recently (forgot the source) that found that productivity actually increased, if the employer allowed some goof off time. I don't know if porn counts. It certainly is dangerous for the employers computer, since porn sites can often be sources of viruses and malware. But just goofing off isn't necessarily a bad thing as long as the work gets done.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLooks like many readers have never heard of the zero tolerance policy in government for sexual harassment. Failing to immediately terminate pornography exposes agencies to HUGE penalties, despite having already fired this employee they could still face a hostile workplace or sexual harassment lawsuit.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe can only speculate at the $58,000 at this point, but it will very likely include the cost of the filtering appliance and audits of all the other computers.
Topical commentary aside, I do have to wonder at the science implications of this story, if any. The topic and tone more closely resemble something from "The Register" where this style is obligatory.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.theregister.co.uk/