UCSD’s most embarrassing fiasco

By San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial Board

In the 51-year rise of UC San Diego to super-elite status among the nation’s research universities, probably nothing has been as significant an embarrassment as its loss over the past three months of the bulk of the important and prestigious nationwide Alzheimer’s disease research program that UCSD has managed since 1991.

As reported by the Union-Tribune’s Gary Robbins and Bradley Fikes, the financial loss to UCSD could be as much as $93.5 million. That’s the figure offered by officials at the University of Southern California, which successfully staged an astonishing raid on the UCSD Alzheimer’s study, first luring away the study’s director, Paul Aisen, and then convincing sponsors of eight of the project’s 10 main funding contracts to also defect to USC and a new USC institute that Aisen will run in San Diego.

It is the largest loss of research funding in UCSD’s history. But the money may not be as important in the long run as the hit UCSD is surely taking to its international reputation. It is clearly a compliment to Aisen that the financial sponsors, led by pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly, chose to move their funding to USC. But it also suggests strongly that those sponsors lack the confidence in UCSD to manage the program effectively going forward.

Much of the problem for UCSD seems to have been self-inflicted.

David Brenner, UCSD’s vice chancellor for health sciences and dean of the medical school, acknowledged to Robbins and Fikes that the university had made mistakes in not closely monitoring and assessing the Alzheimer’s Disease Cooperative study, as the project is formally known. It’s not clear exactly what that means, but it’s known that relations between Aisen and top administrators at UCSD began to sour at some point at least several months ago. One independent Alzheimer’s activist who knows Aisen said the scientist was clearly frustrated.

William Mobley, interim co-director of what’s left of the study program at UCSD, told Robbins and Fikes that the university gave Aisen everything he wanted. But that may have come too late to salvage the relationship.

Clearly, USC has taken its share of hits in this episode, as well. Universities try to lure top faculty away from other institutions all the time. But USC’s persistent efforts not just with UCSD but with other scientific research institutions in San Diego over the past year or so have made it look like a predator simply trying to buy its way to prestige status in the science world.

UC San Diego officials pledge now to pick up the pieces and rebuild the Alzheimer’s program. We wish them success. But UC’s leadership systemwide and on campus in La Jolla need to take a critical, introspective review of what went wrong with this project, why, and what to do about it.

[Source]: San Diego Union-Tribune