Comments on posts to this blog usually stray far from the topic. In the case of The Best Possible Shield the topic has drifted to DOE foreign travel/vacation policy, with calls for a new top level post. Did DOE buy a "pig in a poke" when they approved this travel to Dijon, France?Anonymous said...
Details for Frank:
The rule is that DOE has to approve foreign travel. They generally reject foreign travel if two apparently married people are going, where apparently = same last name. They seldom reject travel if people have different last names.
Married couples with different last names use foreign travel as a way of going on vacations. If you plan it right, you can make it last all summer.
So anyhoo, there is a particular AD [Neu] who is married to a now-naturalized previously-European person. They have used this loophole for about 10 years.
It is a pretty common practice, although this particular couple is really masterful.
96 comments:
So, we have this high-salaried AD plus his also-employed wife scamming the system for a European vacation.
Just marvelous! Another example of our great LANS management. I am certain that they will find a way to cover this up.
Dijon was small potatoes for Neu and Runde. Last fall they traveled together to Moscow for some Mendeleev Conference and then did the grand tour of European heavy isotope labs. Neu's tab alone was something like $7 grand, all paid out of CLES org support. It's tough duty but somebody has to do it.
Any LANL-ites reporting in from Dijon this week? Is Neu making a typical horse's ass of herself out there?
This is yet another example of some anonymous person with sour grapes. The trip in question is to a conference called "Plutonium Futures 2008" where Wolfgang Runde is giving a talk and his wife, Mary Neu, is presenting a poster. Anyone can check the schedule to verify this. They have never hidden the fact that they are married, and both have legitimate reasons for attending the conference, as they are experts in their field. And it is increasingly common for a wife to not take her husband's name, especially in a science related area where name recognition is important. I seriously doubt it was done with the intention of an end run around the DOE's travel policies.
5:31, you're showing your sexist bias.
Call the New Mexican!! The DOE isotope manager took a tour of European isotope labs! The GAO must immediately investigate this obvious waste, fraud, and abuse! If we don't put a stop to this, X-div designers will start wanting to visit Livermore on the LANL dime, and they might stop off for a day in SF! The horror!
Careful here. Getting approval for foreign travel is difficult, and almost impossible on LDRD funds. So if DOE notices any fraud with this respect, it will increase the paperwork and burden for foreign travel request for sure. Or the only allowed foreign travel to conferences would be to Mannheim, Germany or Walsall, UK (cities as appealing as Detroit).
But on the other hand, only having a poster accepted at a conference for a person such as Mary is rather obvious - any grad-student can do that.
Ha, ha, ha! This is so funny. Haven't you dimwits realized by now that these rules are only for the little people at LANL?
Nothing will come of this story except that Neu will launch an angry witch-hunt when she gets back home to find the little weasels who ruined a perfectly wonderful DOE-paid European vacation for her and her hubby. And so it goes.
"only having a poster accepted at a conference for a person such as Mary is rather obvious - any grad-student can do that."
This is an unclear point, or maybe I am just dense. What did you mean by this? Thank you.
Regarding the poster, yes, getting posters accepted is virtually guaranteed. Few conferences review abstracts of contributed papers other than what is necessary to put the paper into the proper session. As a member of a number of program committees I can tell you that all that the program committee usually does is set up the invited paper sessions.
The conferences will do anything to get registration fees.
"But on the other hand, only having a poster accepted at a conference for a person such as Mary is rather obvious - any grad-student can do that." - 7/9/08 10:46 AM
Exactly! Putting up a simple poster at a conference is no reason for DOE to pay for a lavish European trip for Neu. Are you paying attention to all this, DOE auditors?
Oh, wait. Nue and her husband will have to enter in all those lengthy travel expenses on LANS' wonderful Concur system once they gets back to LANL. This will help assure that they never get repaid for this stealth vacation.
Wow, you LANL guys never miss a chance to try to take each other down, don't you?
And you never realize that in the long run, you hurt everyone at LANL. Or maybe you do?
This post looks like little more than professional jealousy.
One thing's for sure: the other labs can always count on LANL to badmouth LANL. You do their work for them. LANL hardly needs more enemies than some of its own bitter and self-centered staff.
Thank goodness I left -- you don't realize how bad it is until you're gone.
Don't you just love all these power couples at LANL? Together, Neu and her husband must be sucking in around half a million dollars in salary from the LANL tit every year. A nicely furnished Europeon vacation for the both of them is just icing on the cake.
This business about the poster paper is quite a stretch. The DOE does need to look into this. Of course, if they look too closely, they will end up finding themselves to have been foolish for approving a family vacation.
7:45 AM, thanks so much for the clarification, Mary. I feel much better now. Oh, just a few minor points:
- Do you not understand that your own employees have had similar trip requests turned down, simply because they have the same last name as another traveler? Where was your righteous indignation on their behalf?
- Do you not understand that org support funds are intended to be used for the benefit of your organization, not your own personal career aspirations?
- Do you not understand that we are not fooled by your lame little poster presentation? You submitted a poster as your nominal justification for the expensive trip. After all, how can you claim your status as an expert in the field if you don't do the proper facetime at one of its major conferences? With all due respect, it's not as if the conference organizers begged you to come and bequeath your vast expertise on the assembled conferees, now did they?
- Do you not understand that "The Team" should behave in ways that are above reproach? You wouldn't have your name anonymously dragged through this blog if you'd actually stop and think about both the ethics and the appearance of your actions once in a while.
- Do you not understand that you are infamous as a retaliator?
- Okay, so Wolfie has a thin justification for last fall's grand tour. What's your excuse? I don't remember you writing in your CLES updates about the copious benefits of your trip on the directorate as a whole. In fact, you kind of forgot to mention it, didn't you. Why is that? Sue Seestrom has at least had the balls to be honest about how she's wasting her employees' ovehead dollars.
Your employees send their love and kisses.
That's a good point, 12:30, the reason DOE doesn't look too closely at fraud, waste and abuse, much less the "appearance" of such, is that DOE will itself look foolish for approving and/or not being aware of the entire picture. Rather ignore than to have to take any action and blame the incidents on "sour grapes". No, it is not sour grapes. A power couple with half a mil in annual income should be above such behavior but then again, this is LANS, where ethics are spoken of but not practiced by the great managers. Enron managers had the same disgusting behavior condoned by the high and mighty, had similar perk "working vacations" and guess who lost their pensions, yep, the employees, not the managers. This is disgusting.
"Wow, you LANL guys never miss a chance to try to take each other down, don't you?
And you never realize that in the long run, you hurt everyone at LANL. Or maybe you do?"
7/9/08 12:14 PM
Amen to that! LANL staff love to blame management, or Congress, or CCNS, or anyone else. What they really should do is look in the mirror. That's your problem, staring right back at you.
I doubt most of the nay-sayers and rabble-rousers here are actual LANL employees. This blog has been frequented by toxic mix of malcontents, anti-nukes, and nutjobs for some time.
They keep trying to pass themselves off as insiders, but its easy to sort through the wannabes from the folks that know.
This is a non-story, a dry-hole for an anti-nuke that was hoping to bring yet more bad press to LANL. Sounds salacious; but like most anonymous blog posts with scandalous accusations, it's not quite the story that was first sensationalized.
Whine, whine, whine that LANL doesn't look for work outside the weapons program; then, when a relevant world-known conference on actinides occurs, whine, whine, whine that LANL staff and managers actually attend to promote their work and discuss actinide science with applications beyond the weapons program. Your schizophrenia is showing again...
Here is a shorter version of 4:25. 'You complain when we beat you and you complain when we screw you. Aren't you ever happy?'
I was wondering, if Neu is such a "leader in the field of actinide science" then wouldn't Pu Futures want her as a speaker and not a poster presenter??
"Okay, so Wolfie has a thin justification for last fall's grand tour. What's your excuse? I don't remember you writing in your CLES updates about the copious benefits of your trip on the directorate as a whole."
The trip undoubtedly helped out her husband, the National isotope program manager, and her former postdoc, the LANL isotope program manager.
4:25 PM, you are full of shit. I for one can assure you that Neu has actually tried to brow-beat people to "invite" her to the conference in question. This time did not work and she ended up giving a poster. At the last couple of ACS meetings she tried to compete with people like Al Sattleberger and acted like a horse's ass - ignoring us who work in her Directorate and playing hte all-big important person she thinks she is. She was at her worst in New Orleans. Anyhoo, I would like to think Terry and Mike are paying attention to all this - Mary is not doing you a service to the Lab. Hey, does anyone know if her former PD-now-TSM-Andi Guant got to go to France? What about her BFF Ian May? If so, who paid for it?
Additional suppor for 12:55 PM - I am in T-division and I know of colleagues who got their travel to "Plutonium Futures 2008" rejected because they were only giving a poster. Any explantatiopn to this oh great Neu suppporters?
Why don't you all just leave Mary Neu alone? She is a brilliant scientist and a leader in her field. The Lab is lucky to have her as part of their organization. SHe should be made a Fellow. Other institutions would be grateful to have her in addition to her world-reknowned husband Wolfgange Runde.
a leader in her field
Her field of plutonium speciation is microscopic. It does nottake much to be a leader.
However, that is beside the point. The point is the family vacations based on pulling a fast one on DOE. These trips would be rejected had DOE known the full story.
To 7:52: I think her husband might object to her being "made a Fellow".
Dunno. All Europeans are bi. Not that there is anything wrong with that.
You mean bilingual of course. Otherwise we don't need explore that topic here.
Anonymous at 7/9/08 12:14 PM writes:
"Wow, you LANL guys never miss a chance to try to take each other down, don't you?"
"And you never realize that in the long run, you hurt everyone at LANL. Or maybe you do?"
In part, s/he is correct. But, the problem is that there is really no other outlet for these kind of complaints. You can't take this to the DOE because they were complicit in approving the family vacation travel. The only hope is that by reporting this stuff on the blog, LANS will get the message and improve their behavior. Or, more likely, work on improved cover-ups.
Can't hold the Fellow title while being a manager.
Neu is a good, not great chemist, who will never make Fellow because she has systematically alienated all of her potential supporters through over a decade of childish, backstabbing antics. p.s. If you really know another institution that's willing to take Neu, please post it here. I'd be delighted to see her leave LANL.
The LANS upper management (Division
Directors and above) and shamelessly arrogant. They treat LANL as their private sandbox. This is but one example. Neu should be fired!
7/9/08 7:45 AM here. Sorry to disappoint, but I am not Mary or Wolfgang. I really don't care much either way about them. Who I am is a regular lanl person who is offended by people using malicious and inaccurate accusations of impropiety in an attempt to settle a personal score. LANL has a lot of problems, and bullshit like this detracts from the REAL problems.
What do you mean 8:09? These are real problems, not bullshit, not perceptions. The LANS management team is deliberately flaunting its disregard for the rules. This is beyond innuendo, sour grapes and personal vendettas. Time after time, instance after instance, beginning with the John Mitchell issue, we share our knowledge of gross misconduct by these managers. If you don't want your sensitive eyes and ears to be affected, then baa baa sheep yourself back to your secure little job in the hope that you will keep said job. The rest of us will continue to share and discuss the corrupt behavior of these managers in the hope that someday DOE or someone else reading the blog will finally become as fed up as we are and do something about it. It's bad enough when our Rechtel manager is dumber than dirt and doesn't care if we all know it, it's becomes doubly important to point out how corrupt they are. As long as taxpayers pay our salaries, they deserve to know what is going on.
I am sure that somebody will wonder (perhaps Congress since they like to study DOE travel)...At any rate, perhaps you should be asking why DOE approved foreign travel for what I understand to be 77 people who were presenting at the Pu Futures conference. I was unable to confirm this number but I personally know of 10 people who went. I believe that DOE is a sponsor of the conference.
The DOE sponsor that is paying for the trip must review, justify and approve of the travel.
What I can say is that in an era of very tight (and getting tighter) budgets, management should be looking at these "junkets" harder then they probably do. I know that some managers use travel to reward employee performance. It should only be approved if it represents a legitimate business need. Remember, travel is not a perk! Those of us who have to travel alot becuase of our job find it tedious and could find better things to do with our time. I personally hate taking 3 days to travel to DC for a 2 hour meeting.
2:09
All I see in your passionate rant is the same language used by several others: "They're &^%%^$ theives and we're pure and holy.
What I'd like to see you negativists do is give more solid evidence to your claims instead of opinionated assumptions. These days people can't seem to exist without finding a reason to find fault with others. Who stepped on your grave?
The fact is, as bad as LANS has said what they were going to do versus their actual record, the truth lies somewhere between what you say and what they say. The quality, and least of all the tone, of your writings shows your anger comes from fear. If you haven't got the guts to face it, how about you do something about it instead of trying to spread it. Instead of writing about LANL sheep, how about you all get the guts to get off your butts and do something instead of expecting someone else to do it.
Things are changing all over...get used to it. The problems come from inside the beltway FIRST before the trickle-down hits the Hill.
Hi 8:09. What exactly is inaccurate about this post?
Why doesn't anyone complaining about the travel fraud also complain about LANL paying Alan Bishop to go to California and write part of LANS response to the bid? Does anyone think that was ethical for Bishop to do? Should he have been paid by the taxpayers to help write the response to the bid that resulted in his being promoted from Division Leader to AD?
7:46 PM, I hear you brother! Same goes for Seestrum and Wallace - both did the same thing. AND were handsomely rewarded ...
Quid pro quo.
To 7:33 PM - absolutely nothing! In fact, my understanding is that Neu brow-beat one of her subordinates to try and get an invited talk but never could and so she settled for a poster just so that she could go to France. Pretty pathetic, actually. I would hate to be that low-life TSM at PA time this year ... ouch!
7:46 PM wrote, "Should he have been paid by the taxpayers to help write the response to the bid that resulted in his being promoted from Division Leader to AD?"
That's nothing! Neu was promoted from being a lowly TSM to AD. How do you explain that?
Move along, move along. Nothing to see here. Move along.
That's nothing! Neu was promoted from being a lowly TSM to AD. How do you explain that?
Uh, excuse me but wasn't she was an acting deputy group leader for a while? Clearly this qualifies her to run an entire directorate. Gheesh!
Hey, not that I don't enjoy the Mary-bashing but here's a little gender equity for ya.
A favorite old trick of certain LANL frequent travelers was to collect travel vouchers by allowing themselves to be "bumped" from overbooked flights. After not too long, it was pretty easy to "buy" the wife and kids a trip to Hawaii or some other vacation spot.
This never seemed quite right to me. I guess if the airline is paying for the hotel and meal vouchers, it's one thing, but then again these guys were still charging their T&E to the lab.
Is this practice still viable with the new travel policies?
7/10/08 2:16 PM
"I personally hate taking 3 days to travel to DC for a 2 hour meeting."
Stick with it; you'll learn how to do it in two. It's been done in one more than once, by the way.
7:46pm: "Why doesn't anyone complaining about the travel fraud also complain about LANL paying Alan Bishop to go to California and write part of LANS response to the bid? Does anyone think that was ethical for Bishop to do? Should he have been paid by the taxpayers to help write the response to the bid that resulted in his being promoted from Division Leader to AD?"
Almost (apparently) everyone knows that the LANL upper managers (and some others with specialized knowledge, including me) who went to San Francisco to the Bechtel offices there to help write the contract bid were paid from a special fund to cover those efforts; not from LANL programmatic funding. This malicious rumor stays alive, though.
"This malicious rumor stays alive, though." 7/10/08 11:28 PM
What is *not* a malicious rumor, however, is that all of the LANL staff who went out to Bechtel HQ to help write the LANS bid (and, thus, sell out their colleagues back home) were all very well rewarded when they got back to LANL.
Most of the excesses we see today at LANL and the ugly "us vs. them" attitude are largely the creation of these very same people.
They felt entitled to do much as they please once LANS won the bid. The increasingly burdensome sets of LANS new rules and policies don't appear to apply to them.
"Almost (apparently) everyone knows that the LANL upper managers (and some others with specialized knowledge, including me) who went to San Francisco to the Bechtel offices there to help write the contract bid were paid from a special fund to cover those efforts; not from LANL programmatic funding. This malicious rumor stays alive, though."
Were you on vacation? What fund paid for your retirement, sick leave, etc.? What "special fund"? Didn't all money come from the taxpayers whether programmatic or not? Or were you bribed by LANS? What cost code was your time paid against?
Meanwhile, Susan Seestrom visited the "Institue Leon Langevin" in France, according to her email distribution today. Never heard of it? She means the famous Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL); but she obviously has never heard of Max Von Laue, whose discovery of the diffraction of X-rays on crystals resulted in a Nobel prize in 1914. This is the level of ignorance that pervades our senior management!
Here's a timely note from Sue Seestrom's ADEPS news. Mary Neu, please note that your colleague (a) left her husband at home, and (b) is able and willing to articulate a Directorate (not personal) benefit to her European boondoggle.
"Strategy: Leveraging our Multiple User Facilities
Earlier in July, I traveled to several European scientific facilities with Kurt Schoenberg and Alex Lacerda. We were in Grenoble, France where we visited the Centre de l'Energie Atomique (CEA), the Institue Leon Langevin (ILL), the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF), and the Grenoble High Field Laboratory, then on to the Forschunsgzentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (FZR) in Dresden, Germany, the pulsed neutron and muon source, ISIS in Abingdon, UK and the Laboratoire Leon Brillouin (LLB) in near Paris. Pshew - 4 cities in 6 days!
The facilities were thriving with strong user programs and we saw several examples in which they leveraged multiple facility capabilities to attract a broader set of users. We are considering
this as a possibility for our EPS facilities and we discussed this at length at our retreat. We brainstormed potential synergistic activities between CINT and Lujan, NHMFL and Lujan and collaborations among other facilities including Trident, IBML, EML, pRad, WNR.
We identified actions with owners to continue to explore opportunities that could enhance user visitor experience with access to multiple user facilities. Cris Barnes will be chartering a small team of people knowledgeable about the science potential of our facilities to discuss potential collaborative challenges. I will keep you informed as we pursue collaborations among the facilities.
7/10, 2:16 p.m. said "perhaps you should be asking why DOE approved foreign travel for what I understand to be 77 people who were presenting at the Pu Futures conference."
I find this post confusing -- with LANL as one of the world leaders in plutonium science, shouldn't we have LOTS of people at this conference, presenting and learning? The idea that there's something dreadful about people attending a professional conference in a specialized field reveals a very narrow, anti-LANL attitude. I would be claiming sloth and nonperformance of duty if these people did not ATTEND the conference. What are we paying them to do if not stay current in their area of expertise?
My question to the LANL employees: Why are you trying to destroy one another?
To 5:58 PM - with no money and making it more difficult to get work, it becomes a zero sum game and it is survival of the fittest (or best of the best and brightest).
7/10/08 8:54 PM wrote "That's nothing! Neu was promoted from being a lowly TSM to AD. How do you explain that?"
Amazon sature, blonde, big boobs ...
5:58 pm: "My question to the LANL employees: Why are you trying to destroy one another?"
Why, that's what we do, why else?? Actually, and more seriously, that is the prime reason LANL is doomed, The employees think the world owes them a living, and the managers know it has happened to them. Go figure how that can be fixed to save the institution and the employees. I can't see how. The employees will defend their right to bitch until they drown in it. No right-thinking LANL employee would ever work to save the institution, and therefor, his/her job. Better to punch more holes in the boat than bail, even though there are no lifevests.
3 mottos for the future:
(1) Aut vincere aut mori.
(Either to conquer or die.)
(2) Penser Hors Limites.
(Imagination without boundaries/To think beyond the boundaries.)
(3) Ad Inexplorata.
(Into the unknown.)
8:34.
I think you're right on a couple points, but you lost it with the thought that LANL employees are, in effect, trying to commit professional suicide.
What is the point of that, then? The people here are smarter than that.
All we can do is our jobs. Period. Do it well, take pride in it, even put up with all the bureaucratic Mickey-Mouse that the paranoid, over-the-top-safety/security clones are forcing on us. Let them be the ones getting in the way of getting work done.
Do it for yourself, and your family, and whatever future you may have. Find a way to leave if it all torques you that much, and go find something you think is better.
If you get more wrapped up in the cult of jealous personality fostered by this website (No offense, Frank) and its predecessors, then you'll just end up driving yourself down and everybody around you.
The best solution I've been able to come up with is just do your job. Do the best you can with what you've got to work with, and let the system's weakness's become obvious.
What does nature abhor? A vacuum.
Business, and that's what everything is, hates inefficiency and waste. It makes their leaders look bad and God forbid they let that happen.
CYA, and don't include others unless they're worth the effort. Let THE LOSERS fail from their shortcomings. Maybe, just maybe, they'll run out idiots they stick in these "leadership" positions within their good-ol-boy network.
I wouldn't hold my breath on that one, though.
Former Senator Graham was right... We are a nation of whiners.
Speak for yourself.
8:16 AM, why is exposing waste, fraud and abuse by the managers at LANL considered whining? Should we just bend over and say "thank you Sir, may I have another?" You know, we pay taxes too.
So ... is our world-renknowned AD and her spouse back from their travels to the south of France? Can't wait to get her CLES update and see how she helped the directorate by using our overhead for her vacation!
Back to the original topic ... I do find it interesting that nobody could relly explain how Neu was promoted from being a lowly TSM to AD ... aside from physical attributes.
4:39 pm: "why is exposing waste, fraud and abuse by the managers at LANL considered whining?"
If the "exposure" doesn't rise to the level that engages the interest of regulatory or law enforcement bodies, and the "exposer" is not willing or able to provide that level of evidence, it is whining.
"Back to the original topic ... I do find it interesting that nobody could relly explain how Neu was promoted from being a lowly TSM to AD ... aside from physical attributes."
How did her hubbie get promoted from lowly TSM to program manager, by-passing any project leader experience. How did her former PD, on a year long wine making sabbatical, come back to LANL and get promoted from lowly TSM to program manager (right on the edge of the hiring freeze), and who directly reports to the AD's hubbie.
These and other pressing questions tonight on 60 Minutes....
9:26 PM "I heard..."
Your comment was rejected. Even if you heard it and even if it's true, it's off topic and too inappropriate to publish. Go take a cold shower, read up on DOE travel regulations, and send me something I can use.
This is yet another example of some anonymous person with sour grapes. The trip in question is to a conference called "Plutonium Futures 2008" where Wolfgang Runde is giving a talk and his wife, Mary Neu, is presenting a poster. Anyone can check the schedule to verify this. They have never hidden the fact that they are married, and both have legitimate reasons for attending the conference, as they are experts in their field. And it is increasingly common for a wife to not take her husband's name, especially in a science related area where name recognition is important. I seriously doubt it was done with the intention of an end run around the DOE's travel policies.
And yes, in times when the average taxpayer is hovering above bancruptcy it is well justified. Yes, I am glad my taxes are being thrown out the door. If this trip was really so "important" they should kick in some of the cost.
I know the people in question and the attitude, and the general explanation on what they are doing is " out fucking off" (ofo'ing) they are taking a vacation on taxpayer money. This is a virtual societry, so there is no need for them to travel, and in light of the current eceonmic conditions the behavior is quite heinous.
And still nobody has been able to explain how Neu was promoted from being a lowly TSM to AD. What does it really take to become an AD at LANS?
"I do find it interesting that nobody could relly explain how Neu was promoted from being a lowly TSM to AD."
First off, Terry doesn't really care about management credentials. Look up the bio for Neu's deputy, Dave Thorn. He has even less experience than she does, i.e. none at all.
Secondly, when Mike Anastasio announced the creation of ADCLES and her selection as AD, he specifically said it was because she has experience in chemistry, biology (i.e. microbiology of plutonium, presumably from when she ripped off Christy Ruggiero's proposals), and geology (i.e. Pu in the envt, presumably meaning when she has taken credit for Dave Clark's work).
Mike said he was looking for someone who could build bridges between these areas especially in the threat reduction arena.
(Scary that I remember that announcement... must be PTSD flashbacks).
8:59 AM, you just sound like one of the bitter people Mary jumped over to get her position. First of all, Mary has done a beautiful job of merging the 3 areas of her directorate and buidling TR programs - just look what she has been able to grow in C-INC alone.
Secongly, Mary is a world-renowned expert in microbiology of plutonium. Christy was a post-doc under Mary and so Christy worked for Mary - it is a common practice for former Postdocs to think they are the brains behind the research and then think they own it. Not so - they come to work for the PI not the other way around.
As for taking credit for Dave Clark's work, he has not published environmental research for decades. In fact, he talks a big line but only Mary has been publishing - in fact, the Rocky Flats clean-up was her idea. I think if you called anyone outside of LANL they would say Mary is the leader.
Finally, as for Chemistry Mary has been single-handedly responsibile for revitalizing the inorganic and organometallic chemistry of the actinides. Her work is garnering all kinds of publicity and capturing covers of journals.
And to think she is still able to maintain vital research programs in all these efforts while being ADCLES.
I think she earned her job on her credentials!
Finally, as for Chemistry Mary has been single-handedly responsibile for revitalizing the inorganic and organometallic chemistry of the actinides. Her work is garnering all kinds of publicity and capturing covers of journals.
=================
Oh please. You've GOT to be kidding me. I can think of many other staff at the lab (and academics) who are far better known and more reputable in this niche of chemistry. TO credit her for the revitalization of actinide inorganic and organometallic chemistry is totally absurd.
12:02 PM - all I have to say is that if Mary Neu is such a great scientist that has had such a huge impact on the field then why is she not a Lab Fellow or why does she not have a Fellows Prize? Ooooh, I am such in awwww ...
Sounds like our ADCLES has delusions of grandeur ...
Me too - ROTFL at the "singlehandedly revitalizing" comment. Yes, Mary has garnered much publicity for this work in the pages of the PADSTE highlights and her own web ADCLES site.
Too bad she has been paying for this work by skimming illegally from programs such as medical radioisotope production and from Chemistry Division overhead.
People - check out the LANL homepage today advertiing a talk about Plutonium by none other than Dave Clark. Yeah, ADCLES is such a respected expert in the field (ie revitalized it) that she can't even get an invite to give a talk from her own institution! Perhaps she can bully the organizers and talk about her poster!
12:02, that's exactly the point. Neu is so intellectually bankrupt as a scientist that all she knows how to do is scrape up Dave Clark's leftovers and repackage them as her own. Carbonates? Sure, Neu comes up with a new Np compound a decade after her postdoc with Dave Clark and now she "owns" the field singlehandedly. (Witness her self-serving carbonate talk in NOLA).
Same thing for organometallics. Clark and Sattelberger published the synthesis of Pu tris-amides in the 1990's. Neu has her unfunded-mandate LTFN lackey remake the compound and get the crystal structure. Ooooh! What a breakthrough! And conveniently in the initial web publication, she conveniently "forgot" to cite Clark's original synthesis paper.
But, like the Communist Party, Neu controls the internal press and gets to tell the story her way.
Neu apparently counts on people forgetting about - or being too stupid to look up - the work that precedes hers. She is a wannabe with no real ideas of her own. (It's notable that her only JACS-worthy publications were coauthored by Clark). Her only remaining claim to fame is the bacterial reduction of Pu in the environment, and her work in that field has been severely criticized by her peers.
In short, she is a legend in her own mind.
And Mike's too, I guess.
"Too bad she has been paying for this work by skimming illegally from programs such as medical radioisotope production and from Chemistry Division overhead." - 7/14/08 7:21 AM
Wait just a minute, LANS has implemented a strict project code crack-down. They've been informing staff that using project codes for work outside the bounds of those codes can be used as grounds for being sacked.
Oh, silly me, I forgot. These strict LANS project code usage rules don't apply to those at the top.
Neu could have three Nobel prizes and that still doesn't answer the question: How did she get to be an AD with no management experience to speak of?
2:43 PM, the lack of answers to this question should be quite telling. We have an AD in charge of 3 important organizations at LANL. Her inexperience is causing people like TOm Baker, John Gordon, and others to leavev(or just retire) and she is killing science in Chemistry, Biology, and Environmental Divisions for her own self-gain. We should thank MIke and TErry for this gift.
Could you elaborate on John Gordon leaving?
7:45 PM - going to Brown University ...
One AD, 80 comments, no answers to the big quetion asked repeatedly ... how many "Bectels" do you that that garners?
I heard today that Carol Burns is leaving ADCLES because of Mary Neu and her vindictive and retaliation behavior. Will anyone do anything about this? Likely not, but let's make it very clear that it has been Carol Burns who has built the TR portfolio in ADCLES and NOT Neu.
Where is Carol going?
Actually to be completely realistic, the foundation of the TR portfolio in C-NR in particular was built way back under group leaders Glenn Bentley (radiochemistry and debris analysis) and Inez Triay (clean chemistry and mass spec).
But I concur that Burns has been its modern champion and knows and interacts with the pertinent sponsors in ways that Neu never has, and never will (unless it's to tell them about her idiotic organometallic chemistry project).
There are some really good questions here for the next All-Hands' Meeting.
Who will ask them?
There must be some person who is about to retire and has no intention to return as an affiliate!
Baker, JG, now Burns. Tell me this is not true. Come on Toto lets find that yellow brick road. Or perhaps Al is just cleaning house. Tee hee.
12:43 PM - nobody will ask the questions. Neu is a vindictive, calculating, back-stabbing uhh person who makes certain that anyone who questions her goes down. That is why she hires men who are spineless wimps to serve under her (e.g. like Thorn, Petersen, Gordon, etc.)...
Al has tried to clean house, but Argonne Chemistry makes LANL's infrastructure look modern and luxurious by comparison. The grass is not always greener.
7:24 PM, you can add John Kazuba to the list ...
... and Dave Clark
Actually 7:25 PM, Baker is leaving because he is tired of the slacker PDs that come in at 9 and leave by 5 and think they are doing him a favor. He has said on numerous occasions the blatant-in-your-face poor attitude of the PDs at LANL would not be tolerated anywhere else. Here they learn that they can scream "abuse, help!" and people come-a-ruunin. ANywhere else the PI would be like, fine, you are fired.
To 7:13 PM ... and lazy PDs in C-Div get converted to lazy TSMs ... it is a sad pattern I have witnessed since it was announced that LANS was taking over LANL.
to 8:02 pm
Can you actually name some of the lazy PDs that got converted to TSM since LANS took over? And what makes you say they are lazy?
Lazy = brings in no funding, milks off of the dollars of others, doesn't publish, complains about being tasked with any "real" work, refuses to work on programmatic activities, works 9-5 (if you are lucky), and gets defensive if you even question their hours. As for names, that would just bring bad focus on my AD Neu and she has had enough blog publicity lately.
Hi Pinky, this thread still seems to have a lot of life in it - any way you can "revive" it and bring it up front again?
Agreed- top tier, just like CLES.
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