NOTICE: Retraction of Vol. 144 Issue 18 Guest Opinion Piece
Concerning “Opinion piece on MIT CSAIL research” (Nov. 7, 2024)
Publisher's Note (December 18, 9:06 PM): All mentions of the original article's title in this notice have been removed upon request.
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After careful deliberation amongst the Executive Committee and our faculty advisors, we have decided to pull this article, which was signed by the MIT Coalition for Palestine (C4P), from publication. This article is being retracted in full. Our decision was made in light of increasing hostile rhetoric and action against Professor Daniela Rus and her laboratory.
This retraction was made after The Tech Editorial Board identified major factual inaccuracies in the piece, and was done in consultation with our faculty advisors and the subject of the piece, CSAIL Director Daniela Rus.
Listed below are corrections to the factual errors in the piece, which were identified with the direction of Professor Rus:
The grant that supports Professor Rus’ research is funded by the U.S. government; the grant is intended to support research conducted in partnership with U.S. allies. The research work is done in collaboration with the University of Haifa, under a contracting partnership between the U.S. government and the Israeli Military of Defense.
The work conducted under the grant research is basic science on the mathematics of compressing data using coresets, and is not deployable for use in drones with the applications claimed by the C4P.
An unrelated project under Professor Rus’s laboratory, which is funded by separate sponsors, is primarily used for field deployments to monitor whales for sustainability research.
The Tech was not involved in any action or rhetoric that may have taken place against Professor Rus and her laboratory. We sincerely apologize to Professor Rus and the CSAIL community for any harm done following the publication of this piece.
— Ellie Montemayor, Vol. 144 Publisher