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Paul Kearney Update

10/1/2015

5 Comments

 
​It has been about a month since the last update so I thought I would add some coals to the fire to see if I can’t keep it burning. Although I have received many private emails from concerned faculty with regards to this posting, disappointingly few have ventured to comment on this site. The general fear is that of retribution should they be identified.  I think that fear is somewhat justified, but I am still disappointed in that it seems to fly in the face of what I always felt academia and especially academia in America stood for. That being open forums of education, conversation and even dissents, without fear of retaliation.  This is clearly not the case at the University of Kentucky, and especially in the College of Medicine. So simply in summary we have:
 
a.    Dr. Kearney’s expulsion from the College and Hospital as dictated by a committee assembled by the EVPHA Michael Karpf and his Chief Medical Officer Bernard Boulanger.
 
b.    In a clearly orchestrated and predefined meeting, a three-person panel of Board of Trustees members upheld these sanctions:  http://www.kentucky.com/2015/07/31/3968493/hearing-updates-uk-doctor-fights.html
 

c.    In a subsequent Board of Trustees Health Care Committee meeting (of which Michael Karpf and Bernard Boulanger are non voting Ex Officio members) the committee voted to uphold the revoking of Dr. Kearney’s patient privileges but restored all of Dr. Kearney’s tenured faculty member privileges.  http://www.kentucky.com/2015/07/30/3967360/university-of-kentucky-trustees.html
 
d.    Then in complete defiance with the Board of Trustees edicts, President Capilouto supposedly convened a separate committee that decided that Dr. Kearney may not talk to medical students or residents, attend any public lectures or go to any clinical areas of the university. His office was moved out of Chandler Hospital and his salary is under review. Furthermore, he was told that if he wishes to consult or work outside of UK, he would have to get approval from the medical school dean. http://www.kentucky.com/2015/09/02/4016773/university-of-kentucky-takes-further.html


e.    Just in, for those not receiving Davy Jones email to the University Senate and other faculty, I paste it in here below. This just typifies the arrogance and complete lack of respect the current University President, his Legal Council and the Hospital administration have for the Board of Trustee, the University Faculty and the employees of this University. It is appalling and needs to change. I think the media and general public need to hear this and perhaps it is time to bring in an AAUP (American Association of University Professors) representative and hear what they have to offer with respect to unionization of our faculty.

From: Jones, Davy
Sent: Thursday, October 08, 2015 8:22 PM
To: Bailey, Ernest; Brown, Roger M; Hippisley, Andrew R; Kraemer, Philipp; Mazur, Joan; McCormick, Katherine; Porter, Todd; Watt, David; Webb, Bruce A; Biery, Sara A; Gower, Rebecca J; Mullen, Austin M; Grossman, Robert B; Wilson, John; Brothers, Sheila C
Cc: Capilouto, Eli; Tracy, Tim; de Beer, Frederick C
Subject: Administrative Action re: Office Academic Files and Personal Family Photos of Dr. Kearney

University Senate Council Members,
 
Just when you thought it could not get any more egregious…
 
Six weeks ago, on 8/24/2015, the Board of Trustees' Health Care Committee
 
"reaffirmed Dr. Kearney's current status as a tenured faculty member,"
 
and directed the President to stop banning Dr. Kearney's on-campus academic, nonclinical activities. Specifically, the President was directed that Dr. Kearney
 
"retains his tenure and the privileges associated with being a faculty member at UK."  
 
Bill Thro, who reports to the President and is currently paid for and signs officially as UK General Counsel, committed in writing on August 28, 2015 that
 
"University employees will pack and move Dr. Kearney's possessions from his old office to his new office."   
 
It now turns out that the President's Legal Counsel Office and the College of Medicine Dean de Beer implemented onto Dr. Kearney their following vision of what it means to be "a faculty member at UK."  
 
When Dr. Kearney arrived at his new "office" assigned by the Dean (a small room under a stairway in the old Pharmacy building, that another occupant of the building referred to me as "the box"), his office computer and his personally purchased external drive weremissing.  He pressed to the President's Legal Counsel Office to have the computer returned, and when it finally was, the hard drive had no files on it and his external hard drive was still missing.  He protested to the President's Legal Counsel Office that his "27 years of academic work product"* were missing and inaccessible to him.  Also previously on his computer and missing were unique personal family photos including those of his deceased wife.
 
He then learned from an IT employee (Mr. JD Silvey) that what actually happened was that the computer had been moved from his previous office (from which he had been locked out since January 26, 2015) over to IT.  IT physically opened up the computer, removed the hard drive, and put in a different (blank) hard drive.  Also removed from the computer was the attached external hard drive.  Then, Mr. Silvey was instructed that on 9/17 he was to put into the new office the computer with its new hard drive devoid of files, and it missing the external hard drive personally purchased by Dr. Kearney. No explanation was provided to Dr. Kearney by the President's Legal Office that the hard drive had been removed and replaced with a blank drive, nor any explanation from the Legal Counsel Office on how he could reobtain access to the many academic (i.e., nonclinical) files* on the hard drive.  As of this writing, he still does not have access to any of his 27 years of academic (nonclinical) files* on the hard drive, nor access to his personal photos of his deceased wife on the hard drive.
 
Given the above conduct by the President's Legal Counsel Office, how could the President's administration have really intended to comply with the Board of Trustees that Dr. Kearney be able to renew his academic, nonclinical activities "associated with being a faculty member at UK"? How do we assess that the above conduct happened despite the President's General Counsel assuring in writing:
 
"University employees will pack and move Dr. Kearney's possessions from his old office to his new office"   
 
What University "core value," what Board "ethical priniciple" prevented the President's Legal Office from simply communicating forthrightly with Dr. Kearney and asking "do you have anything personal on the computer hard drive that we can return to you before we remove the hard drive" so that they have would have learned of and returned his photos of his deceased wife?
 
Davy Jones
Professor of Toxicology and Cancer Biology
UK College of Medicine
 
Cc: University Senate Members, University Community, President Capilouto, Provost Tracy, Dean de Beer
 
_____________________ 
*Including, but not limited to
1. Scholarly Manuscripts and Drafts
2. Didactic educational materials
3. Numerous PowerPoint presentations that include both teaching decks and scientific meeting presentations.
4. Own Personal CVs
5. Recommendation letters written to support other faculty
6. Published journal articles that were searched out, collated and downloaded as part of ongoing scholarly activity and professional development
7. Nonclinical files by created by or received in capacity as a member of the COM Faculty Council or Dept. of Surgery faculty member   
 


I hate to wear this out, but one has to ask the obvious question “Why?”
 
Well again there is Dr. Kearney’s requested audit of KMSF funds that resulted in Michael Karpf’s threat at the College of Medicine Faculty Council meeting. Supporting this, as I noted in the blog, is the Dan Ross case.
 
An audit would also expose exactly how this hospital administration is using not only KMSF funds but also research grant direct and indirect funds, and funds provided by the state for teaching purposes. In my mind, the “Wethington Award” by itself reeks of abuse of these funds, but I suspect digging further might unveil even more serious problems here.
                                  
Finally, suggestion of irregularities in financing the new hospital buildings has surfaced in my emails. These will take further investigation to substantiate, but if anyone out there has any hard evidence to support that I will gladly post it on this blog site.
 
Lastly, a curiosity of mine as noted in the blog post was that of “where is President Capilouto in all of this?” The last Herald Leader article above suggests he is likewise worried about Dr. Kearney. Why he is worried enough to overturn the results of the Board of Trustees meeting I can’t say, but it makes one wonder if there is more to this than simply trying to discipline a tenured faculty member. I will note that beyond the potentially criminal Dan Ross case cited in the blog, in some of my emails with regards to this blog I received innuendos that UK may have in the past misrepresented their grant funding, or at least their reporting of officially funded grants versus submitted grants. If true, I feel sure something like that would also reflect badly on both the university and Dr. Capilouto.  This is something else that will require further investigation to substantiate, but again if anyone out there has any hard evidence to support this claim I will gladly post it on this blog site.
 
Bottom line, there are still plenty of things to talk about. So paraphrasing the immortal words of agent Mulder, ‘The truth will save us, Scully’.  Like I stated above, email me with any news or things you may feel merit discussion. Use this dnoonan48@gmail.com rather than my university email, because as the open record obtained below from the UKy attorney's office suggests "Big Brother is monitoring whenever and wherever they can".

From: Crocker, Theresa B  [DJ NOTE: This person is in the UK Legal Office]
Sent: Monday, January 26, 2015 8:15 AM
To: Massie, Kevin C.
Cc: Shock, Eric D; Thro, William E [DJ NOTE: William Thro is President Capilouto's General Counsel]
Subject: email access
 
Kevin: at 11:00 today (and not before) can you please suspend access to email for Paul Kearney (pakear0).  Please also preserve and copy his email account, and provide the copy to Eric so he can post it on my server.
 
Can you set the account to remain active, even though access to it is denied?  We may want to check and see what emails are received on that account in the future.
 
Thanks.
Terri
 
terri blom crocker
senior paralegal
office of legal counsel
university of kentucky
309h charles t. wethington jr building
lexington, KY 40536
phone: 859-257-5485
fax: 8590257-5123

tbcroc2@email.uky.edu

Note: Each of the 2 posts has its own set off comments. To read comments or add a comment simply click on the word "Comments" at the top or bottom of the post.
5 Comments
Bill
10/7/2015 12:28:57 pm

Dan, Thanks for the update. You would probably get more comments if you let everyone know that you have updated. I have one comment and one question.
Comment: I agree Capilouto's actions that subvert and basically defy the actions of the Board of Trustees are out of line with the basic chain of command at the university. I personally do not have much respect for Capilouto. He appears to have few if any original ideas and feel he is simply a puppet of the hospital administration in these matters. I suspect that your suggestion that he fears the actions of Dr. Kearney is not the motivating force behind these decisions, but rather that he fears the actions of Michael Karpf.
Question: Why is it that you feel the Wethington Award is some form of abuse of grant funds?
Keep up the good fight.

Reply
Dan Noonan
10/8/2015 12:27:44 pm

Wow, an actual comment on this blog site. Thanks Bill. I really should remind everyone that this blog site is active and if for nothing other than entertainment they might check it intermittently.

I tend to agree with your comment about Capilouto. I originally thought the guy might become a leader here, but I was very wrong about that. I should do some checking to maybe see what his history was at UAB. I wouldn’t be surprised to find some interesting stuff. If anyone out there has people I can contact, feel free to email me.

Hmmm, explaining my concerns with the Wethington Award may take more than a few sentences. Not knowing your familiarity with the award kind of requires a bit more elaboration. This award is given to research scientists as a reward for their ability to attain research funding. Historically it was divined back in the early 2000s by several chairs in the Basic Sciences departments in the College of Medicine. I was a member in the Biochemistry Department and I remember in a faculty meeting that it was first suggested by our then Chair Lou Hersh to be a bonus paid through grant salary reimbursement dollars. Several of us complained that this was not only unethical but also probably illegal. They then went to the university lawyers for assistance in the matter and, as might be expected, the lawyers found a way around this concern by simply calling it an “award”. So what is my concern with this? Well as this so called award worked in our department, the amount of the award was established as any grant funded salary reimbursement dollars in excess of the 30% that was fed back into the department. In the beginning this was maxed out at $25,000/yr, but as greed would have it, it soon moved to $50,000/yr. So what exactly are we talking about here. Well almost all grant funding can be divided into 2 basic components, direct cost dollars and indirect cost dollars. Direct cost dollars are the money you are stating that it will take to do the research proposed (e.g. supplies, reagents, equipment, personnel, etc.) and indirect costs are the money that indirectly goes into doing the research proposed (e.g. utilities, grant management, space, etc.). Indirect costs are a fixed value for each institution and last I heard for UKy it was 48%. Therefore, if you receive a federally funded grant that you state will cost one million dollars to perform the research proposed, the government will toss in another $480,000 to the university to pay indirect costs associated with this grant. Interestingly, salary reimbursement dollars falls under the “direct costs” category and it is supposed to be money to reimburse the salary payer (in our case the state of KY taxpayers) for the time the researcher is drawn away from his/her regular faculty duties to perform these research studies. In Kentucky the state never asks for these reimbursement dollars, so in essence this money simply goes into the coffers of the University and is transferred back to the College and Department it originated from. Therefore, what is happening here is that the university lawyers have devised a way of laundering the money that a researcher tells the granting agency it needs to have for performing the research, and is basically supporting the use of this laundered money for paying bonuses (ooops, I mean awards) to these researchers. Although the lawyers claim this is all legal, I personally would be interested in hearing NIH’s thoughts on the matter. If really legal, as a taxpayer I minimally question its ethics, but after observing the level to which the UKy lawyers are willing to stoop in this Paul Kearney case, ethics appear to rank pretty low in their priority list.

Reply
Fred D'beverage
10/7/2015 03:49:24 pm

I heard that there are some even more recent developments that include revocation of Kearney's tenured appointment and KMSF benefits. Am I right about this? Could someone fill us all in on the details?

Reply
Dan Noonan
10/8/2015 12:31:31 pm

Hi Fred, You are correct. I think it can be summed up in this email pasted below that Davy Jones sent out.

Subject: Administrative Action re: Children/Dependents of Dr. Kearney

University Senate Council Members,

An update for you on yet additional administrative consequence upon our academic colleague Dr. Kearney, this time specifically targeting his children/dependents. On June 19, 2001 the Board of Trustees conferred upon Dr. Kearney the academic status of tenured Professor in the Department of Surgery:

"Kearney, Paul A, Associate Professor with tenure, Surgery, to Professor (with tenure), Surgery, effective 7/1/01" http://exploreuk.uky.edu/catalog/xt7pc824bx69_2?<http://exploreuk.uky.edu/catalog/xt7pc824bx69_2?%20>

However, as you are aware, with the President's knowledge, Bill Thro (who reports directly to the President) has written an 08/25/2015 letter (that he signed as having the official govt employee title of UK "General Counsel") asserting that the Dean of the College of Medicine, Fred de Beer, has taken as his own administrative authority to remove Dr. Kearney's academic appointment out of the Dept. of Surgery (he is " no longer in the Department of Surgery"). This contradicts the Dean's own action last year to "recommend" through the President to the Board of Trustees that the Board change the academic unit appointment of de Beer's own Associate Dean Alan Daugherty to be out of the department into which the Board tenured Dr. Daugherty.* This also contradicts the many other Board actions recorded in its minutes to change a faculty member from his or her original home department of academic appointment where the Board had placed that individual.

The Dean, the Provost and the President have failed to explain this contradiction to the Senate.**

Now, Dr. Kearney has received an 09/28/2015 letter from KMSF (cc'd to the President's subordinate, the Dean) asserting that a necessary consequence of the Dean 'removing' Dr. Kearney from the Dept. of Surgery is that Dr. Kearney has thereby lost his "position[] in [a] clinical department," which thereby causes loss of his "membership in the [KMSF] Geographic Full-time Plan," which thereby causes "you are no longer eligible for this benefit for your children and dependents [of] the Kentucky Medical Services Foundation, Inc. (KMSF) Tuition Support Program."

In my personal opinion, the President and his implementing UK administrative subordinates have reached a pathological state of vindictiveness, exceeded only by the sense of impunity with which the vindictiveness is dispensed.

Davy Jones
Professor of Toxicology and Cancer
UK College of Medicine

Reply
Daniel Rusu, MD
10/13/2015 02:31:59 pm

Dan,

Thank you for the blog!
I am part time with UK, I left in May after the terms with my contract were changed. I understand why you don't get more replies - people are afraid. I can tell you this - in my five years with UK we had a huge turnover in the transplant pulmonary and surgery division. All of them left because UK didn't fulfill their agreed contract. My colleagues left settling out of court with UK - the contract was not respected. I know Paul - I worked with him and I put my word for his integrity. I know also the trauma team - I worked with them - excellent physicians and colleagues. I contacted the President personally but was no answer. KMSF ...no way to reach them . It is like a MAFIA organisation - just google them. Nothing is known about them. it is more convenient to keep it silent - time will tell us the truth. Please let me know if I can be of any help!

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