The Finnish Government (valtioneuvosto) has promoted Valkee’s chairman, Ex-CEO and investor Timo Ahopelto to the board of the tax-funded TEKES agency. The man who has wasted millions in this scam. The person who was in charge when a fake publication by Valkee lured TEKES into throwing more millions on the company.
This is the most bizarre and absurd political move possible – at a time when Valkee’s fast demise became apparent. Ahopelto is now responsible for TEKES spending policy, he decides about projects greater than 3 M Euros.
Now a few words in private. No, I don’t expect Valkee to get another 3 M€ from TEKES. But I expect that they went finally too far with this.
The policy makers could hardly say it more directly: Fuck the public opinion. Fuck science. Fuck ethics. Here is money to be spent.
Simply incredible.
You can find more here:
https://twitter.com/timomj/status/496660309063782401
As a management professional, I’m a bit scared by this campaign. When I hop on to the CEO role of some company which technology is based on university professors’ research, I trust the research has been peer reviewed since it’s been published in well known journals. I.e. I trust the experts’ opinion. I typically have little understanding of the given field and definitely not enough to criticize the studies. Hence, if the research foundation of the product is revealed to be invalid, how the hell am I responsible for it and should sacrifice my whole future because of it?
You’re absolutely right: If it would be like you described it, then this would be a scary campaign.
But it isn’t. You can easily check, that there was no peer-reviewed science when Ahopelto hopped on board. If you look closer, you’ll see that until today, still all peer-reviewed articles on Valkee’s device/method are negative, with the 1st such publication stemming from November 2013. Actually, there wasn’t even any science pointing to an effect when Ahopelto became CEO. But he claimed:
Still, no such studies exist. Throughout his CEO time at Valkee, Ahopelto spoke about great scientific findings – though he knew better (I am accused of being biased when I say Ahopelto has lied). He maybe wished it had been so.
In fact, a responsibly acting person could have simply asked an independent expert. Any person. Maybe even asked you, because you know that expert peer-review is needed. Everybody outside of Valkee would have told already back then, that it’s not trustworthy what Valkee does.
Interestingly, Valkee and Ahopelto are still defended by industry – management – start-up persons, who probably simply think: Of course, there must have been some confirmation before Ahopelto invested himself and the money. But it wasn’t.
A deliberate scam from the beginning. Some are still denying this insight only because they do not expect one of them to lie, and to have acted, as Ahopelto does. Look at the facts, think logically, listen to the independent experts. Don’t be scared of the idea that what happened really happened. It did.