June 16, 2009

A hilarious "oversight" in Nisbett's "Intelligence"

On the VDARE.com blog, I have a posting up about a striking omission in Richard E. Nisbett's book Intelligence and How to Get It.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

By Steve Sailer on 6/16/2009

55 comments:

Anonymous said...

So what was, in fact, Rick Heber sent to jail for? What exactly did he do? He was charged with mishandling funds, yes, but did he NOT carry out the research, but only invented his data, or what?

6/16/09, 4:02 PM
Nanonymous said...

So what was, in fact, Rick Heber sent to jail for?

Tax evasion

6/16/09, 4:42 PM
gordon-bennett said...

Wiki's article on the Milwaukee Project doesn't mention it as a failure.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milwaukee_Project

6/16/09, 5:17 PM
SF said...

"Tax Evasion"...
and two counts of theft, or embezzlement. (same reference)

6/16/09, 5:46 PM
Anonymous said...

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1368&dat=19831226&id=15YWAAAAIBAJ&sjid=-BIEAAAAIBAJ&pg=7068,6069183

He was sent to jail for putting his wife on the payroll for doing nothing.

6/16/09, 6:21 PM
beowulf said...

"He was sent to jail for putting his wife on the payroll for doing nothing."

Umm, unless he and his assistant Garber were practicing polyandry, no.

"Heber put Garber's wife on a UW-Madison payroll (for no work) so Garber could be reimbursed for travel expenses."

6/16/09, 6:51 PM
Anonymous said...

This is reminiscent of the Joan Peters book "From Time Immemorial". Despite being exposed as a mixture of fraud and plagiariasm (and quite a bit of plagiarism from fraudulent sources!), it is routinely cited in discussions of the Middle East.

6/16/09, 6:58 PM
ben tillman said...

The Milwaukee Project was a small study with some 20 experimental subjects and 20 control subjects. It was not reported on by the investigators in any refereed scientific journals, yet its cost was some $14 million, mostly in federal funds.

So that's $700,000 for each "experimental" child over six years, or $117,000 per child per year -- in 1960's dollars. Since 1967, we've had inflation of about 540%, which means that in inflation-adjusted dollars the program spent $750,000 per child per annum.

Even if the results weren't fabricated, the program obviously couldn't be replicated on a large scale.

6/16/09, 10:34 PM
Big Bill said...

Tillman's comment regarding the Milwaukee Project is equally applicable to the Abecedarian project: limited sample size, massive costs show that (at best)six figures per year per dumb student lead to modest improvements.

Most of the six figure costs are spent on School of Education grad students and researchers, natch.

6/17/09, 3:46 AM
V said...

Curiously, in Arthur Jensen's The g Factor (Chapter 10), the Milwaukee project is described in entirely respectable terms. There is no mention of Heber's conviction, and not a hint of doubt in the integrity of the data he presented. (Of course, Jensen does comment on the modest results considering the exorbitant cost. In his words: "In terms of the highest peak of IQ gains... the cost was an estimated $23,000 [over $100K in today's money!] per IQ point per child.")

Jensen obviously didn't have any incentive to paint a rosy picture of this project, so I have no rational explanation for this. I can hardly believe that he hadn't heard about the affair. What makes it even more puzzling is that, according to Jensen, "the originator and first director of the project, Rick Heber, died in an airplane crash and was not involved in the production of the final report." Yet the report is cited as written in 1988, while Heber died in 1992 according to the encyclopedia cited in the Vdare article. I'm puzzled.

6/17/09, 10:44 AM
Anonymous said...

The FOIA and counterpart State laws might be overdue to use in
revealing facts of the Heber anti-
Miracle. Sketchy info suggests
a coordinated prosecution of small
easily proven charges in various
venues that Heber plead "no contest" to. No trial as such
appears to have resulted anywhere.
The story has to be extracted--not
just picked up and processed.

6/19/09, 8:41 AM
Anonymous said...

It is not ad hominem in view of the
convictions of Heber and Flanigan
and one or two others in the Project, for the Project to be
deemed temporarily suspect and
off limits for citations, etc.,
pending an objective external
inspection to see that the actual
data collection, etc. did take place and the Project was not some
Hollywood mock up. Was'nt done.

6/19/09, 8:47 AM
Anonymous said...

The various charges Heber plead
"no contest" to seem somewhat
modest and somtimes typical of
persecution-prosecution. Known facts, however, suggest the likelihood that the coordinated
investigatons--state and fed--if laid open in a trial would have caused a lot of stigma to people at UW and in D.C. that were not guility of crime--just sloven.??

6/19/09, 9:12 AM
Anonymous said...

As far as Jensen's "g" Factor book
and mention of Heber's convictions--I believe?(not certain) that in
a book length interview about 2002
by Frank Miehle, Jensen did refer to the convictions. The issue seems to be that UW / HEW etc. never had the Projet data and research conduct examined to give
assurance Heber had not fiddled with it as he had with the funds.

6/19/09, 9:25 AM
Anonymous said...

In the lush grantmanship years
of the 60's and 70's,the easiest
way probably to have filched lots
and lots of money wouldve been kickbacks vis a role as a
consultant
within the archipeligo of MR researchprojects in North America. If hopping about on your own plane could get everywhere for a little
bit,you'd be immune to prosecution

6/22/09, 12:38 PM
Anonymous said...

The Heber matter sprung into
view from a series of investigative newspaper articles in a Madison (WS) paper--maybe
Capitol Times ?? about 30 years ago But the articles are not online and no brief
summary of them (who? what? where?)
is to be found. Accounts of the
Heber scandal are virtually non
existent online. Hmmmmm.

6/22/09, 12:44 PM
Anonymous said...

As to Heber's death date and the
final report date--there is some
suggestion that Heber died in
December 1987--not in 1992. As
in so many ways, the facts of all
this are oddly sparse and very hard to pin down. I could find
no SSI Death Index for a birth date
of Jan. 12, 1932 AND any 1992 death
date. I have poor search skills.

6/23/09, 12:33 PM
Anonymous said...

As far as Jensen's "The g Factor"
not alluding to any prison time
for Heber, etc., I find this
interesting, too...but the content
of a book is tempered by the editors and their inhouse legal staff and often the prudent thing
about a non-essential fact that may arise from a cloudy context
is just to omit it. Relevant to
Jensen's book? I don't know.

6/23/09, 12:42 PM
Anonymous said...

Heber reportedly was an advisor
directly to the President of Egypt re MR and related health-education
issues. "Rick and Ann Heber" are
referred to often and with high
regard in bulletin boards dealing with the important and finishing
and breeding of fine Arbabian Horses. They had a stable
Ranchara Arabains at Merrimac
WI & later near Colo Springs.

6/28/09, 9:52 PM
Anonymous said...

Heber was convicted , along with an associate, of using increasingly elaborate schemes to misallocate research grants into their own personal accounts and to use the money for such things as purchasing golf clubs, etc. The unsuccessful defense was that they earned/deserved/ the money as payment for expert services, consultation, etc. Heber was also convicted in State court in at least one trial. He served time at federal "country club prisons" in Bastrop, Texas, near Colorado Springs, and finally in Utah. He was killed in the crash of small plane containing him and 10 other members of a tour he headed, this on August 03, 1987 just over the border of Zaire in very wild country within Rwanda. No survivors. He resided at the time in/near/ Monument , Colorado, where reportedly he continued his long involvement with the breeding and training of fine Arabian horses. Allegedly, he began getting "technical" and "Involved" with federal grants back in 1971 and just indulged, allegedly, in more and more sophisticasted schemes for misallocaing larger and larger amounts of money.

10/3/12, 9:52 PM
Anonymous said...

Heber and an associate, Patrick Flannigan, went to trial, apparently refusing to cop a plea, in an initial trial that lasted several days. Heber testified. It would be interesting to scrutinize the trial transcript to see why Heber felt he could defend against the charges. The parsimonious assumption is that Heber did really consider environmentalism as an established , vindicated truth and never detected early on the extent to which people in academia often express overtly what they privately disdain. He apears to have been a kind of con man who was enveloped by a Society that was doing a con job on itself about nature/hurture? HE spent very very little time on the Madison campus, although being a full professor for, what?, more than 15 years. IN fact, just in common sense terms, he was living in Colorado on his horse ranch (he imported, showed, and bred fine Arabian horses ) for at least a few years before his Project came under scrutiny about 1980. He appears to have been respected and trusted among horse fanciers, and the academic scandal appears not to have impacted that status. He also loved flying. The sense is that the Madison campus had long been simply a base of operations for him. He appears to have delegated almost everything to underlings willing to stay and work on campus. There were three prosecutions brought against him, at least two of them in State Court. One looks in vain online for transcripts of the trials, for the local newspaper reporting (there was almost no reporting beyond Madison ), for FOIA recovery of his grant applications, etc. etc.

1/26/13, 3:07 PM
Anonymous said...

What was Heber sent to jail for?
The trial in federal district court in Madison, WI in July 1981 resulted in Heber and an associate being convicted on all counts charged. But the monies diverted appear to have been not from the Milwaukee Project but from an attendant project to provide workshops in MR services (for school counselors, etc. ). The defense appears to have had such elements as the revelation of Heber's wealth and the lack of any motive to get in trouble for limited amounts of money (the cost of a used car, in one instance, etc) One count involved a phantom job for the wife of one of Heber's University cohort. But she pointed out that while the job did not exist, the "salary" paid was used entirely to pay for her husband's academic travels to Europe (workshops, etc.). It is astounding that the only fairly consistent news coverage given the Heber Affair was from the local
Madison Capitol Times newspaper. Apparently along about 1975 or so,
some of the funding he had consistently relied upon (and he got a helluva lot of money out of
the feds ), started "drying up"--someone was pinching the spigot.
One is left with the impression that the University (and others?)
generally succeeded in boxing up and burying the Heber story. The guy had huge power and prestige and was brilliant, if not sufficiently conscience laden. Perhaps the real story apropos America's insistence upon biologial equipotentiality is that
"You can not con an honest society but a dishonest one can be conned year after year, for about two decades!!!

4/28/13, 8:02 PM
Anonymous said...

Rick Heber was sent to (minimum security) federal prison for misuse of funds ($160k ) not directly involving the Milwaukee Project but involving workshops and short seminars offered by the Waisman Center (for research in Mental Retardation) that Heber had headed since its inception (1964 ff) at the Madison campus. Oddly,
there appears to be no record of investigation of funds used directly in the Milwaukee Project, and an estimated $14 million was spent in that Project--almost all of it from federal government grants at a time when the Freedom of Information Act would permit access to grant applicatons, approvals, IG surveys, correspondence, etc . How $14 million from the fed government to the Project flies off into the clouds without an accounting is indeed more interesting than the purported aims of the Project. The summary of the Milwaukee Project by Dr. Howard Garber was finally published in 1988, 22 years after the Project got underway and about 12 years after it ceased. In 1983 Garber told a regional newspaper that the report was finished and ready for publication. No one has revealed why five years elapsed before he could mail the manuscript to the publisher. Garber and his wife now live in Milwaukee, in deep retirment.

5/18/13, 3:54 PM
Anonymous said...

There is almost no primary source material re Heber. An official trial transcript appears never to have been compiled. The records of each day of testimony of the 09 day trial that almost certainly the University had made by its own stenographer observers of the trial appears to have been destroyed? And aside from Professor Ellis Paige of George Peabody, no academic appears ever to have used the FOIA to try to get information in a timely way.
If Heber was so evidently guilty, why in the hell did he choose to go to trial rather than cop a plea?
AS to the Garber matter---It is not unlikely that Heber did , in fact, "re-allocate" ALL ALL of the money allocated for a campus job into sending the Garbers to Sweden to conduct a seminar in MR (?) Now there was a stark candor in all this. There was no pretext of having a job. No fig leaf. No smoke screen. On University campuses in the 60's and 70's all manner of funds for campus jobs were diverted and the de facto standards were flagrantly permissible to the point of fiscal anarchy. The trial judge, however, appears to have prevented such contextual facts of life from being entered before the jury.
Look, basically you have in the Heber Affair what characterized the Burt Affair (Sir Cyril Burt of the UK)_ until until people started making a retrospective about it. In both instances, the mistake has been to "infer" motive backward from the alleged wrongdoings. When, instead, the larger biographies are looked at and then then a connection is sought between the persons as such and the alleged wrongdoing--than it might be a little hard to find a CRIMINAL motive for Heber's actions. IF he was criminally inclined (rather than being a consummate "hot to make it happen"
manipulator ) the Milwaukee Project with all its walls of security etc, would have been a far better plumb pick than the Waisman Center money dealings. About $14 million over a dozen years came into the Project. Yet, as far as I can determine, those funds were never scrutinized? Hmmm.

11/3/13, 7:31 PM
Anonymous said...

Again, the "he said, she said, they said" sources for information about Heber and his career have a way of generating more rumor than realism. Heber had a reputation as a "living legend" in how to make things happen involving money and involving federal grants to campuses. He had a knowledge of money transfers on the order of what a Miami banker might have. He was charged essentially with mis-allocation of money. HIs attorney , Stephen Glynn (yet practicing in Milwaukee ) declared in his opening statement, "We will show that value was given for value received" THAT is not theft.
As nearly as can ge gleaned Heber's intensely private (a kind
of 007 type ) life was nonetheless free of charges of wrongdoing in the domain of Arabian horses (in which he had a giant reputation ) and in other business domains. In a tape recorded interview of about two hours in May 1979, made
for Archives at the U. of WI at Mad town, Heber said the Milwaukee Project was wrapped up and the data were being pulled together, etc. It is implicit that the Report is in the offing. Yet on Dec. 31, 1983, in the Milwaukke Sentinet, reporter Susan Trebach quotes Garber, then head of the Milwaukee Project, as saying he has just completed the Report and it is publisher ready and will soon be available. Yet by the time of Heber's mysterious death in Rwanda on Dec. 03, 1987, no report had surfaced. It took nearly as long to issue the Report as it did to carry out the Project. The Project was cloaked in about five layers of "Langley like" secrecy but represented a total of about $14 million in grants over about 14 years--most of it by 1971 or so. IF IF Heber were simply a con man and thief, why would he not have milked the Project? Yet there appears to have been no investigation of the Project or Projedt Funds. This whole matter and the U. of Wisconsin evasions about it ought to be a matter of careful retrospective at the Madison campus.

11/3/13, 7:45 PM
Anonymous said...

22 Jan. 2014.
The question of just what the hell
Heber was convicted for, is yet
another specific matter that is part of the extraordinary "cloud cover" that Heber put over his activities and that the UW Madison
appears to have concurred with (??) Heber did not plead "no contest" to the basic federal case
brought against him in federal district court in Madison, WI , in
April 1981 and tried in July that
year in a nine day trial. He plead "no contest" to State charges that simply overlay the financial issues in his federal
trial---tax issues. But scholars
have NOT translated the complex financial issues of the federal trial or of the State charges into
any social ethos framework. Heber
went to a federal detention center
("Country Club prison") at Bastrop, Texas--no prison clothing issue; no iron bars, etc.
Any number of people get sent to
such "detention centers" for what
is often translated into social
judgement as trying to do something OK but doing it in the wrong way. Heber's brilliant defense attorney in his opening
statement said "We will show that my defendant gave value for value received." Heber was a very bright guy. He was sophisticated in the management of money as well as in research design, grantsmanship, etc. Heber's main academic role was as a money making consultant. He was excellent in such work. The University obviously cooperated with him in this vast archipelago of consultation contacts and the
Money, Brains, Power, Influence, skills it represented. Heber was involved in a vast network of research cooperation, etc., that
was a real orchard of quid pro quo possibilities for himself and for the University. No details seem to be known about much of any of this. For the amount of cloud cover over Heber's academic career, one would assume all this took place in the USSR--not the
USA. Heber was a hell of a risk taker, and got a lot of excitement out of pulling off great ploys. Want to find out how something can be done that others say can't be? See Rick Heber, was the legend. To know much about any aspect of his career would require massive "evacuation" of facts.

1/21/14, 9:52 PM
Anonymous said...

22 Jan. 2014
A specific example of how facts about Heber have to be excavated is demonstrated from his death in a yet mysterious place crash in Rwanda on Dec. 03/04, 1987. When one bird dogs details that appeared in the Amarillo, Texas,
and Dallas, Texas , newspapers,
then one can reasonably extrapolate that what was overtly seen as a "safari" or "photo safari" was, in fact, a field research trip and Heber was not merely the "tour guide" but was an academic consultant to the whole matter. It involved an
evolutionary psychology approach to human locomotion--toward enhanced understanding of neo-natal, infant, and early childhood behavioral disorders in locomotion. OK, the bevy of health science professional from
the Amarillo area were centered around Associate Professor of pediatrics at the Amarillo Health Sciences Center of Texas Tech University--one Dr. Mary A. Slater, M.D. Slater had been a student under Heber and then an assistant to him at Madison from
1972 up through Heber's resignations, and then, herself, on up to about 1984 when she gravitated to Amarillo. Heber was doing , then, in Nov./Dec 1987
what he had been doing probably since 1963?---making money by giving damn good insight to academic ventures in return for ample fees. The plane carried
12 Americans--one of them a hitchhiker to the trip--and a poorly trained Kenyan pilot. There was an onboard explosion of some sort (mechanical? more lurid?) according to witnesses on the ground (at take off). The plane never really got into flight trajectory. It is most likely that Heber took over the plane? It verred in and out of control for about 16 minutes. He had in moving in a large circle, more or less, and had the most frightened of the passengers pushed up to the open windows of the twin prop plane where their screams alerted the indigenous very rural population on the ground. He also had the passengers throw out of the plance at intervals, items of clothing and some items of personal identification wrapped in clothing. Passengers were waving their arms and yelling, etc. Everyone on the ground was attentive to the situations. The engines apparently could not be
slowed down. Heber (?) finally
skimmed tree tops to slow it down and then crash landed it into a tree trop for at least several seconds before the running engine dislodged the place and slammed it into a mountainside in a ball of flame that incinerated all of the people beyond eyeball recognition. As far as I can find out thus far, no one knows what happened to the plane. The Amarillo paper gives details about the efforts of the relatives of the victims to find out about the incident and to see
about the return of the bodies. They got so many varied stories that only protests from members of the Texas congressional delegation got any degree of clarity from the State Department (?). Heber and his wife refused to register to vote for reluctance to make public the amount of personal information that voter registration involved. He would not allow himself to be photographed. When he was Directing the JFK Panel on Mental Retardation, he would not agree to be interviewed for archival purposes. The only interview he
ever gave, to my awareness, is one on May 14, 1979 at Madison to
a University archival project--this as something he was expected to provide. It is quixotic to complain about the Milwaukee Project lacking transparency under Heber's direction . The question is why was a Howard Hughes type person like Heber ever put in charge of the Project
(as distinct maybe to advising it)
??????

1/21/14, 10:10 PM
Anonymous said...

22 Jan. 2014
The concealments and "cloud cover" over about everything Heber did seems to be illustrated by what an reasonably be extrapolated regarding his death.
He died in a yet mysterious small plane crash in Rwanda in early
December 1987. On the surface it
was a "safari" that had been tour guided by one "Franz Heber" of Monument , Colorado. One and the same. The safari was almost certainly a field research trip for work on the evolution of human locomotion that his former student and assistant at Madison
was then into as herself an Associate Professor Pediatrics with a focus in neo natal and early childhood disabilities--one Dr. Mary A. Slater, PhD. M.D., then at the Texas Tech Health Sciences Center in Amarillo. Now, if they were photographing mountain gorillas in this context, it would have been a gaping omission not to have photographed the indigenous population , also. A very very
sensitive issue. But no under the guidance of someone as brainy and ballsy as Heber. The plane had an onboard explosion of some sort soon after take off from Goma, Zaire, as it entered Rwandan air space--just as it entered Rwandan air space. Most likely Heber, reportedly an accomplished pilot,
took over the almost out of control plane and moved it in a wide circular path as he tried to
get better control. The engines could not be slowed, it seems. He had passengers pushed to the open windows, where some of them were screaming. He had items of clothing thrown out and sometimes with items of personal identification in the clothing. The rural indigenous population knew from the outside that something was wrong and that it would be interesting to "stay tuned". It is likely he started skimming tree tops to slow down the plane and then attempted a crash landing into a tree top. Some of the passengers were alive
at that point. ONe woman had her legs out of the plane onto a tree limb but could not extract herself from her safety belts. The engines caused the plane to dislodge from the tree top and slam into the mountain side into a ball of flame that incinerated everyone of the 12 Americans and the single poorly trained Kenyan pilot. The Amarillo newspaper (nine of the victims were from
that community ) carries interesting information about the weird reports given the next of kin from Rwanda as to return of the bodies. It is likely Heber,
mentioned as a "tour guide" was
in fact the academic consultant to Slater's work. If so this is the sort of consultation that he
had done since probably 1963 or so, from the UW Madison campus
base of operations. When a persona like Heber leads a Howard Hughes life of concealment, he is not suitable as the Project Director of a $14 million research Project like the Milwaukee Project. It is quixotic to focus upon the cloud cover that enveloped the Milwaukee Project when the real issue is why in the hell the University had Heber direct it (as distinct from avising it )??

1/21/14, 10:31 PM
Anonymous said...

It is not unlikely that the "photo safari" to video mountain gorillas--an interesting tourist event--was a "cover" for Slater, Heber, and others videotaping the foot flexion and odd racially selective ankle movement of the Tsa tribe of pygmies who in 1987 (but not for much longer ) were yet living in the forested areas also inhabited by mountain gorillas. It was in the local/regional/ inquiries made by the Amarillo paper and some of the regional TV outlets, that Slater's interest in the evolution and development of human locomotion was made mention of. As noted, she had worked under Heber's tutelage and protection and leadership since the mid 1970's and by the time he came under investigation on the Madison campus, she was a leading assistant director at the Waisman Center---a right hand assistant to Heber (who was gone from campus so much he was known as "the Howard Hughes of academia")

It is a not unreasonable investigative hypothesis that Heber from about 1955 or so was associated with the American national security apparatus--quite possibly with the CIA and that in the wake of the publication of THE TESTING OF NEGRO INTELLIGENCE by Audrey Shuey (deeply aided by Prof. Henry Garret ) in 1958, the genesis of the Milwaukee Project began as a "lightning rod" to defuse and deflect the insights/
leads of inquiry/ that her work presented and that was vastly advanced by Hans Eysenck and especially by Eysenck's star student and collaborator, Prof. Arthur R. Jensen. It is silly to complain about the cloud cover and shadows over the Milwaukee Project when all aspects of Heber's involvements are similarly "Howard Hughes" obscure--e.g., his role in the operant conditioning and diagnostic "reworking" of Rose Mary Kennedy; his role in getting tens of millions of dollars of federal grant money into his "empire" on the Madison campus, this during the 21 years of his employment there; his ability to serve little more than 24 months in custody when newspaper reports locally specified by 1982 that he had been sentenced to a total (federal and state offenses ) of
seven years; the fact that by 1974 or so, he was for all practical purposes a resident of Monument, Colorado, spending little time at his former home in
the Wisconsin River Valley---Ranchara Arabians, RR 1, Merrimac, WI. ONe of the Wikileak documents specified that Kissinger had personally attempted to facilitate funds transfers aiding Heber's travels into Tripoli, etc etc. He traveled in and out of Kenya for years for reasons no one on the Madison campus could fathom.

7/16/14, 9:42 PM
Anonymous said...

By the time of the 1986 and 1987
"photo safaris" out of Amarillo/
Texas Tech. U., would have presented research attractions far beyond ankle/foot flexion. The Twa pygmies have been estimated by Richard Lynn's work to have an overall IQ range among the lowest among evolved human groups. The Milwaukee Project focus of Heber and Slater would have scoped within the Twa pygmies far beyond mere ankle/foot flexion. But thus far no evidence of any covert research focus has surfaced.

8/24/14, 9:10 PM
Anonymous said...

The failure of the academic
community to look into Heber's
life is regrettable. He was
so fanatically devoted to secrecy that from 1960 or so he and his wife refused to register to vote because of not wanting to make public the meager information required to register. He used many variants of his name, and apparently had his name altered by a probate process sometime between 1953 and 1955. He would never allow himself to be photographed. He was gone a huge amount of time from the Madison campus & in fact known, as noted, as "the Howard Hughes of Academe".
In the "chain of command" at UW
Madison, he seems never to have been held accountable. There was a firm "no comment" policy re anything about him. He seems to have been de facto employed lavishly (two positions/ two salaries ) for the amount of grant money he brought in, the favorable publicity he generated,
the very brilliant work he could do and sometimes did do, his many quid pro quo arrangements benefiting the University. Much
of his conduct and his overall high ability are consistent with the possibility of his having been mainly an asset or agent of some portion of the US national security network, rather incidentally connected to the UW Madison that was, mostly, a kind of base of operations. The Milwaukee Project, if viewed as a national security contrivance, was a brilliant success in deflecting regard to Arthur Jensen's work for perhaps as long as 25 years from the 1971 glitzy
report by Strickland about "the Miracle in Milwaukee"---a report later revealed Heber solicited him to do. To understand the Milwaukee Project, it is necessary to have some sense of
Heber's motivation. When that is attempted, it becomes difficult to imagine that he wished to fake anything re Project results. And it becomes hard to imagine the UW Madison ever having much control over him up to sometime in early 1979 or so. How it is possible for someone with so much invisibility and lack of overt
accountability to fly high in academe for 21 years is like something from outer space.

9/14/14, 10:49 PM
Anonymous said...

It is amazing that the UW Madison has allowed almost no information about Heber to get into its Archives. One item that legally had to remain there because it was directed at Heber as a part of his contractual obligations was a two hour archival interview he gave in the spring of 1979. But otherwise, he would never allow himself to be interviewed. Other than this, there are no
expurgated contents of the massive investigations, no redacted copies of the observations University officials made on hand each day of the nine day trial; no newspaper articles exposing Heber before the indictment in April 1981; etc.

9/14/14, 10:56 PM
Anonymous said...

A retrospective on Rick Heber and his(?) Milwaukee Project likely would excavate very interesting facts. Several best guess efforts to know what was going on
are probably in need of updating/revision.
(1) The Heber scandal involved the $160k he misallocated and did not account for. The scandal was that the charges were just a few prosecutorial juicy items from a huge mass of investigation reaching back more than ten years.
(2) The Heber scandal had to do with the Milwaukee Project. The Funds at issue in the prosecution were not directly related to the Project.
(3) Heber never returned to academic life after he went to prison. In fact, he was paroled sometime in 1985 (early release) in order to accept a position as a research director at a university in either Norway or Sweden and the position involved lots of travel, including travel into Africa It involved (field?) research into mental retardation caused by severe environmental deprivations.
(4) The fatal plane crash on "photo safari" (? ) quite possibly involved at a deeper level video footage for research
about mental aspects of the indigenous population and not merely photos of mountain gorillas.
(5) Heber had many firm aversions along lines of never permitting himself to be photographed, using many variants of his own name, etc. etc.

The Milwaukee Project , in context, sometimes takes on a Langley smell????

9/22/14, 5:20 PM
Anonymous said...

So little actual excavation of facts about Heber has ever taken place that previous honest efforts are not proving in error.
For example, Arthur Jensen's brilliant and well researched review of Heber's Milwaukee Project (going to press about
November 1988) mentions that after Heber's conviction and prison time, Heber did not return to academe. Well, part of the problem is Heber's penchant for
"Agent 007" standards of privacy.
Heber had about six variants of his name, and his Canadian birth name was apparently not the same as what remained for him after he got US citizenship. At any rate,
Heber got early parole in the summer of 1985 in order to take a research director position within an Institute in a university in Norway (or Sweden).
This position involved extensive travels, including travels into Africa. This makes it more likely, not less likely, that the
"photo safaris" of 1986 and the tragic one of 1987 may have also
involved--or centrally involved--
video taping the indigenous human population of the forests--not merely the mountain gorillas. His former UW Madison reaseach associate, Mary A. Slater, was the key person forming the "photo safaris" out of Texas Tech U. Hospital at Amarillo. Academics appear never to have had the time to take from their research in order to excavate facts about Heber.

9/23/14, 1:27 PM
Anonymous said...

On or about October 12, 1985, Rick
"Franz" Heber was released early
from parole on his convictions of misallocations of money at the U.
of Wisconsin at Madison (July 1981) in order to assume a position as Research Director at
an Institute within the University of Gothenburg in Sweden
for international research (and much travel) within the domain of
environmental causative factors for mental retardation. The position explicitly required a lot of (unspecified) travel into
Africa. It is not an unreasonable question whether the
"photo safari" trips out of TTU
in Amarillo (Health Sciences Research Center ) in 1986 and the fatal one in 1987 may have been
covers for compilation of video footage to study and chart child
developmental stages / and errant
developments/ among the pygmy tribes inhabiting the forests.??
If such research , if it did take place, were anchored to Gothenburg, this might permit no
research approval to be required in Texas???

9/23/14, 9:58 PM
Anonymous said...

The CONGRESSIONAL RECORD--US SENATE for Dec. 11, 1987, on page 35285-86 contains a eulogy re Mary Alice Slater of Texas Tech U. Health Sciences Center, who had perished in the plane crash along with her mentor, Rick Franz Heber, and several of her colleagues, on Dec. 03, 1987.This appears to affirm that the so-called "photo safaris" were, in fact, research excursions doubtless focused upon human behaviors and most likely upon behaviors relevant to mental limitations.

12/18/14, 5:30 PM
Anonymous said...

Re Rick Heber's chief assistant and co-researcher, Mary Slater:
At the time of the yet mysterious plane wreck killing her , Heber (a/k/a Franz R. Heber) and several persons from the Texas panhandle linked to research and video compilations for research---Slater had four academic articles almost ready for submission. Her immediate supervisor declared that each of them would be finished up and submitted. Yet there is little indication they were published. If they pertained to human research attendant to the 1986 and the fata 1987 "photo safaris", then their absence is but another aspect to the bizarre gaps and shadows characterizing Heber and his associates. Heber was reported in expose news articles in Wisconsin in 1981 to have been whispered on the Madison campus to be "the Howard Hughes of Academe". For over three decades now, the academic community has perceived prudence to be the better part of valor as far as exploring the contexts and shadows surrounding Heber and his ("his"?) research. It far more likely some heavy drinking deep thinking member of the Literature Department at some Wisconsin community college would explore all this than it is that anyone in behavioral science at Madison would be gland able to do so.

1/2/15, 4:00 PM
Anonymous said...

One indication of how little is actually known re Heber's relevant career acts and omissions involves the investigations of his suspected violations of law re management of funds. His attorney right after the April 1981 indictment on 13 counts, sought access to the investigative files and mentioned in an affidavit filed into the Case how much material existed in the federal prosecutor's office. It is quite possible that some federal investigation or "review" was made of some of the funds coming into the Milwaukee Project. What is known is that none of the 13 pin point indictments involved Milwaukee Project monies. The FBI questioned Heber's co-defendant Pat Flanigan but the Summary of that questioning can not now be found in the Case file records. The questioning was mainly about Heber--not Flanigan.
The vast box full of investigative reports, files, etc. that Heber's attorney witnessed revealed the investigations to have reached back 11 years or so. The Court case was made of just a few items that seemed juicer for successful prosecution--not for much at all of the overall findings.

1/20/15, 4:17 PM
Anonymous said...

It is true that one can not assume easily that the Milwaukee Project funds were not investigated (up to a point). The FBI had an agent "Lewis" questioning Patrick Flanigan (co defendant in the prosecution of Heber ). But the FBI seemed so oddly "squeamish" about investigations surrounding Heber that the questioning was turned over the University security (police) department and summarized by them. Then it was handed back to the feds for prosecution. (Dizzy?) But the question looms whether Heber's financial manipulations were mainly a means of getting money where he wanted it to go in order to carry forth research, travel re research, etc. The gratuitous assumption has been rampant for 35 years that Heber was stealing the money he was juggling. Maybe some of it. But it is not clear whether he was guilty of using means that were out of bounds to attain OK ends--or whether he was completely on the take. The better guess is he was just juggling to get stuff done. ??
The Gonad Quotient on campus was never high enough to make an intellectual exercise out of such
discovery.

1/25/15, 5:52 PM
Anonymous said...

As far as Heber's possible interest in the estimation by neighboring indigenous tribes that the Central African pygmies were collectively mentally retarded---Heber had a manifest interest as early as the mid 60's in anthropological studies of how mental retardation was viewed and dealt with in underdeveloped societies. Several Heber associates have commented over the years about cryptic trips he took in and out of Kenya (a travel hub for viewing the pygmy population of Zaire/Rwanda ). Of course, he took all manner of cryptic trips. Little was ever known about the where and what of his travels and efforts.

He had a keen interest in the use of behavior modification to help mildly (cultural familial ) mentally retarded people eliminate intrusive behaviors that caused them to be viewed as MR. By careful behavior modification such people can be able to "pass" for normal. If he was into appraising the Central African pygmy population (for the CIA?), that behavior technology would have been basic. Heber would have been the person of choice for any such covert operation. Doesn't prove it happened. And in the absence of evidence, it remains a quiet question--not a "conspiracy theory" notion. No one in academe in the 60's and 70's had as much power, influence and led such a covert existence as Heber was permitted to. (By whom??)

1/25/15, 6:01 PM
Anonymous said...

Psychological studies of the Central Africa Pygmies had been made by a few Western psychologists reaching back to the late 60's. But they relied upon extensive mere visual observation and notebook entries.
By the 1986 initial "photo safari"
of mountain gorillas/chimps (read:
covert studies of the Batwa pygmies ) camcorder technology had vastly moved forward the potential for such study. Almost certainly Heber and his long time associate and former student, Mary Slater, were using such then cutting edge technology. ?
The video footage would have likely been legally defined as part of human research out of U. of Gothenburg in Sweden; the photos of the mountain gorillas and chimps, as linked to the campus of TTU-HSC in Amarillo?
27 years of cloud cover makes it yet difficult to know.

1/27/15, 3:40 PM
Anonymous said...

It is noted that in a eulogy just a few days after her death and that of her very close former Director and mentor, Rick/Franz
Heber--see Congressional Record--Senate pp. 32585 for Dec. 11, 1987--her immediate supervisor at Texas Tech University's Health Sciences Center (in Amarillo), noted she had four research papers each practically finished and ready for submission for publication. He declared that each of these would be finished out and submitted as a tribute to her....but they appear not to have ever been published. Well, the 1986 book edited by Cavalli Sforza, AFRICAN PYGMIES, contains a very short preface by him in which he notes that a similar book about the pygmies is soon to be issued based upon psychological research, whereas the one for which he is entering a preface is based on physical anthropology and a bit of social anthropology. Well, no one appears to know what happened to this "soon to be issued book".
Presumably these publishing "abortions" are coincidental matters...but they do serve to suggest how much mist and cloud cover surrounding psychological work with the pygmies.

2/3/15, 9:57 PM
Anonymous said...

The companion volume to Cavalli-Sforza was published (Prof. John W. Berry et al) in 1986 as is entitled ON THE EDGE OF THE FOREST--ADAPTATION AND COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT IN CENTRAL AFRICA. But up to this point, at least, Berry and H.A. Witkin and others linked to them, had not inclined to a direct measure of non-verbal IQ/ or even--as far as is known--to adaptive behavior measures. ??

2/5/15, 8:41 PM
Anonymous said...

Regard is given above to the information in the CONGRESSIONAL RECORD--SENATE Dec. 11, 1987, pg. 35285 re the fact that what was reported in wire services about the tragic plane wreck of Dec. 03, 1987 being a "photo safari" omitted what is here
set forth---that the salient aspect of the excursion was research on human subjects. But it is important to note that in the federal criminal case that caused Heber to be sentenced in Madison, Wisconsin, on October 30, 1981, to prison, there was filed into the record of that case important later information. In a hearing on September 30, 1985, for early release of Heber from parole, his counsel filed into the Case a single page letter over a letterhead of the University of Gothenburg in Sweden that Heber had an offer at that time to be a Research Director at that University for an international program in research on mental retardation. The single page letter over the signature of the person that was characterized as "Professor Gunnar Hedlund" noted that this position would involve travel in both
Africa and Europe. Research involving human subjects is not supposed to be totally
covert. The moreso for thiry years downstream. Neither Texas Tech University nor
the University of Gothenburg seem disposed to shed any degree of light on this murky matter. ???

6/2/15, 5:09 PM
Anonymous said...

The documentation of the fatal 1987 "photo safari" being saliently a research
excursion by two academics (Heber and Slater) long focused on the environmental
influences (cultural familial) on human mental retardation is given above re the
citation from the Congressional Record... The documentation re Heber's role in
international research into such mental retardation linked to the University of Gothenburg is a one page letter to him bearing letterhead of that University and
dated March 01, 1985, over the signature of famous Swedish politico and intellectual (and Arabian horse fancier ), Gunnar Hedlund. This letter was entered into Exhibit in the criminal case that put Heber into prison for two years..Case No. 00-CR-20 from the W. District of Wisconsin. It is extraordinarily
odd how little was known in American academe re Heber's post prison academic activity. It is doubly odd that research re human beings by him/ Slater/ could
remain covert (and yet so) for 28 years or more. That two universities in the Western world had links to Heber after his prison time and that no information at all has been made public about any aspect of his research during that time, is
worth of the USSR, perhaps, but a bit weird here.

6/3/15, 8:11 PM
Anonymous said...

In 1969 I worked as a clerk with Profs. Heber and Flanigan and Howard Garber at UW. Always wondered about Heber. He was a mystery but now not quite as much. Thanks.

2/1/16, 8:17 PM
Anonymous said...

"a mystery" I am particularly interested in how much time he seemed to be gone from campus. It got to the point in the 70's that he seemed to be off campus (wherever) about 85% of the time. He spent a few months in sabbatical in 1965 or so
at a Swedish university, I've heard (?) Also, into the 70's at least, he seems to have taken trips into and out of Kenya a lot, but no one could figure out what that was about. He seemed to have a lot of links to Sweden. I don't know just what that might have been all about.

3/3/16, 12:06 AM
Anonymous said...

"a mystery" It is really astounding how ingeniously manipulative Heber was. Cutting through deceptive appearances and getting into the hard base if facts is a big time problem in anything linked to Heber. What would seem in most social contexts as "morbid suspiciousness" becomes in matters linked to Heber simply elementally basic realism. What would seem in most social contexts as plausible and likely and consensually supported very, very often becomes in matters linked to Heber skillful fool making. A guy showed me over coffee one page of an intake
summary about Heber that was done at a Texas minimum security prison after he arrived. Even conscientious prison workers would find that a plausible report was so flawed as to be more misleading than revealing. No one seemed to know of his several months in 1953-54 in Canada working in a provincial institute for the care of the mentally retarded. In many reports there is no awareness that he was married first in 1953 and had four children by a woman that many people at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who knew Heber had never heard of ! Heber split from her in stages from about 1959 through mid 1962. It is reported that Heber was sent to prison for mishandling about $165,000. It is more truthful to say that he was massively investigated for suspected--indeed presumed mishandling of a far far
greater amount of money over a period of perhaps 15 years or more. He was prosecuted only on certain mishandling that seemed especially vulnerable to successful prosecution. It is asserted in a BoP brief summary that he had no suspected history of drug use. In fact, there was firm investigative reason to presume had been involved with cocaine. It is almost a kind of psychopath legend how hugely variant the underlying facts are with formal reports about Heber and skillful misrepresentations Heber made. It is formally reported during his prison time and after his prison time that he was involved as a contract/sales/ person with a medical office décor firm. In reality, it seems he was the one who conceived of creating the firm and covertly dominated its functioning. There is a several page report--an "official report" allegedly of the mysterious plane crash in which he and 13 other people were killed in Rwanda on Dec. 03, 1987. But it appears that it was not based on a thorough attempt to interview a lot of people on the ground that actually witnessed the damaged plane trying to stay in the air over a period of several minutes. It is astounding how little is reliably known about Heber's acts and omissions. The clear sense is that at UW Madison up to maybe about 1978 or so---he was given pretty much carte blanche liberties in reciprocity for the amazing amounts of grant money he brought in, the international prestige he had created, and the genuinely brilliant research he had designed and overseen. He was not held to standards other faculty / and administrators / were as far as reporting outside income and accounting for massive absences from campus.

3/5/16, 4:46 PM
Anonymous said...

A Dean who bore formal responsibility for overseeing Heber was noted during the time 1980-1982 that the Heber scandal broke---as having been a university administrator who seemed always interested in any information anyone had about Heber or in any questions anyone might have. But observant people noticed over the years that this UW Madison administrator was never a source of any useful information about Heber. It' a bit like being all ears and eyes to flypaper awareness of information but all "wink and smile" about doing anything regarding it.

Presumably any high official in Wisconsin curious about all this could have been briefed confidentially for a few minutes behind closed doors and then would have been "assured" about it all. ?????

3/5/16, 4:54 PM
Anonymous said...

Documents released by the DoJ Bureau of Prisons (Heber was a federal--mostly coat and tie--prisoner for 25 months ) regarding Heber reveal how puzzled federal officials were as to Heber' underlying Motive may have been. He was prosecuted only on a few pin-point charges , as noted here, concerning juggling federal monies that had been aimed at workshops and seminars for those already working within the field of Mental Retardation services. The total was $165,000--juggled in rather small amounts over several years. But at the trial of a Heber aide, Dr. Howard Garber (who was exonerated by the trial judge ), the trial judge noted that the amount of money revealed in various investigations that Heber "moved" was a vast amount--the total of which would probably never been tallied up. His "movement" of monies went back to at least the mid 60's. HOWEVER, it is not clear that much of this money ever made it into Heber's own activities. There are various ways to make informed investigative hypotheses re what may have happened. One very fact-relevant hypothesis is that Heber may have been moving monies not into his own use but into covert national security research re IQ / nature/ nurture/ in Central Africa or elsewhere. He was convicted on the pin point charges because it was shown he moved the money and knew it was legally dubious, at best. But the overall amount of monies juggled continually over a vast period of time is far, far in excess of the mere $165k. Heber had generated a very good income for himself quite legitimately via private high fee consultation that seemed to give very good value for the value received (fees). He also did well in the world of Arabian horse fanciers. He seemed to be trusted and respected in both of these domains. It is very unclear what Motive would account for the vast amount (beyond the mere $165k).
Very little is known in detail re Heber. As noted, he was known as "the Howard Hughes of Academe". Of course Hughes played around with his own money. A lot of the money juggled by Heber came from taxpayers. A very vital distinction.

Too, the feds seemed not to wish to investigate Heber but seemed content to let Wisconsin state authorities (mainly the UW Madison campus security unit ) carry out extensive investigations reaching far back and far beyond the limited counts upon which he was prosecuted.

4/5/16, 6:12 PM
Anonymous said...

The letter under IDRERI University of Gothenburg letterhead and over the signature
of semi-retired Swedish politico Gunnar Hedlund (dated March 01, 1985) was put into
exhibit in the hearing held in Heber's federal case on September 30, 1985, to release him half way through parole. The letter offered him the position of Research Director of IDRERI functioning within the U. of Gothenburg in Sweden.
The letter notes that IFERI was funded then by corporate donations and mentions
explicitly the "Volvo Corporation" (international headquarters in Gothenburg) was
an important donor. Given that Heber was sent to prison for 25 months as an outcome of the July 1981 trial in federal court in Madison, Wisconsin, it might be
useful for the Volvo Corporation to try to bring light on just why it got linked
to "the Howard Hughes of Academe" after he somehow was resurrected (word?) after
25 months of prison and 18 months or parole to go to Sweden and start the academic
mystery life that caused him to be compared to Howard Hughes during most of the 21 years he was at UW Madison--i.e., no one knew much about where he was or what he was doing. The spectre that he may have been doing covert research as part of the tragic trip ending in a small plane crash and his death (and that of 13 others) on
Dec. 03, 1987, in Rwanda should be enough of a stimulus for Volvo to shine high beam headlight on just what he was into with IDRERI from October 1985 onward.
As far as I know, Heber never owned either a Volvo or a VW.

4/5/16, 6:20 PM
Anonymous said...

It is a dainty fact of life that from the three-part Wisconsin investigations of Heber (mostly by the UW Madison campus security) there were used to prosecute him
(in federal court !), no redacted portions of any of what was done (all at taxpayer expense) has ever been made publicly accessible. The University had close and redundant observation and note taking at every portion of the nine day federal trail in July 1981 that sent Heber and his co-defendant, Patrick J. Flanigan, to federal prison (if mostly "country club" confinement ). Yet no portion of the record compiled by the University is known to have ever been made publicly accessible. The feds seemed to be squeamish in getting involved in investigating Heber, notwithstanding that it was a federal case tried in federal court.

It all represents over 40 ears a big big Memory Hole--the moreso that taxpayers have paid for the whole drama.

4/5/16, 6:26 PM
Anonymous said...

IF IF Heber were "moving money" from federal grants into covert national security/
intelligence operations in Central Africa, the known details regarding his presumed offenses would be about what is thus far known. It seems in his dealings re Arabian horses, real estate, etc., he was a stickler for doing what he said he would do and expecting those he was dealing with to likewise perform on their commitments to him. There is scant indication that moneyed people involved with Arabian horses ever took very seriously the "difficulties" he got into at the U. of Wisconsin. And those at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden offering him a Research Director position in 1985 certainly did not seem concerned at all about Heber's "difficulties" at the U. of Wisconsin, Madison, or his 25 months in federal "country club" prison.

5/9/16, 11:35 PM
Anonymous said...

This strand began with a question of what HEber was sent to jail for. While
the temptation is to note the 12 felony counts and the one conspiracy count from
his federal trial in July 1981 in Madison ( W. District of Wisconsin), the question is basically one of MOTIVE. During his 25 months in federal "white collar" prison
(actually about 20 months in "white collar" prison and about 90 days in a transition into parole and about 18 months in parole--he was released half way through parole, as noted above ) Bureau of Prison commentaries make clear that Motive was always a question. Of the approximately $165K he was charged with mishandling, by his BoP period estimation, only about $65k ever really came into his hands. In terms of his income, his assets, etc., there appears to be no convincing surface MOTIVE for his actions. This serves to suggest the hypothesis that the juggling of federal monies was all along possibly part of a covert national security research effort in Central Africa ??

5/25/16, 9:39 PM
Anonymous said...

In the years leading up to the indictment in April 1981, a person who likely knew as much as anyone about Heber's professional acts and omissions was his very close associate, Mary Alice Slater, herself a graduate student under his tutelage from about 1972 until her completion of an M.A. in 1974 and a PhD in 1980. She was his administrative assistant, but essentially was entrusted as his on site contact at the U. of Wisconsin Waisman Center while he was traveling all over North America and into Sweden and other European centers and into Egypt and Tunisia--with frequent cryptic flights into and from Kenya. She always maintained he was not guilty of theft or any felonious conduct but had been "set up". There simply was never any convincing Motive found for the notion that he deliberately stole money for his own use.

5/25/16, 9:45 PM

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