Professor Bill Cooke

In a personal capacity
Address as email

Professor Stephen Toope

The Old Schools,
Trinity Lane,
Cambridge CB2 1TN
UK

Dear Vice-Chancellor

Research Misconduct at Cambridge University: Its Role in the The £60bn USS Pension Fund Strike

I was shocked to hear the Congressional testimony of Mr Mark Zuckerburg yesterday which appears
to contradict the ongoing correspondence I have received regarding the ethical responsibilities of
your University in harvesting my data. I invite you to reconsider your responses to me in this light.

Mr Zuckerberg spoke of the possibility of ‘something bad going on’ at Cambridge. There does
certainly seem to be an ethical mess. I write now in relation to Cambridge University’s role in the
consultation survey conducted by Universities UK (UUK), a charity, of employers who are members
of the £60billion Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS). The current wave of strikes is directly
attributable to proposals to severely cut pensions in the sector which directly result from the results
of that survey.

It is clearly the case that University of Cambridge staff got together to submit similar survey
responses from individual colleges, and from the university itself, with the intention of weighting the
result of the survey towards a particular position. This position is the one UUK consequently
adopted, and USS endorsed. It is apparent that Cambridge University, together with Oxford
University colleges, which you enrolled in this plan, thereby exerted disproportionate influence.

By any standard, responses to a survey are a research activity, and those offered by any university
must be surely be bound by its own research ethics standards. Your own statement of research
misconduct follows.

Misconduct in this context means:

Fabrication, falsification, plagiarism or deception in proposing, carrying out or reporting

results of research and deliberate, dangerous or negligent deviations from accepted practice
in carrying out research. It includes failure to follow agreed protocol if this failure results in
 unreasonable risk or harm to humans, other sentient beings or the environment, and
facilitating of misconduct in research by collusion in, or concealment of, such actions by
others. It includes any plan or conspiracy or attempt to do any of these things.

Misconduct in this context does not include honest error or honest differences in
interpretation or judgement in evaluating research methods or results, or misconduct
(including gross misconduct) unrelated to the research process.

Source: https://www.hr.admin.cam.ac.uk/policies-procedures/misconduct-research

Evidence of this misconduct is summarized here:

https://medium.com/ussbriefs/cambridge-and-oxford-in-the-uss-pensions-dispute-925056677d64

https://medium.com/@mikeotsuka/cambridge-colleges-coordinated-a-rejection-of-usss-proposed-
level-of-risk-bfced9866c0e

https://medium.com/@mikeotsuka/email-from-cambridge-pensions-sub-committee-to-college-
bursars-9e9252cc7755

In these sources, and in others which they further link to, there is evidence in the public domain of
plagiarism in carrying out the response to the UUK research policy. On 21st September 2017, College
Bursars were sent a template response to the UUK survey. It is (see the sources above) a matter of
public record, that a number of colleges responses to the survey were verbatim the same, some with
minor variations. That is, the responses were plagiarized.

This plagiarism was part of an attempt to influence the outcome of the survey in a manner which
gave the template’s originator(s) views greater weight in respect to alternatives than might
otherwise accrue. It is certainly a deliberate deviation from accepted practice. In that this was done
in secret, this it is the facilitation of misconduct in research by collusion in, or concealment of such
actions. And it certainly is a plan or conspiracy to do any of these things.

As far as I read your research ethics and research conduct requirements, all staff, whatever their
role, are bound by them. That Cambridge staff were respondents in this survey, and not (as far as
we know) its author, does not release them from research ethics requirements.

Research emanating from your University stands or falls by its integrity. Failure to address this
deliberate attempt to distort a research process will undermine the legitimacy of any involvement of
Cambridge, its Colleges and its researchers in future survey research. This is a very serious breach of
research ethics, and I look forward to you acting with due haste, given the seriousness of the matter
at hand, and its impact on our sector as a whole.

I should also inform you that this letter will form part of a complaint to the Competition Authority.

Yours Sincerely

[Signature as per email]

Professor Bill Cooke

12 April 2018