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Agreed —Preceding unsigned comment added by Endlesslywaiting ( talk • contribs) 16:22, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
![]() | This edit request by an editor with a conflict of interest has now been answered. |
I would like to offer a revised version of the article for Wikipedia's consideration on RTI's behalf (see below). I've spent a lot of time on it and appreciate your consideration of my work. I believe it is a substantial improvement over the current article. CorporateM ( Talk) 20:15, 24 January 2013 (UTC)
Proposed draft
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This version of the article can now be seen here |
A couple areas where my conflict of interest is most relevant include the shooting in Iraq in 2007 (included) and the issue of figuring out which notable projects to include and to what extent. A neutral editor may feel the Notable projects section is too long (making it promotional) or too short. I roughly used profile stories like this one as a guide for which to include. A lot of positive stories were excluded, [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] but so were some of their more controversial projects. [6] [7] It's also documented in secondary sources that the dollar coin made under RTI's recommendations was poorly received, while two treatments developed by RTI scientists, camptothecin and Taxol, became very successful commercial drugs and the EGRA reading assessment program became widely used in more than 50 countries. I didn't include outcomes of specific projects (positive or negative) due the pressing need for brevity in an ocean of verifiable information about their work. That section requires a lot of editorial judgements and I hope I made the right ones, but trust the community's judgement.
PS - by chance I have edited this article in the past on a volunteer basis. CorporateM ( Talk) 20:15, 24 January 2013 (UTC)
GA toolbox |
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Reviewing |
Reviewer: Maclean25 ( talk · contribs) 05:48, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
How's this? I re-organized it to be by-topic and added (hopefully non-promotionally) information on why the projects were significant, as well as some more explanation in certain areas and other copyedits.
Extended content
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![]() Two RTI scientists, Monroe Wall and Mansukh Wani, synthesized an anti-cancer treatment, camptothecin, from a Chinese tree in 1966, and Taxol, from a Pacific yew tree in 1971. [2] [3] $3 billion in the two drugs invented by RTI scientists are sold each year by pharmaceutical companies. [4] In 1986, RTI was awarded a $4 million contract with the National Cancer Institute to conduct an eight-year clinical trial on the effects of a tobacco intervention drug. [5] Two years later, RTI began a $4.4 million AIDS treatment program for the National Institutes of Health, which grew to $26 million by 1988. [6] RTI scientists helped identify toxic chemicals in the Love Canal in the 1970s. [4] In 1978, RTI researched the possibility of improving solar cells for the US Department of Energy [7] and coal gasification for the Environmental Protection Agency the following year. [8] The Institute helped China implement emission controls before the 2007 Olympics in Beijing by training air modelers and providing computer models. [9] An RTI survey in 1973, commissioned by the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, confirmed prior research that found no connection between drug use and violent crime, despite a long-held belief that heroin users were more prone to violence. [10] In 1975, a study RTI conducted for the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism found that 28 percent of the 13,000 teenagers polled were "problem drinkers," though they were under-aged. [11] A 1996 study done by RTI and funded by the Pentagon found that drug abuse in the military had been reduced by 90 percent since 1980. [12] In 1975, RTI provided recommendations to the
Bureau of the Mint to halt production of expensive pennies and replace half-dollars with a new dollar coin.
[13]
[14]
[15] In 2001, RTI scientists created a new thinfilm superlattice material that uses the
thermoelectric effect to cool microprocessors.
[16] |
Draft Organization section
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RTI International is a not-for-profit research organization established by three local universities, but managed independently by a separate board and management team.
[21] RTI's structure consists of members of the corporation, the board of governors and corporate officers. The members of the corporation elect governors, who in turn create the organization's policies. RTI has eleven primary service areas, including health policy, survey research, education, international development, economics and energy among others. [23] It has eight US offices and ten international locations, supporting operations in 75 countries. [24] About 60 percent of RTI's staff are headquartered on a 180-acre campus inside the Research Triangle Park. [1] [25] Many of RTI's staff hold faculty positions at the three universities that form the Research Triangle and participate in cooperative research projects. It also has partnerships with the Research Triangle Energy Consortium, the Triangle Global Health Consortium and other universities and research organizations. [26] As of 2010, about 35 percent of RTI's revenue came from its largest client, the US Agency for International Development (USAID). [27] Most of RTI International's funding comes from research contracts. [4] [28] In 2012 it authored 627 journal articles. At the time, RTI owned 400 patents. [28] References
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I'm using this space to store new sources as they come up that may be worth including in the page. CorporateM ( Talk) 01:25, 14 November 2014 (UTC)
I am a new Wikipedia editor but I made this account when I noticed this page. I encountered the name RTI when reading "The Shock Doctrine" by Naomi Klein. Here is what she writes, regarding the privatization of nearly every "reconstruction" project in post-invasion Iraq:
"Even the job of building 'local democracy' was privatized, given to the North Carolina-based Research Triangle Institute in a contract worth up to $466 million, though it's not at all clear what qualified RTI to bring democracy to a Muslim country. The leadership of the company's Iraq operation was dominated by high-level Mormons - people like James Mayfield, who told his mission back in Houston that he thought Muslims could be persuaded to embrace the Book of Mormon as compatible with the teachings of the prophet Muhammad. In an e-mail home, he imagiend that Iraqis would erect a statue to him as their 'founder of democracy'."
There is a note that goes on: "In fact, RTI was driven out of the country after it helped block local Islamic parties from democratically taking power in several cities and towns."
She cites among other articles/online sources: http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=XW8qAAAAIBAJ&sjid=E1MEAAAAIBAJ&pg=3726%2C202624
I would think this would raise a red flag: RTI should probably not be described in glowing terms in a Wikipedia article written by an RTI employee... A slightly more balanced viewpoint is needed on a company that apparently took part in the legendarily corrupt "reconstruction" effort in Iraq. Currently, the 2007 shooting is buried so deeply in a list of RTI's accomplishments that anyone who came to Wikipedia to learn about RTI's performance in their single biggest and most controversial contract to date would probably scroll right through the article and shrug their shoulders. I don't feel qualified to decide what should happen to the article, but I hope that some more experienced editors will at least take a look at it and prevent RTI from using Wikipedia for whitewashing.
Thanks.
- exit8 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Exit8 ( talk • contribs) 16:34, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
Klein writes further: "In the province of Taji, RTI, the Mormon-dominated contractor tasked with building local government, dismantled the council that local people had elected months before it arrived and insisted on starting from scratch." (The Shock Doctrine, p. 460)
Exit8 ( talk) 17:58, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
→On $185,000 cash lost by RTI being replaced by taxpayers: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/27313639/ns/world_news-mideast_n_africa/t/us-taxpayers-foot-tab-when-cash-lost/#.VIfQF3uupv4 http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/washington/2008-10-22-iraq-lostcash_N.htm
→On RTI's inability to usefully implement their 100+ million dollar reconstruction contract http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=11402 http://www.merip.org/mer/mer234/faded-dreams-contracted-democracy
→On RTI's poor reporting on their project costs, activities, and achievements (see page 90) http://cybercemetery.unt.edu/archive/cwc/20110929221553/http://www.wartimecontracting.gov/docs/CWC_Interim_Report_At_What_Cost_06-10-09.pdf
Exit8 ( talk) 05:33, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
RTI has worked with the US Agency for International Development since 1983 [1]. In 2003, RTI was the sole bidder on a $168 million contract with USAID to "create and train local governing councils across post-Saddam Iraq" [2], the organization's biggest contract to date. Both RTI and USAID have drawn criticism over the nature and execution of the contract from critics of the Iraq Reconstruction project such as Naomi Klein [3], and corporate watchdog groups. RTI lacked any previous experience in Iraq [4], and the project was criticized by RTI employees and observers as unrealistic and undemocratic in nature [5], [6], [7]. In 2004 RTI employees "physically lost" $185,481 and then billed USAID to replace the lost cash [8]. Between 2003 and 2012, USAID awarded RTI over $1.8 billion in development contracts, which contracts accounted for over 75% of the organization's revenue from 2009-2012. Since 2003 RTI has hired at least five former USAID employees to executive positions [9] [10]. In December of 2014 RTI announced that it had been awarded a 5-year USAID contract worth up to $650 million to "improve urban and local governance in 112 countries in key functional areas including public service delivery, accountability, climate change management, and urban finance." [11]
Exit8 ( talk) 06:26, 31 December 2014 (UTC)
draft
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RTI began working in Iraq for the US Agency for International Development (USAID) in 2003. [1] It <insert description of project><insert source> USAID would become responsible for 35 percent of RTI's revenue by 2010. [2] During the project, a security contractor shot and killed two innocent Iraqi women in 2007 [3] and a billing dispute arose over $185,481 that was lost during an evacuation. [4] |
Exit8 ( talk) 21:12, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
}
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
What is the most appropriate sourcing, weight and NPOV summary of RTI's work in Iraq. Please see options a, b and c at Talk:RTI_International/RFC 00:00, 20 January 2015 (UTC)
I am not familiar with either RTI or the Middle East Research and Information project. I take it you have some affiliation with RTI. What is the objection to the latter, apart from the fact that it is critical? Corpwatch occasionally has good information, but I have not seen enough of it to have an opinion at the moment on whether it is a reliable source. Books are generally considered reliable but in areas of breaking news online site are often where the information actually is. May I suggest that you have a look at the archives of the NPOV board and see if either of the sources you don't seem to think are reliable have in fact been addressed before? Elinruby ( talk) 20:52, 31 January 2015 (UTC)
I have done some copy editing to the article, mostly for passive tense and verb agreements; it had clearly been reworked several times. Pretty sure nobody is going to object to anything I did, although I did tone down a reference to "helping" China "control emissions" that I found a bit excessive. That particular detail needs a little more attention btw -- if the object was to improve air quality for the Olympics, well, this is laudable, but does not amount to helping the whole country "control emissions". And what's an air monitor that you train, by the way? Another mystery is the acronym with no prior reference that was involved in the school network.
But those are details; what I came here to say was that the one sentence about the shooting kind of sticks out like a sore thumb -- a very specific detail in the midst of a sea of "helping China" and "working with USAID" (to do what?). I don't have the time right now to make a proper judgement about this but I do offer my current thoughts: The reconstruction of Iraq was a big deal. It's the economy of a country and a huge chunk of the US budget. So some detail is merited. Surely it was not a total fiasco, and some positive things can also be said about this program if that is the concern? As to Corpwatch, I have never assessed it as a Wikipedia source so I dunno if it meets the editing criteria, for one thing, and I agree that it does at times not bother to hide its opinion. I have a vaguely positive impression of it though, as in, I believe that I came across it while researching something, and the facts themselves did check out. However, if it is true, as the other editor says, that it's like the Huffington Post, often a re-write of more mainstream publications, with some partisan language thrown in, then yes, by all means let us use those sources instead. However, I do not think that advocacy journalism in and of itself is necessarily an unreliable source. I know was involved in a major discussion about the Sunlight Foundation, which someone was trying to discredit, but just because it is against money in politics, does not mean that it is not in fact quite accurate on the subject of money in politics :) and sometimes the only source for a particular piece of information, like how much Senator so-and-so got from energy companies in his last campaign, which may well be relevant to his stance on energy issues, capice?
Oh and while I am opining, yes, Taxol is a big deal, and still in use today. Possibly that achievement should be expanded upon as well. Also while I am thinking of it, there was a slightly strange wording there -- some sum of money in annual sales by pharmaceutical companies. Not RTI companies? Is it generic now, is that what that was about? I left it alone but it might be good to clarify that because if I wondered probably someone else will too.
One last thought -- do we really care about the dates the various divisions were created?
If I get a chance or need to take another breather from what I am doing I may interest myself in this Iraq AID question, but I can't promise anything. Spent too much time on this tonight already ;) 50.193.53.99 ( talk) 11:53, 4 February 2015 (UTC)
@ Elinruby Thanks for your great copyedits! I went through and removed/replaced dead links, answered some of your who/which annotations, etc. What do you think about the below?
RTI began working for the US Agency for International Development (USAID) in post-war Iraq in April 2003 to manage the Local Governance Program. RTI established neighborhood advisory councils, promoted local government an encouraged citizens to vote in the 2005 democratic election. [1] After the election, RTI held workshops and trainings for newly elected Iraqis to develop budgeting and administrative skills through Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRT). [1] USAID work represented 35 percent of RTI's revenue by 2010. [2] According to academic James D. Savage, a 2009 audit by the USAID Inspector General found RTI's program had greatly increased local Iraqi budgeting competence, but not management skills. The program experienced difficulties with the military's civilian security requirements and few of the staff had local cultural expertise. [1]
An employee of the contractor, Unity Resources Group, hired to protect RTI staff doing USAID work in Iraq shot and killed two Iraqi women on October 9, 2007. [3]
CorporateM ( Talk) 14:01, 4 February 2015 (UTC)
References
qts
was invoked but never defined (see the
help page).I've checked the article for neutrality and reviewed the above talk page discussions. Because it is a good article and has already been reviewed for NPOV, before tagging it, any editor should leave specific comments here regarding what the NPOV problems are listing sentences of sections that should be improved. Reliable sources need to be brought forth, as DGG suggests above. Rather than citing a politically oriented rewriting of the news, just cite the underlying news source. Keep in mind the requirements ofread WP:UNDUE.
Any COI of editors involved in writing this are not justification to tag for NPOV. COI is a sign that an article should be checked for NPOV, but the tag should only be applied if problems are discovered that cannot be corrected directly, and we need to warn editors reading the article that fixes are "in the works". Questions? Please ask, and welcome to new editors who were participating above. Jehochman Talk 23:32, 2 February 2015 (UTC)
It occurs to me that Naomi Klein is in herself notable -- why not simply document and attribute her contention that RTI was one of many US contractors whose behavor had problems x y and z? I realize that this solution will probably please no-one, but this is true of many compromises. Just a thought. Elinruby ( talk) 00:00, 9 February 2015 (UTC)
![]() | This edit request by an editor with a conflict of interest has now been answered. |
Would this image be useful for the "Operations" section? David King, Ethical Wiki ( Talk) 18:03, 21 September 2015 (UTC)
I have only checked one, but #20 https://www.rti.org/annual_reports/2012/rti_ar_2012.pdf no longer leads to the annual review of 2012. It leads to the abyss. Okay, it leads to nothing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.154.51.250 ( talk) 23:00, 17 July 2017 (UTC)
I work in marketing at RTI International. Although this page was brought up to Good Article status some years ago, it has since become out-dated. I would like to propose some edits indicated here [10] that would:
The proposed changes are numerous but mostly mundane. I have highlighted two portions where my conflict of interest is more relevant, because I am proposing the removal of unsourced criticism, in order to draw attention to them.
Thank you in advance for taking a look and providing any feedback on the changes!
pinging @ DGG: and @ Maclean25: who reviewed an earlier rev and did a good article review respectively
Mzap RTI ( talk) 14:55, 29 May 2019 (UTC)
To avoid the potential appearance or accusation of impropriety, I would like to request an independent editor consider deleting the following content:
"RTI staff are not independent researchers, but are instead compensated for their time as salary in exchange for yielding any scientific interests in external publications and extramural funding. RTI competes with the three universities that form the research triangle and other research institutes for contracts... While RTI is technically a non-profit research institute, senior employees are rewarded salary bonuses (4% for senior staff, and 9-15% for managers) based on annual performance and corporate profit. However, employees have no current vested interest or role in corporate governance."
This material has no citations and appears to rely on personal opinion. Mzap RTI ( talk) 17:15, 5 July 2019 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
RTI International article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
![]() | RTI International has been listed as one of the Social sciences and society good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it. | |||||||||
|
![]() | This article is rated GA-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
![]() | The following Wikipedia contributor has declared a personal or professional connection to the subject of this article. Relevant policies and guidelines may include
conflict of interest,
autobiography, and
neutral point of view.
|
Agreed —Preceding unsigned comment added by Endlesslywaiting ( talk • contribs) 16:22, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
![]() | This edit request by an editor with a conflict of interest has now been answered. |
I would like to offer a revised version of the article for Wikipedia's consideration on RTI's behalf (see below). I've spent a lot of time on it and appreciate your consideration of my work. I believe it is a substantial improvement over the current article. CorporateM ( Talk) 20:15, 24 January 2013 (UTC)
Proposed draft
|
---|
This version of the article can now be seen here |
A couple areas where my conflict of interest is most relevant include the shooting in Iraq in 2007 (included) and the issue of figuring out which notable projects to include and to what extent. A neutral editor may feel the Notable projects section is too long (making it promotional) or too short. I roughly used profile stories like this one as a guide for which to include. A lot of positive stories were excluded, [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] but so were some of their more controversial projects. [6] [7] It's also documented in secondary sources that the dollar coin made under RTI's recommendations was poorly received, while two treatments developed by RTI scientists, camptothecin and Taxol, became very successful commercial drugs and the EGRA reading assessment program became widely used in more than 50 countries. I didn't include outcomes of specific projects (positive or negative) due the pressing need for brevity in an ocean of verifiable information about their work. That section requires a lot of editorial judgements and I hope I made the right ones, but trust the community's judgement.
PS - by chance I have edited this article in the past on a volunteer basis. CorporateM ( Talk) 20:15, 24 January 2013 (UTC)
GA toolbox |
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Reviewing |
Reviewer: Maclean25 ( talk · contribs) 05:48, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
How's this? I re-organized it to be by-topic and added (hopefully non-promotionally) information on why the projects were significant, as well as some more explanation in certain areas and other copyedits.
Extended content
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![]() Two RTI scientists, Monroe Wall and Mansukh Wani, synthesized an anti-cancer treatment, camptothecin, from a Chinese tree in 1966, and Taxol, from a Pacific yew tree in 1971. [2] [3] $3 billion in the two drugs invented by RTI scientists are sold each year by pharmaceutical companies. [4] In 1986, RTI was awarded a $4 million contract with the National Cancer Institute to conduct an eight-year clinical trial on the effects of a tobacco intervention drug. [5] Two years later, RTI began a $4.4 million AIDS treatment program for the National Institutes of Health, which grew to $26 million by 1988. [6] RTI scientists helped identify toxic chemicals in the Love Canal in the 1970s. [4] In 1978, RTI researched the possibility of improving solar cells for the US Department of Energy [7] and coal gasification for the Environmental Protection Agency the following year. [8] The Institute helped China implement emission controls before the 2007 Olympics in Beijing by training air modelers and providing computer models. [9] An RTI survey in 1973, commissioned by the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, confirmed prior research that found no connection between drug use and violent crime, despite a long-held belief that heroin users were more prone to violence. [10] In 1975, a study RTI conducted for the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism found that 28 percent of the 13,000 teenagers polled were "problem drinkers," though they were under-aged. [11] A 1996 study done by RTI and funded by the Pentagon found that drug abuse in the military had been reduced by 90 percent since 1980. [12] In 1975, RTI provided recommendations to the
Bureau of the Mint to halt production of expensive pennies and replace half-dollars with a new dollar coin.
[13]
[14]
[15] In 2001, RTI scientists created a new thinfilm superlattice material that uses the
thermoelectric effect to cool microprocessors.
[16] |
Draft Organization section
|
---|
RTI International is a not-for-profit research organization established by three local universities, but managed independently by a separate board and management team.
[21] RTI's structure consists of members of the corporation, the board of governors and corporate officers. The members of the corporation elect governors, who in turn create the organization's policies. RTI has eleven primary service areas, including health policy, survey research, education, international development, economics and energy among others. [23] It has eight US offices and ten international locations, supporting operations in 75 countries. [24] About 60 percent of RTI's staff are headquartered on a 180-acre campus inside the Research Triangle Park. [1] [25] Many of RTI's staff hold faculty positions at the three universities that form the Research Triangle and participate in cooperative research projects. It also has partnerships with the Research Triangle Energy Consortium, the Triangle Global Health Consortium and other universities and research organizations. [26] As of 2010, about 35 percent of RTI's revenue came from its largest client, the US Agency for International Development (USAID). [27] Most of RTI International's funding comes from research contracts. [4] [28] In 2012 it authored 627 journal articles. At the time, RTI owned 400 patents. [28] References
|
I'm using this space to store new sources as they come up that may be worth including in the page. CorporateM ( Talk) 01:25, 14 November 2014 (UTC)
I am a new Wikipedia editor but I made this account when I noticed this page. I encountered the name RTI when reading "The Shock Doctrine" by Naomi Klein. Here is what she writes, regarding the privatization of nearly every "reconstruction" project in post-invasion Iraq:
"Even the job of building 'local democracy' was privatized, given to the North Carolina-based Research Triangle Institute in a contract worth up to $466 million, though it's not at all clear what qualified RTI to bring democracy to a Muslim country. The leadership of the company's Iraq operation was dominated by high-level Mormons - people like James Mayfield, who told his mission back in Houston that he thought Muslims could be persuaded to embrace the Book of Mormon as compatible with the teachings of the prophet Muhammad. In an e-mail home, he imagiend that Iraqis would erect a statue to him as their 'founder of democracy'."
There is a note that goes on: "In fact, RTI was driven out of the country after it helped block local Islamic parties from democratically taking power in several cities and towns."
She cites among other articles/online sources: http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=XW8qAAAAIBAJ&sjid=E1MEAAAAIBAJ&pg=3726%2C202624
I would think this would raise a red flag: RTI should probably not be described in glowing terms in a Wikipedia article written by an RTI employee... A slightly more balanced viewpoint is needed on a company that apparently took part in the legendarily corrupt "reconstruction" effort in Iraq. Currently, the 2007 shooting is buried so deeply in a list of RTI's accomplishments that anyone who came to Wikipedia to learn about RTI's performance in their single biggest and most controversial contract to date would probably scroll right through the article and shrug their shoulders. I don't feel qualified to decide what should happen to the article, but I hope that some more experienced editors will at least take a look at it and prevent RTI from using Wikipedia for whitewashing.
Thanks.
- exit8 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Exit8 ( talk • contribs) 16:34, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
Klein writes further: "In the province of Taji, RTI, the Mormon-dominated contractor tasked with building local government, dismantled the council that local people had elected months before it arrived and insisted on starting from scratch." (The Shock Doctrine, p. 460)
Exit8 ( talk) 17:58, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
→On $185,000 cash lost by RTI being replaced by taxpayers: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/27313639/ns/world_news-mideast_n_africa/t/us-taxpayers-foot-tab-when-cash-lost/#.VIfQF3uupv4 http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/washington/2008-10-22-iraq-lostcash_N.htm
→On RTI's inability to usefully implement their 100+ million dollar reconstruction contract http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=11402 http://www.merip.org/mer/mer234/faded-dreams-contracted-democracy
→On RTI's poor reporting on their project costs, activities, and achievements (see page 90) http://cybercemetery.unt.edu/archive/cwc/20110929221553/http://www.wartimecontracting.gov/docs/CWC_Interim_Report_At_What_Cost_06-10-09.pdf
Exit8 ( talk) 05:33, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
RTI has worked with the US Agency for International Development since 1983 [1]. In 2003, RTI was the sole bidder on a $168 million contract with USAID to "create and train local governing councils across post-Saddam Iraq" [2], the organization's biggest contract to date. Both RTI and USAID have drawn criticism over the nature and execution of the contract from critics of the Iraq Reconstruction project such as Naomi Klein [3], and corporate watchdog groups. RTI lacked any previous experience in Iraq [4], and the project was criticized by RTI employees and observers as unrealistic and undemocratic in nature [5], [6], [7]. In 2004 RTI employees "physically lost" $185,481 and then billed USAID to replace the lost cash [8]. Between 2003 and 2012, USAID awarded RTI over $1.8 billion in development contracts, which contracts accounted for over 75% of the organization's revenue from 2009-2012. Since 2003 RTI has hired at least five former USAID employees to executive positions [9] [10]. In December of 2014 RTI announced that it had been awarded a 5-year USAID contract worth up to $650 million to "improve urban and local governance in 112 countries in key functional areas including public service delivery, accountability, climate change management, and urban finance." [11]
Exit8 ( talk) 06:26, 31 December 2014 (UTC)
draft
|
---|
RTI began working in Iraq for the US Agency for International Development (USAID) in 2003. [1] It <insert description of project><insert source> USAID would become responsible for 35 percent of RTI's revenue by 2010. [2] During the project, a security contractor shot and killed two innocent Iraqi women in 2007 [3] and a billing dispute arose over $185,481 that was lost during an evacuation. [4] |
Exit8 ( talk) 21:12, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
}
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
What is the most appropriate sourcing, weight and NPOV summary of RTI's work in Iraq. Please see options a, b and c at Talk:RTI_International/RFC 00:00, 20 January 2015 (UTC)
I am not familiar with either RTI or the Middle East Research and Information project. I take it you have some affiliation with RTI. What is the objection to the latter, apart from the fact that it is critical? Corpwatch occasionally has good information, but I have not seen enough of it to have an opinion at the moment on whether it is a reliable source. Books are generally considered reliable but in areas of breaking news online site are often where the information actually is. May I suggest that you have a look at the archives of the NPOV board and see if either of the sources you don't seem to think are reliable have in fact been addressed before? Elinruby ( talk) 20:52, 31 January 2015 (UTC)
I have done some copy editing to the article, mostly for passive tense and verb agreements; it had clearly been reworked several times. Pretty sure nobody is going to object to anything I did, although I did tone down a reference to "helping" China "control emissions" that I found a bit excessive. That particular detail needs a little more attention btw -- if the object was to improve air quality for the Olympics, well, this is laudable, but does not amount to helping the whole country "control emissions". And what's an air monitor that you train, by the way? Another mystery is the acronym with no prior reference that was involved in the school network.
But those are details; what I came here to say was that the one sentence about the shooting kind of sticks out like a sore thumb -- a very specific detail in the midst of a sea of "helping China" and "working with USAID" (to do what?). I don't have the time right now to make a proper judgement about this but I do offer my current thoughts: The reconstruction of Iraq was a big deal. It's the economy of a country and a huge chunk of the US budget. So some detail is merited. Surely it was not a total fiasco, and some positive things can also be said about this program if that is the concern? As to Corpwatch, I have never assessed it as a Wikipedia source so I dunno if it meets the editing criteria, for one thing, and I agree that it does at times not bother to hide its opinion. I have a vaguely positive impression of it though, as in, I believe that I came across it while researching something, and the facts themselves did check out. However, if it is true, as the other editor says, that it's like the Huffington Post, often a re-write of more mainstream publications, with some partisan language thrown in, then yes, by all means let us use those sources instead. However, I do not think that advocacy journalism in and of itself is necessarily an unreliable source. I know was involved in a major discussion about the Sunlight Foundation, which someone was trying to discredit, but just because it is against money in politics, does not mean that it is not in fact quite accurate on the subject of money in politics :) and sometimes the only source for a particular piece of information, like how much Senator so-and-so got from energy companies in his last campaign, which may well be relevant to his stance on energy issues, capice?
Oh and while I am opining, yes, Taxol is a big deal, and still in use today. Possibly that achievement should be expanded upon as well. Also while I am thinking of it, there was a slightly strange wording there -- some sum of money in annual sales by pharmaceutical companies. Not RTI companies? Is it generic now, is that what that was about? I left it alone but it might be good to clarify that because if I wondered probably someone else will too.
One last thought -- do we really care about the dates the various divisions were created?
If I get a chance or need to take another breather from what I am doing I may interest myself in this Iraq AID question, but I can't promise anything. Spent too much time on this tonight already ;) 50.193.53.99 ( talk) 11:53, 4 February 2015 (UTC)
@ Elinruby Thanks for your great copyedits! I went through and removed/replaced dead links, answered some of your who/which annotations, etc. What do you think about the below?
RTI began working for the US Agency for International Development (USAID) in post-war Iraq in April 2003 to manage the Local Governance Program. RTI established neighborhood advisory councils, promoted local government an encouraged citizens to vote in the 2005 democratic election. [1] After the election, RTI held workshops and trainings for newly elected Iraqis to develop budgeting and administrative skills through Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRT). [1] USAID work represented 35 percent of RTI's revenue by 2010. [2] According to academic James D. Savage, a 2009 audit by the USAID Inspector General found RTI's program had greatly increased local Iraqi budgeting competence, but not management skills. The program experienced difficulties with the military's civilian security requirements and few of the staff had local cultural expertise. [1]
An employee of the contractor, Unity Resources Group, hired to protect RTI staff doing USAID work in Iraq shot and killed two Iraqi women on October 9, 2007. [3]
CorporateM ( Talk) 14:01, 4 February 2015 (UTC)
References
qts
was invoked but never defined (see the
help page).I've checked the article for neutrality and reviewed the above talk page discussions. Because it is a good article and has already been reviewed for NPOV, before tagging it, any editor should leave specific comments here regarding what the NPOV problems are listing sentences of sections that should be improved. Reliable sources need to be brought forth, as DGG suggests above. Rather than citing a politically oriented rewriting of the news, just cite the underlying news source. Keep in mind the requirements ofread WP:UNDUE.
Any COI of editors involved in writing this are not justification to tag for NPOV. COI is a sign that an article should be checked for NPOV, but the tag should only be applied if problems are discovered that cannot be corrected directly, and we need to warn editors reading the article that fixes are "in the works". Questions? Please ask, and welcome to new editors who were participating above. Jehochman Talk 23:32, 2 February 2015 (UTC)
It occurs to me that Naomi Klein is in herself notable -- why not simply document and attribute her contention that RTI was one of many US contractors whose behavor had problems x y and z? I realize that this solution will probably please no-one, but this is true of many compromises. Just a thought. Elinruby ( talk) 00:00, 9 February 2015 (UTC)
![]() | This edit request by an editor with a conflict of interest has now been answered. |
Would this image be useful for the "Operations" section? David King, Ethical Wiki ( Talk) 18:03, 21 September 2015 (UTC)
I have only checked one, but #20 https://www.rti.org/annual_reports/2012/rti_ar_2012.pdf no longer leads to the annual review of 2012. It leads to the abyss. Okay, it leads to nothing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.154.51.250 ( talk) 23:00, 17 July 2017 (UTC)
I work in marketing at RTI International. Although this page was brought up to Good Article status some years ago, it has since become out-dated. I would like to propose some edits indicated here [10] that would:
The proposed changes are numerous but mostly mundane. I have highlighted two portions where my conflict of interest is more relevant, because I am proposing the removal of unsourced criticism, in order to draw attention to them.
Thank you in advance for taking a look and providing any feedback on the changes!
pinging @ DGG: and @ Maclean25: who reviewed an earlier rev and did a good article review respectively
Mzap RTI ( talk) 14:55, 29 May 2019 (UTC)
To avoid the potential appearance or accusation of impropriety, I would like to request an independent editor consider deleting the following content:
"RTI staff are not independent researchers, but are instead compensated for their time as salary in exchange for yielding any scientific interests in external publications and extramural funding. RTI competes with the three universities that form the research triangle and other research institutes for contracts... While RTI is technically a non-profit research institute, senior employees are rewarded salary bonuses (4% for senior staff, and 9-15% for managers) based on annual performance and corporate profit. However, employees have no current vested interest or role in corporate governance."
This material has no citations and appears to rely on personal opinion. Mzap RTI ( talk) 17:15, 5 July 2019 (UTC)