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          Institute of Science in Society

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          Society
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     Relevant Links:   * Foreign academics threaten black list over
                         sacked Steele
                       * Senior Scientist Dismissed for Defending
                         Academic Standards
                       * Is Framework VI Socially Accountable?
                       * Public Subsidy of Failed Corporate Science
                       * The New Thought Police -- Suppressing Dissent
                         in Science


     ISIS Report -- May 29 2001
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                        Big Business = Bad Science?

          Commercial pressures are distorting academic science and
          society is not getting the full benefit from the science
          it is paying for. Prof. Peter Saunders and Dr. Mae-Wan
          Ho report on a recent conference in London.




     "Corruption of Scientific Integrity? The Commercialisation of
     Academic Science" was the title of a day long meeting held in the
     British Academy, 2 May, under the auspices of the Council for
     Academic Autonomy and the Council for Academic Freedom and
     Academic Standards. The room was filled to capacity, and people
     had been turned away.

     "Down which river has academic science been sold?" began John
     Ziman in a provocative mood. Ziman, well known both as a physicist
     and for his work on the social responsibility of science, argued
     that there are two kinds of science: "instrumental" and
     "non-instrumental". The first is generally directed towards
     practical ends, wealth creation, improving health, preserving the
     environment, and so on, which are foreseen at the outset. It is
     also generally proprietary (someone owns the results), local,
     limited (to foreseen problems and needs), and partisan.

     In contrast, the goals of non-instrumental science are not so
     clearly defined. It lays the foundation for instrumental science,
     and fulfils other roles as well. It provides trustworthy knowledge
     of the world and of ourselves, and is a source of wonder. It helps
     us develop an attitude of critical rationality, reminding us not
     to accept without questioning, dogmas, theories, `facts' or
     authority. It is a source of non-partisan expertise, a necessity
     in an age when governments require scientific advice in taking
     many decisions. Non-instrumental science is public, available to
     all, imaginative, self-critical and disinterested. It has
     traditionally been largely carried out in universities, though
     also to some extent in government sponsored laboratories.

     Society needs both kinds of science, but there is an increasing
     tendency to focus on practical utility to the exclusion of
     everything else. This leads to a new `post-academic' culture in
     which everything, in universities as in industries, is directed
     towards practical instrumental values. All the UK research
     councils except PPARC (Particle Physics and Astronomy) have wealth
     creation at the top of their missions, and Ziman reminded his
     audience that particle physics too got its big push during and
     after the war on practical grounds. But post-academic science
     cannot perform many of the functions society requires of science,
     and so by treating all science as a saleable commodity, society
     risks losing many of the benefits.

     If non-instrumental science is to survive, Ziman said, we need new
     structures, funding arrangements, contracts of employment and even
     a new culture within science itself. He did not suggest what these
     might be, but told the meeting that developing them must be a high
     priority for the scientific community.

     The second speaker, Professor Nancy Olivieri, described her
     travails at the Toronto Hospital for Sick Children, part of the
     University of Toronto. She had been working on Deferiprone, a drug
     for treating the blood disease thalassaemia. The first results had
     been encouraging, but the researchers later became concerned about
     the level of toxicity. The company involved, Apotex, made great
     efforts to prevent her from informing her patients and other
     scientists.

     The result has been a long legal battle, in which the University
     has sacked and reinstated her several times. Olivieri acknowledged
     the support of colleagues and of her union, the Canadian
     Association of University Teachers (CAUT). She knew of similar
     cases in other universities, and it was significant that in none
     of them had the institution supported its staff. She herself had
     been relatively fortunate, she said, because the company's actions
     had been overt: they had written her letters and left messages on
     her answering machine. In many cases, the pressures are covert.
     You just don't get the grant or the job, and however convinced you
     may be about the reason, there is no evidence that will stand up
     in a court.

     Olivieri pointed out that to conceal information about possible
     toxic effects is a violation of the Hippocratic oath, which
     incorporates the precautionary principle. Contracts that require
     such information cannot be binding in Canada because they violate
     the common law provision that a contract may not contain a clause
     that is against public policy.

     Many in the audience were aware of another incident that had been
     reported in the press shortly before the meeting, and which also
     involved the University of Toronto. David Healey, a British
     psycho-pharmacologist, had been offered, and accepted, a post in
     the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) at the
     University. In November, he spoke at a conference that was being
     held at CAMH, and claimed that the highly profitable drug Prozac
     could cause people to attempt suicide. The job offer was withdrawn
     within a week. Eli Lilly, the makers of Prozac, is a major funder
     of CAMH, but both the company and the University denied they
     exerted any influence on the decision. The Canadian Association of
     University Teachers has, however, described the affair as "an
     affront to academic freedom in Canada."

     Like the other speakers, Sir David Weatherall, who recently
     retired from the Institute of Molecular Medicine, University of
     Oxford, accepted that there has to be cooperation between
     universities and industry. This will inevitably lead to problems,
     which we must try to solve. What John Ziman had called
     non-instrumental science was also important even from a practical
     point of view. When medical students were asked which discoveries
     are the most important for the treatment of disease, over half
     those they named arose out of `curiosity based' research. If we
     concentrate on goal-directed science, we may fail to solve the
     really important problems.

     There is also a problem with clinical research because it is seen
     as close to market and therefore something that industry, not
     governments, should pay for. But this can lead to conflicts of
     interest or bias when the investigators are financially linked to
     the company. There can be great contractual pressures, and Nancy
     Olivieri's story was very much the tip of the iceberg.

     There is also evidence that someone who has an interest in the
     outcome is more likely to produce a positive result. The learned
     journals have been slow to note conflicts of interest. Weatherall
     described as "not uncommon" a practice known as ghosting, in which
     scientists working for a company write a paper and pay an outside
     academic to be the "author".

     One of the problems is patent law, which he described as being "in
     a mess", at least so far as biological material is concerned. What
     should be patentable is a novel use, but the law is at best not
     clear on this point. If it is possible to own genes, that can
     hinder research.

     Weatherall stressed the need for safeguards at the interface
     between universities and industry. There must be reduced pressure
     for short-term gains and a rationalisation of the patent laws on
     biological material. Journals should demand statements about
     possible conflicts of interest. There should be more protection
     for scientists. This is difficult to achieve because the usual
     pressure on them is simply a failure to fund them, but it would be
     a step forward to have review panels to sort out problems.
     Weatherall also urged that young scientists should be taught how
     to deal with industry; he felt that both scientists and the
     universities were naïve, and easily taken advantage of.

     The final speaker George Monbiot began by apologising for arriving
     late; he had been at a meeting on the corporatisation of
     agriculture, which gave an idea of how pervasive is the problem of
     corporate takeover. Scientists must join up with the general
     struggle of society, he admonished.

     He reminded the meeting that because the government sees science
     as a driver of the growth economy, it ties funding more and more
     to the needs of business. Industry has more and more influence in
     universities. One way is by giving money to departments that are
     involved in research that directly affects the company. On the
     face of it, this might seem natural enough, but when combined with
     the general shortage of funds, and the presence of many
     industrialists on Research Council boards, the result is to bias
     academic research heavily into the direction the companies want.
     For example, UK universities spend five times as much money on
     research into oil and gas as into renewable energy sources. Yet
     you would expect that the latter, being a new field, would require
     more academic investment than does a mature technology.

     The government expects research establishments to attract outside
     funding, but this makes it difficult for any laboratory such as
     the Centre for Coastal Research, whose function is largely to
     monitor the effects of pollution. Corporations are unlikely to
     fund an institution whose job it is to study the harmful effects
     of corporations. Monbiot pointed out that the one pollutant that
     seems to be studied extensively is radon, which happens to be
     almost the only one that occurs naturally and not as a by-product
     of industry or agriculture.

     In the same way, a disproportionate amount of public money has
     gone into research in agricultural and biomedical biotechnology.
     Research into the risks of genetic engineering, which ought to
     have been high on the agenda of public funding councils, is almost
     non-existent. Instead, as in the case of Dr. Arpad Pusztai, whose
     scientific findings go against the interest of corporations, he is
     sacked and villified.

     Monbiot ended by charging that scientists tend to side with the
     corporations and not with the public. "We need a revolution in the
     laboratory", he said, though he didn't say how we could go about
     it. When asked how an independent scientist could work for the
     public good, all he could advise was to set up shop independently,
     like the staff of the Centre for Ecology, who were driven out of
     Edinburgh University for criticising the government and industry.

     There were lively interjections from the floor on issues that were
     hardly touched upon on the platform, especially those that might
     begin to solve some of the problems aired. For instance, little,
     if anything, has been done to promote critical public
     understanding of science by those charged with the task, such as
     the Royal Society's Committee for the Public Understanding of
     Science (COPUS), nor have they made any effort to engage the
     public in open dialogue. A public with critical understanding of
     science is necessary, both for making democratic decisions on
     science and science-related policies and in ensuring that science
     is accountable to society. The suppression of scientific dissent
     by the scientific establishment must be strenuously resisted by
     all concerned, as it serves to promote the corporate agenda and
     threatens to stamp out any effective opposition to the corporate
     take over from within the scientific community. Above all,
     scientists need to reject biotech patents and to recapture public
     funding for scientific research that genuinely serves public good.

     Unfortunately, the wider issues never got discussed, as the
     organisers' concerns seem to be too narrowly focussed on the
     protection of whistle-blowers. The corporate take over of science
     needs to be tackled at source, in the structure of governance, in
     the social responsibility and ethics of science. It is not just
     the individual freedom of scientists to tell the truth that is at
     stake, important though that is; it is their independence and
     their freedom to work for public good that must be restored and
     maintained.

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