As Monday morning spam goes, this one's pretty interesting. I reproduce it here, unaltered (except for some formatting):
Hello,I've been an ACS employee for many, many years, but I've
grown concerned with the direction of the organization. I'm sending
this email to alert you that ACS has grown increasingly corporate in
its structure and focus. Management is much more concerned with getting
bonuses and growing their salaries rather than doing what is best for
membership. For instance, Madeleine Jacobs is now pulling in almost
$1 million in salary and bonuses... That's almost 3X what Alan Leshner makes
over at AAAS, and almost double what Drew Gilpin Faust makes to lead Harvard.I think Madeleine is smart, but I'm not quite sure if she's in the same
category as Dr. Faust. She doesn't even have a PhD!What really concerns me is a move by ACS management to undermine the open-access
movement. Rudy Baum has been leading the fight with several humorous
editorials -- one in which he referred to open-access in the pages of
C&EN as "socialized science." ACS has also spent hundreds of
thousands of dollars in membership money to hire a company to lobby against
open-access.What troubles me the most is when ACS management decided to
hire Dezenhall Resources to fight open-access. Nature got hold of some
internal ACS emails written by Brian Crawford that discussed how Dezenhall could
help us undermine open-access. Dezenhall later created a group called
Partnership for Research Integrity in Science and Medicine (PRISM),
which has this silly argument that open-access means "no more peer-review."If you're wondering why ACS is fighting this, it's because people like Rudy Baum,
Brian Crawford and other ACS managers receive bonuses based on how much
money the publishing division generates. Hurt the publishing revenue;
you hurt their bonuses.I'm hoping that sending out this email will get people to force ACS
executives to become more transparent in how they act and spend
membership money. Not to mention their crazy need for fatter salaries.It's time for some change. If you want to check out the
sources for this information, there is a wiki site that has all the
articles and documents outlining what I've just written..You can find it here:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=American_Chemical_Society
Those of us inside ACS know that it's time for things to change. But
management won't alter their behavior. The money is just too good.Sincerely,
ACS Insider
I'd be fascinated to hear from anyone else who has received similar, and whether they know if the person in the 'To:' field is actually the author?
