The rise of a new breed of academic entrepreneurs worries Sheldon Krimsky, a professor of urban and environmental policy and planning at Tufts University. In Science in the Private Interest (Rowman & Littlefield), Mr. Krimsky argues that the shift toward ever-greater financial ties between universities and private companies during the past two decades has eroded science dedicated to the public good. “Secrecy has replaced openness; privatization of knowledge has replaced communitarian values; and commodification of discovery has replaced the idea that university-generated knowledge is a free good, a part of the social commons,” he writes.
Q. More and more academic scientists have become involved with industry. What can swing the pendulum back?
A. The changes would require some fundamental principles of ethics to be incorporated. It’s not unlike the changes we saw when we introduced institutional review boards for human experimentation. ...
To safeguard academic science, first of all we have to have universal disclosure. If scientists are going to speak out, either for or against some important public issue -- global warming, the toxicity of chemicals -- we should know whether they have financial ties to special-interest groups.
We have to prevent the most egregious conflicts of interest, such as clinical investigators in human trials who have a financial interest in the drugs that they are testing. Universities should not be permitted as nonprofit institutions to become venture capitalists or equity partners. It’s just too conflicting a role.
Q. You’ve been writing about these issues for years, but the industrialization of science continues. Do you think this book can make a difference?
A. It offers people some options for how we can move in a different direction. At the very least, it will succeed if it raises the consciousness of a variety of groups: the media, government policy makers, industry representatives who have to understand their role in this problem, and of course, the gatekeepers of knowledge, the scientific-journal editors.
Q. Severing ties to industry would hurt universities’ bottom lines. Is the moral argument persuasive enough to cause that change?
A. The most effective way to do that is for the various university organizations, like the Association of American Universities or the Association of American Medical Colleges, to come up with acceptable guidelines that they all can agree to. Many of them don’t want to see the universities just turn into an appendage of industrial interests. The signals that they generally put out about the university are that it is an institution whose integrity should not be compromised. ... Can the universities reach a higher level of moral standing? I think they can.
http://chronicle.com Section: Research & Publishing Volume 50, Issue 6, Page A14
