Tag Archives: Merck & Co

Apr 1 2013

Merck Tries To Control Frazier’s Racist Comments


On the morning of March 17, 2013 – before Frazier’s apology had run in the CDT – a user with the screen name “BroadSt Bully” restored a paragraph that had been deleted 2 days before describing Frazier’s role in hiring Louis Freeh and firing Joe Paterno.  BroadSt Bully also added a paragraph about the racially insensitive comment made by Frazier 3 days earlier:
On March 14, 2013, at a sub-committee meeting of the Penn State Board of Trustees, Frazier uttered a racist and bigoted remark at a candidate running for the Board of Trustees who criticized the Freeh narrative.
BroadSt Bully also removed the qualifier “blue ribbon” which described the Special Investigative Task Force (“commission”).  12 hours later, a user identified only by his IP address 67.165.19.29 removed both of those paragraphs.  This IP address traces back to a Comcast user in Doylestown, PA.  3 hours later, a user in the Netherlands (possibly an administrator) restored the paragraphs with the qualifying edit note:
“The previous edit deleted balancing material that provides criticism of the figure in question. Wikipedia articles are not “fluff pieces” that say only positive things”
 Approximately 14 hours later (11:54 18 March 2013), the previous user once again deleted these 2 paragraphs.  40 minutes later, they were restored by an admin in Connecticut.

Merck Corporate Works on the Cover-up

 An hour later a user identified by the IP address 155.91.28.231 once again removed those paragraphs.  However, this IP address traced back to a corporate ISP:  Merck.
General IP Information
Top of Form
IP:
155.91.28.231
Decimal:
2606439655
Hostname:
155.91.28.231
ISP:
Organization:
Merck and Co.
Services:
Type:
Assignment:
Blacklist:
Bottom of Form
Geolocation Information
Country:
United States <!–[if !vml]–><!–[endif]–>
State/Region:
New Jersey
City:
Old Bridge
Latitude:
40.3958  (40° 23′ 44.88″ N)
Longitude:
-74.3255  (74° 19′ 31.80″ W)
Area Code:
732
Postal Code:
08857
And then the internet sparks began to fly.  Over the next 3 hours, users would attempt to restore those 2 paragraphs, only to be deleted within minutes by the Merck user. 
At 14:03 user “Cornmd” restores the 2 paragraphs.  14:15 the Merck IP address deletes them.
 At 14:16 user “Ubiquity” restores the 2 paragraphs.  14:21 the Merck IP address deletes them. 
 At 14:22 user “BroadSt Bully” restores the 2 paragraphs.  14:22 the Merck IP address deletes them. 
 User “Arctic Kangaroo” tries to restore the paragraphs and within minutes, the Merck IP address deletes them.  Arctic Kangaroo restores the content at 14:25, at which point the content is temporarily removed for discussion by “Edgar181” at 14:31.
 At 14:39 BroadSt Bully restores the content with the edit note:  “Re-added sourced material. User’s IP address traces to Merck, who is Frazier’s employer”
At 14:57 BroadSt Bully adds titles to the 2 paragraphs “Jerry Sandusky sex scandal” and “Racially insensitive outburst.”
At 15:30 the Merck user deletes them.  Over the next 2 hours, the Merck user makes 5 more attempts to delete content, and add flattering career highlights for Ken Frazier, until an admin warns him that he is violating 4 different Wikipedia terms of service.  Five minutes later, the Wikipedia admins lock down edits of the Wikipedia page. Two hours later, the Merck user is blocked for one month from editing ANY web pages. 
This was not the first time this user was blocked by Wikipedia.  Here is the discipline history of 155.91.28.231 which warranted the one month penalty for “disruptive editing”:
 21:53, 18 March 2013 Ronhjones (talk | contribs) blocked 155.91.28.231 (talk) (anon. only, account creation blocked) with an expiry time of 1 month (Disruptive editing)
  22:21, 10 July 2012 Materialscientist (talk | contribs) blocked 155.91.28.231 (talk) (anon. only, account creation blocked) with an expiry time of 1 week (Copyright violations)
  20:11, 7 November 2008 RoySmith (talk | contribs) blocked 155.91.28.231 (talk) (anon. only) with an expiry time of 24 hours (Repeated reversion of text to Yak shaving contrary to prior AFD decision)
  22:13, 25 January 2006 Hall Monitor (talk | contribs) blocked 155.91.28.231 (talk) with an expiry time of 48 hours (massive content removal)
  21:00, 1 December 2005 Brian0918 (talk | contribs) blocked 155.91.28.231 (talk) with an expiry time of 24 hours (vandalisms)

Previous edit on Freeh Report entry on Frazier’s wiki page

Interesting to note Ken Frazier’s Wikipedia page had a previous edit disputed.
 On October 21, 2012, a user named “Callancc” described the Freeh report as being accepted “without review, but was reported to be riddled with conjecture, research with gaping holes, and unsubstantiated conclusions.”  It was revised on November 5, 2012 by an IP address from Boston University to say the Freeh report was accepted “and used as the basis for the NCAA sanctions against Penn State.” With the edit note:
“The last sentence was ridiculously partisan, clearly there only to attempt to discredit the Freeh report which was widely seen as fair and thoroughly done.”)
The Merck user created an account on Wikipedia on October 10, 2005 and spent most of his early time updating the Wikipedia pages of Ann Coulter and Ron Dellums (a long time member of the House of Representatives from California, who became the Mayor of Oakland in 2007).

Controlling the PSU Narrative

Ken Frazier’s comments to Bill Cluck had been widely  but they never reached a global audience until they were posted in Wikipedia.
There is a dogged determination from this Merck user to remove this content from Wikipedia.  In addition, the Merck IT team has been hard at work over the weekend to bury any negative articles circulating about Frazier on the internet and pumping up his bio and other positive articles as they appear in google searches.  Once again, it appears that Frazier is trying to control the narrative by controlling the information available to the public.
Which begs the question, what audience is he really trying to control?
Posted by at 8:20 AM
Mar 19 2013

Ken Frazier Quote – And He Chaired the Committee that Hired Freeh


“Tens of thousands of former Vioxx users sued Merck after it withdrew the drug, alleging Vioxx had caused them to suffer heart attacks and strokes. Frazier, then the company’s general counsel, declared Merck had done nothing wrong and refused to settle. “We’ll fight every case,” he declared, and hired top-flight law firms in several East Coast cities, in the South, in Chicago, and Los Angeles, as well as a prominent New York firm to coordinate the overall strategy.”

Sep 15 2012

PS4RS has identified the following substantial deficiencies in the Freeh Report


• Failure to disclose the fact that FSS’ client was the Board of Trustees, not the university, and, as such, FSS had a duty to act in the best interests of the board of trustees relative to the investigation and preparation of the Report;

• Failure to disclose that FSS sub-contracted a substantial portion of the investigation to the law firm of Pepper Hamilton, LLP, and to disclose the relationship between Pepper Hamilton and individual members of the board of trustees and their employers, including but not limited to Merck & Co., employer of Penn State Trustee Kenneth Frazier, Chairman of the Special Investigations Task Force;

• Failure to report the relationship between FSS and Pepper Hamilton, including August 2012 announcement that FSS had been acquired by Pepper Hamilton;

• Failure to consider inherent conflict of interest involving members of the board of trustees and Special Investigations Task Force in light of the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare’s investigation of the 1998 Incident;

• Failure to report on written threat by the brother of an influential member of university board of trustees to publicly disgrace Joe Paterno as evidence of bias;

• Failure to follow basic investigative and reporting procedures for an internal investigation;

• Failure to interview nearly every critical witness to the 1998 and 2001 incidents before rendering the report;

• Failure to properly address the facts and circumstances associated with the investigation of the 1998 incident by the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare, the Centre County Children and Youth Services, the State College Borough Police Department, and the Centre County District Attorney;

• Misstatement of facts and complete lack of evidence in support of conclusion that Dr. Graham Spanier and Messrs. Tim Curley, Paterno, and Gary Schultz concealed 1998 and 2001 Incidents;

• Failure to acknowledge that the university’s investigation of the 1998 incident with multiple child welfare and law enforcement authorities, while Sandusky was still employed by the university, weighed heavily against a conclusion that these individuals intentionally concealed the 2001 incident from authorities, when Sandusky was not employed by the University;

• Improper reliance of unauthenticated, incomplete, and out of context emails from 1998 and 2001;

• Misstatements of facts and unsupported conclusions regarding the knowledge of Paterno relative to the 1998 Incident;

• Failure to acknowledge that, within days of the 2001 incident, at least 13 individuals, many of whom were outside the university, had knowledge, in whole or in part, of the incident that Mike McQueary reported;

• Failure to acknowledge that there was not a single witness interviewed who stated that there was an intent to conceal the 2001 incident by anyone at the university;

• Failure to acknowledge that there was not a single document that indicated an intent to conceal the 2001 Incident by anyone at the University

• Failure to acknowledge that the decision by Curley to report the 2001 incident to The Second Mile was wholly inconsistent with the idea of an intentional concealment, as alleged in the report;

• Failure to consider the role of The Second Mile and failure of The Second Mile to act upon report of 2001 incident;

• Failure to address information, including testimony of Dr. Jonathan Dranov, which casts serious doubt on the credibility of Mike McQueary in connection with the 2001 incident;

• Failure to consider that McQueary’s statements to his father and  Dranov, immediately after the incident, were likely to have greater reliability than statements made over 10 years later;

• Failure to acknowledge the fact that all email records of the university prior to 2004 were unavailable as the result of a computer system change;

• Failure to consult a psychologist or other medical professional for assistance in seeking to interpret the acts of various individuals in response to allegations of improper actions by Sandusky;

• Failure to acknowledge that FSS made personal findings and credibility determinations of witnesses who FSS did not even interview; and

• Failure to identify who waived the attorney-client privilege and authorized Freeh to conduct a nationwide press conference announcing the ‘findings’ of the Report before presenting those findings to the university.