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Institute of Science in Society
Science [ISIS logo]
Society
Sustainability
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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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