Coming up just short
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The Chronicle T H E I N D E P E N D E N T D A I LY AT D U K E U N I V E R S I T Y
MONDAY MARCH 27, 2017
WWW.DUKECHRONICLE.COM
ONE HUNDRED AND TWELFTH YEAR, ISSUE 70
Searching for Paul Manafort’s Duke ‘legal expert’ Adam Beyer and Gautam Hathi The Chronicle The Associated Press reported last week that Paul Manafort—former campaign manager for President Donald Trump—had worked to assist the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin prior to joining the Trump campaign. Manafort said in 2005 that he had employed “legal experts” to help him, including one from the University who remains unidentified, according to the report. But Duke administrators and faculty members who spoke to The Chronicle had no information to provide on who the unidentified “legal expert” was. The AP report notes that Manafort and Oleg Deripaska, a Russian aluminum magnate and Putin ally, maintained a business relationship worth $10 million a year between 2006 and 2009. Manafort had proposed a plan to “influence politics, business dealings and news coverage inside the United States, Europe and former Soviet republics to benefit President Vladimir Putin’s government.” According to the Faculty Handbook, faculty and administrative staff are allowed to spend up to four days per month in outside consulting work, and all such activities must be reported on a financial conflict of interest disclosure form. But several current and former administrators and faculty leaders at Duke had no idea who this alleged “legal expert” could be. “Regarding this specific situation, if
Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort worked with a Russian billionaire to influence politics and business dealings in the U.S., according to the Associated Press.
anybody from Duke was involved, it would have been in their capacity as an individual and not as a representative of the University, so we have no further information on it,” wrote Michael Schoenfeld, vice president for public affairs and government relations. When prompted by The Chronicle about the Handbook’s rules stating that the professor would have been required to report such activity to the University, he wrote that
he was unaware of who was involved or what activities were alleged. He opted to “pass on commenting on a hypothetical situation.” Schoenfeld told The Chronicle that consulting disclosure reports would be given to the leaders of individual schools and institutes, and that the information would be considered confidential personnel information. An Office for Research Support website says that such activities should be
reported to either the provost, or the dean for those in the School of Medicine, as well as a department chair. Conflict of interest forms are kept confidential “except where a disclosure is required by law or for an administrative purpose,” the ORS website’s frequently asked questions section reads. The ORS also reviews all of these forms. The consulting policy in 2004 is consistent with the current version. It is unclear whether the legal expert’s alleged actions would also have constituted “lobbying” in the Duke policy, which would have required reporting as well. The policy says that lobbying questionnaires are sent out to senior officers on a quarterly basis and to faculty on an annual basis to comply with the University’s legal requirements. Manafort never registered as a foreign agent, as required by federal law, the AP reported. Manafort was not registered as a federal lobbyist either, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Schoenfeld did not comment about the applicability of the lobbying policy to the situation outlined in the AP report, once again saying that he would not comment on hypotheticals. Current and former leaders of the Law School, Fuqua School of Business and Sanford School of Public Policy from the time of the reported relationship said they did not know any professors who had worked with Manafort. The Chronicle also contacted current and former professors with specific expertise in See MANAFORT on Page 4
Playing Pokémon Go could boost your health, study finds Lexi Kadis The Chronicle
Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons The researchers found that people who used the app walked 2,000 steps a day more than those who did not play the game.
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Catching ‘em all could also help you catch good health, according to new Duke research. Presented at an American Heart Association conference earlier this month, the study—led by nursing graduate student Hanzhang Xu—showed that Pokémon Go users walked on average 2,000 more steps per day. “We wanted to see whether Pokémon Go could provide an enjoyable way to engage people in regular physical activity,” Xu said. When Pokémon Go—an augmented reality application in which players travel to capture animated creatures—was released in July 2016, Xu was one of the millions of people who headed outside to try to “catch ‘em all.” “Pokémon Go was a pretty popular game
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last summer. I was a player, and I felt like I definitely walked more after playing the game,” she said. “But during that time, there were very few studies looking at whether playing this game could increase individuals’ levels of physical activity.” The study recruited 167 Pokémon players—who were iPhone users—and asked them to provide screenshots of their daily steps via the iPhone Health app for the three weeks before and after they played the game. Researchers compared the participants’ number of daily steps before and after using the app. Xu noted that people who normally exercise very little experienced a large increase in their physical activity after playing Pokémon Go. “Those that are overweight actually benefit more from the game, and those that spend more time playing the game actually walk more after they play the
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