http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/en/2001/03/11academic

CONFLICTS OF INTEREST ON THE CAMPUS

For sale: US academic integrity


Private enterprise is much taken with education,
especially the universities. In the United States the
race to get hold of academic disciplines that bring in
the money has already increased conflicts of interest
between research and business. Under cover of a
'marketplace of ideas', the logic of the market could
turn academics into entrepreneurs and endanger the
unity of our universities.

by IBRAHIM WARDE *


In November 1998 the University of California at Berkeley signed a
controversial agreement with Novartis, the Swiss pharmaceutical giant and
producer of genetically engineered crops. In exchange for $25m to its
Department of Plant and Microbial Biology (DPMB), the university would
grant the firm first right to negotiate licenses on about one-third of the
department's discoveries (including the results of research funded by state
and
federal sources). Novartis would also be represented on two out of five
seats
in the department's research committee, which determines how the money is
spent.

About half of the faculty members of the College of Natural Resources, of
which the DPMB is a part, expressed concern that the deal would erode
Berkeley's commitment to "public good research", and 60% feared it would
impede the free exchange of ideas among scientists (1). California state
senator Tom Hayden declared that the deal "raises significant questions of
whether biotechnology research primarily serves the interests of
corporations
and marginalises potential academic critics at the expense of free inquiry
and
unfettered research".

Yet, by and large, the deal represents the new model of cooperation between
corporations and universities. Since California's Proposition 13, which
froze
property tax and started a widespread "tax revolt" in 1978, state funding
for
education has started to decline. Changes were afoot at the federal level,
too.
In 1980 the US Congress, concerned about declining productivity and rising
competition from Japan, passed the Bayh-Dole act, which for the first time
allowed universities to patent the results of federally funded research.
Subsequent legislation further encouraged corporations to fund academic
research - through tax breaks among other things - and universities to
licence
their inventions to corporations.

With the end of the cold war, universities suffered more public cuts. Thus
in
1987 Berkeley, which was once funded almost entirely by the state of
California, saw the share of public funding fall to 50% of its overall
budget,
and to 34% in 1999. Buildings erected in the 1990s, such as the one housing
the business school, were financed exclusively by private donations. The
Haas
family (heirs to jeans makers Levi Strauss) was its most generous
benefactor,
and saw to it that the school bore its name. A number of major corporations
endowed faculty positions. Even the dean holds the position of "Bank of
America dean". The state-of-the-art building of the Haas School of Business
is plastered with corporate logos and all its rooms - and even the tables
and
chairs - are adorned with plaques commemorating their donor - a company,
an alumnus or a graduating class.

The market-model university

This is the world of what Harvard professors James Engell and Anthony
Dangerfield call the "market-model university", where departments that make
money, study money or attract money are given priority (2). Increasingly,
universities are becoming two-tiered institutions with rich departments and
poor departments, academic superstars and an academic underclass.

For advocates of this new partnership, such as the Business-Higher Education
Forum, a lobbying coalition of corporate and academic leaders, there is a
long
list of reasons why tearing down the walls separating the universities from
the
marketplace is a win-win proposition: corporate donations help build modern
laboratories and finance cutting edge research; business can innovate while
giving academic scientists a greater share of the financial rewards;
corporations more than make up for the shortfall in public financing;
students
benefit through a variety of trickle-down mechanisms such as scholarships
and
research opportunities; corporate funding enables scientific breakthroughs,
such as finding cures for deadly diseases, which benefit society as a whole;
and the public at large, and even the government, benefit from attendant
economic growth, increased corporate taxes, and individual and corporate
philanthropy.

Not everyone agrees with this proposition (3). One scientist says that "the
increasing pressures on universities to get into bed with industry are not
always resulting in a good night's rest for either partner". Others, like
Ronald
Collins, director of the Integrity in Science Project at the Centre for
Science in
the Public Interest, have argued that "science is losing credibility ...
Conflicts
of interest, biased studies and secrecy are undermining science's reputation
and its truth-seeking objective. Scientist-consultants who are paid by
industries but who serve as faculty professors frequently testify before
Congress and federal regulatory agencies without pausing to reveal their
industry connections. Science departments in public universities enter into
multimillion dollar contracts with private corporations, yet few details are
revealed about the nature of such agreements. Medical and other science
journals all too frequently publish articles without adequately disclosing
even
major conflicts of interest" (4).

Similarly, in his most recent book, Robert Reich, minister of labour in the
first
Clinton administration, criticises the impact of the "era of the good deal"
on
the world of education (5). The quest for knowledge, disinterested research
and intellectual curiosity have become secondary. Heads of universities are
now assuming the role of travelling salesmen and are judged primarily on
their
fund-raising abilities. Students at the most prestigious colleges see their
studies
as an investment that will open the door to networking and huge salaries.

It was once assumed that funding came with no strings attached. But in a far
cry from the old model of philanthropy, corporations now expect to get their
money's worth - and then some. The logic of the "market-model university"
assumes that whoever is paying the piper should call the tune. Recipients
are
expected to become apologists for donors (6). Nike recently announced that
it would withdraw millions of dollars in financial support from three
universities
(Michigan, Oregon and Brown) because student groups had dared criticise
the company's wages and working conditions, especially of children, in their
factories in some of the world's poorer countries.

He who pays the piper

In the 20 years since the Bayh-Dole act was passed, industry funding for
academic research has increased eight-fold and the number of patents
produced by universities has gone up 20-fold. Universities themselves are
beginning to look and behave like for-profit companies. Every research
university has a technology-licensing office whose purpose is to maximise
returns from royalties. In the last few years a number of universities,
including
Stanford and Chicago, have established internal venture-capital funds to
bankroll commercially promising research. With the promise of new "delivery"
systems for education (on-line and distance learning), universities are also
racing to establish joint ventures with for-profit companies. In the words
of
Berkeley Public Policy professor David Kirp, "the hoary call for a
'marketplace of ideas' has turned into a grotesque double entendre" (7).

A logical consequence is the appearance of a new academic type: the
professor-entrepreneur who uses his academic affiliation as a launching pad
for lucrative ventures. Despite full-time academic appointments, such
academics often spend most of their time working on their private projects.
Another unseemly aspect is the tendency to privatise revenues and socialise
expenses (through the use of university administrative resources as well as
"free" student labour). Yet though academic departments and students are
often short-changed in the process, most universities look the other way.
They
look instead at all the financial possibilities that come with
high-visibility
academic stars - from the "overhead" paid to the university out of grant
money
to present or future gifts or bequests from such professors to their
institutions.

Perhaps the major problem with conflicts of interest involving academics who
have a financial stake in the outcome of their research is that it distorts
the
policy process. Increasingly corporations operate under cover of "non-profit
research organisations" which provide the much-needed "plausible
deniability". Thus, at the time of the Microsoft trial, "independent"
research
institutes secretly funded by the software giant churned out "studies" meant
to
influence the public as well as the courts (8). And by looking at research
on
the health impact of tobacco, the "science" behind global warming or breast
implants, or the effectiveness of a drug, we can see that it is not unusual
for
sponsored academics to fudge the data, suppress unfavourable evidence, and
otherwise "torture the numbers till they confess" (9).

An illustration of the policy impact of sponsored research is the case of
University of Florida criminology professor Charles Thomas who for 20 years
was the relentless advocate of prison privatisation. He had testified before
Congress on the merits of full-scale privatisation, and his "expert" views
were
frequently quoted in major newspapers and moved the stock value of
corporations involved in running jails (10). He turned out to have been on
the
payroll of private corrections companies all along, and was also as a
significant shareholder in those companies. In January 1999 he received a
$3m consulting fee over the merger involving Corrections Corporation of
America. Following an investigation by the state of Florida Ethics
Commission, he "denied wrongdoing" and offered to pay a $2,000 fine.

Academic disciplines that should in theory be concerned about the relations
between universities and the marketplace pay scant attention to these
issues.
Departments of education are busy exploring the latest educational fads. The
humanities, obsessed by multiculturalism, have "deconstructed" such concepts
as "truth" and forfeited their right to defend disinterested inquiry. The
social
sciences are mostly preoccupied with quantification and abstraction.
Business
schools are cheerleaders for whatever generates profits.

So by default it is within the sciences themselves - and in publications
such as
the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) or the Lancet - that the
most thoughtful research on conflicts of interest and other ethical issues
is
taking place. A worrying development occurred when the Los Angeles Times
revealed that 19 out of the 40 articles published in the last three years in
the
"Drug Therapy" section of the NEJM had been written by authors with
financial ties to drug makers. The NEJM is hugely influential, and it had
taken
a strong stand on medical ethics and established stringent ethical
guidelines for
its contributors. It was only after the Los Angeles Times report that the
soul-searching began and an internal inquiry was held. Then it emerged that
reviewers of new drugs had disclosed financial ties to the NEJM editors. It
has been suggested that it was simply not possible to find reviewers without
ties to pharmaceutical companies. At all events, Marcia Angell, the outgoing
editor-in-chief of the NEJM, published an editorial decrying the growing
conflicts of interest in academic research institutions throughout the
country
(11).

The world of science is now going through what business schools did in the
1980s. A Stanford business school professor recalls that "in the early 1980s
the faculty here started getting snotty comments about how they were
contributing to greed on Wall Street and training modern day pirates and
buccaneers. After a while it got hard to laugh off. So the faculty said
'Hey,
let's just put an ethics unit in the curriculum. That'll shut everybody
up'." Now
we have ethics galore - ethical guidelines, ethics courses, ethics seminars.
They may not have not stopped the more doubtful practices, but they have
guaranteed that science can proceed with a clear conscience.

* Professor at the University of California, Berkeley; author of "Islamic
Finance in the Global Economy", Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh,
2000

1.Eyal Press and Jennifer Washburn, "The Kept University", Atlantic
Monthly, Boston, March 2000.

2.James Engell and Anthony Dangerfield , "The Market-Model
University: Humanities in the Age of Money", Harvard Review,
May-June 1998.

3.David Weatherall, "Academia and industry: increasingly uneasy
bedfellows", Lancet, London, 6 May 2000.

4.Ronald Collins, "Assuring truth in science a must", Baltimore Sun, 29
August 2000.

5.Robert B Reich, The Future of Success, Alfred A Knopf, New York,
2001 (289 pp, $26).

6.See "The fine art of giving", Le Monde diplomatique English edition,
December 1997.

7.David L Kirp, "The New U", The Nation, New York, 17 April 2000.

8.New York Times, 18 September 1999.

9.Marcia Angell, Science on Trial: The Clash of Medical Evidence
and the Law in the Breast Implant Case, W W Norton, New York,
1997 ; Ross Gelbspan, The Heat Is On: The Climate Crisis, the
Cover-up, the Prescription, Perseus Press, Los Angeles, 1998.

10.See Loic Wacquant, "Imprisoning the American poor", Le Monde
diplomatique English edition, July 1998.

11.New England Journal of Medicine, Boston, 24 February, 22 June
and 13 July 2000.

Original text in English

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