Colonising strategic sectors by setting up seemingly
‘neutral’ institutions or funding existing bodies and co-opting figures
to do the bidding of powerful corporations is a well-worn strategy used
to achieve cultural hegemony and secure material outcomes.
While mouthing platitudes about democracy and democratic institutions, this type of corporate colonisation demonstrates a sneering contempt for democracy and by implication for ordinary people.
Take the case of GM food. The majority of the British public who hold a view on genetically modified (GM) crops are against them. Yet the push to get them into the country and onto plates is in full swing. Strategically placed politicians and scientists are conveying the message that GM food is both safe and necessary.
While mouthing platitudes about democracy and democratic institutions, this type of corporate colonisation demonstrates a sneering contempt for democracy and by implication for ordinary people.
Take the case of GM food. The majority of the British public who hold a view on genetically modified (GM) crops are against them. Yet the push to get them into the country and onto plates is in full swing. Strategically placed politicians and scientists are conveying the message that GM food is both safe and necessary.
Although such politicians and scientists have links to the GM sector, which highlights serious conflicts of interest, certain news outlets report their views uncritically. And it doesn’t help matters that part of the pro-GM public relations assault on the British public is also being facilitated under the guise of ‘objectivity’ by the Science Media Centre (SMC). As with politicians and scientists who give the impression of being independent, the SMC veneer of independence serves to mask where its real interests lie.
The PRWatch website provides some interesting details about the SMC. It was conceived in 2002 and enjoys close links with the British government. It is now based at the Wellcome Trust, one of the world's largest non-profit foundations. The Trust was founded on the fortune of American-born pharmaceutical magnate Sir Henry Wellcome, whose drug company has since evolved to become GlaxoSmithKline. The Wellcome Trust gives the SMC more than the five percent of annual income at which other institutional funding is capped.
PRWatch goes on to state that the SMC received 34 percent of its nearly 600,000 pounds in funding from corporations and trade groups for the fiscal year that ended March 2013. These figures are based on information provided the SMC’s own website. Its current funders include BASF, Bayer, and Syngenta, three of the world's biggest pesticide and GMO corporations, as well as a number of agrichemical trade groups likeCropLife International.
Given these powerful backers, should we be surprised that the SMC spearheaded attacks on French scientist Gilles-Éric Séralini in 2012 after his research team found serious health problems in rats fed Roundup Ready Monsanto GM corn, as well as in rats fed low doses of the herbicide Roundup itself without the GMO corn? His findings struck at the heart of the GM sector.
According to PRWatch, the SMC fed journalists quotes from other scientists attacking the study. Its director Fiona Fox told Times Higher Education that she was proud that SMC's emphatic thumbs down had largely been acknowledged throughout UK newsrooms. A PR job well done! The publishing journal eventually retracted the study, and a Reuters article on the retraction used two quotes from an SMC ‘expert reaction.’
‘Attack on scientific integrity’
Later, however, over 150 scientists sent a letter to the journal calling the retraction an “attack on scientific integrity.”
According to Connie St Louis, the president of the Association of British Science Writers, since the SMC's opening in 2002, the SMC has cast biased press briefings for unwitting and time-starved journalists. She says that the quality of science reporting and the integrity of information available to the public have both suffered, distorting the ability of the public to make decisions about risk.
The result is a diet of unbalanced cheerleading and the production of science information as entertainment.
Sociologist David Miller, co-founder of Public Interest Investigations/Spinwatch and editor of Powerbase, says the problem is that SMC pretends it's promoting the best science, but in fact it promotes a certain kind of science; those kinds of science that corporations and governments stand by in the area of science policy and want to see developed in terms of markets, like cloning, GMOs and to some extent pharmaceuticals as well. These are areas where there's a huge amount of potential profit to be made. Once it steps from supporting science to supporting science policy, SMC becomes political, even though it pretends not to be.
Another prominent figure, Jack Heinemann from the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, has noted that various SMCs in different countries do not publish conflicts of interest, listing scientists' public university positions but not their industry ties. For example, an SMC criticism of a peer-reviewed study he published quoted Professor Peter Langridge, a University of Melbourne senior lecturer in food technology and microbiology. It did not note what local newspaper.
The Press later found out: that his research centre receives significant funding from global GM product developer DuPont, amounting to between A$3 million (NZ$3.66 million) and A$5 million a year.
Heinemann goes on to state that scientists know they have conflicts of interest when they receive large monetary gifts or research contracts from developing technology or have an entrepreneurial stake in technology. He said that if various SMCs can’t find scientists who don't have conflicts of interest, what is their point, apart from being some kind of propaganda channel?
In Britain, through the SMC, the Agricultural Biotechnology Council and strategically placed scientists or officials whose pro-GM comments fly in the face of research findings, the GM sector is attempting to control ‘news’ by attempting to confuse commercial self-interest with scientific fact in the minds of the population and to distort the nature of scientific discourse in the both public and academic realms.
By Colin Todhunter
Science for Sale
Interactions between academia and businesses could affect the future of scientific research
Reviewed by John D. Roberts
Daniel Greenberg is a well-known investigative
reporter of science, and his current book deals with bitter and divisive
controversies over the role of research universities in societal and
commercial arenas. His modus recalls insistent advice given by the
Watergate source Deep Throat to Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward
and Carl Bernstein: "Follow the money!"
The money theme is strongly coupled to "relevance," where relevance
as used here refers to an important factor in the awarding of funds for
scientific or engineering research. The problem with relevance is that
it raises the question, relevant to whom? For example, evidence that
global climate change is connected with human activity is relevant to
many people. Evidence to the contrary is relevant to others. When
society finally pushes to do more than hand-wringing about global
climate change, billions, perhaps in the long run trillions, of dollars
can be made from either outcome.
Needless to say, with financial stakes so high for and against
global-climate-change research, money is widely used by dueling
participants as a weapon. It's used to advertise, lobby, influence vocal
sycophants to preach, and try to draw on highly respected research
universities to provide plausible expertise to influence the fray's
outcome in one way or the other. So "follow the money" becomes quite
relevant in awarding large grants to universities for climate-change
research.
Greenberg's book,
which is organized into three parts, starts with this sentence in the
Introduction, "In all cases, money drives the engine of a university."
In part 1, he is more specific: "On money matters, all of these
[research] universities are puzzling and contradictory organizations.
Virtually all describe themselves as hard-pressed financially, even as
they ingest colossal sums from a variety of sources, accumulate huge
endowments, and operate on enormous budgets." One can argue that
"colossal," "huge," and "enormous" may apply to just a few research
universities, but one cannot dismiss them altogether.
University-industry joint research projects are
special Greenberg targets because of potential conflicts of interest
between traditional university values and commercial interests. As an
example, the author tells us, "In 2002 Stanford University launched a
Global Climate and Energy Project, priced at $225 million over 10 years.
ExxonMobil, a declared disbeliever in global climate change and
generous angel for right-wing think tanks, was chief sponsor and donor
of up to $100 million for the project." Other contributors were General
Electric, Toyota, and Schlumberger, all of which had some interest in
the outcome, but not necessarily in the same way as ExxonMobil, which
elicited a comment at the time that the petroleum company was trying to
"greenwash its environmental reputation" for a sum about equivalent "to
its paper-clip budget."
Of course, Stanford offered assurances "that their project would
respect traditional scientific and academic values," and indeed, if
there have been difficulties in the ensuing six years, they are not
reported by the author. Still, constitutionally suspicious readers will
worry that the amount of money involved could lead to trouble when an
extension is negotiated if ExxonMobil should become displeased with the
project achievements. A similar arrangement for climate-change research
was reported by C&EN in 2007 between the University of California,
Berkeley, and British Petroleum for $500 million, which seems to mandate
that a contingent of BP personnel be stationed on campus. A further
Berkeley-Dow research agreement was more recently reported in C&EN.
Both agreements have received considerable criticism from Berkeley
faculty and others as being inappropriate to the university's basic
educational mission.
It should not be assumed that such university-industry arrangements
are suddenly new or unique. In California Institute of Technology's
early days (1925-35), a building was built and important research was
done for Southern California Edison Co. through a collaboration of
Caltech's electrical engineers and Edison on high-voltage power
transmission lines. Starting in 1926, through the Guggenheim
Aeronautical Laboratory led by famed aerodynamicist Theodore von Kármán,
Caltech worked with aircraft companies using an industry-funded wind
tunnel on campus, with great benefit to the participants. In the 1930s,
Caltech physicists collaborated with the medical profession on the use
of high-energy radiation to treat cancers.
Around 1980, Caltech's Carver Mead created an industry consortium
with leading electronics companies to research architectures for
large-scale arrays of integrated silicon transistors. This project had a
difficult gestation associated with intellectual property rights until
Mead got the participating companies to finesse the issue. Unlike with
other such collaborations, Mead decided when enough was enough and moved
on to other things. If ethical concerns were voiced at that time or
later about these projects at Caltech, they were minor enough, or so far
in the past, as to not be reported by Greenberg.
Greenberg gives excellent attention to the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980.
Bayh-Dole came about because of legal ambiguity concerning the ownership
of patents created in universities using federal research support from
agencies with their own policies respecting patent ownership. To solve
this problem, Bayh-Dole was passed and is still in effect.
Many readers may be unaware of the specifics of this almost
30-year-old act, so what is involved? The author starts with an excerpt
from the act: "It is the policy and objective of the Congress to use the
patent system to promote the utilization of inventions arising from
federally supported research or development ... [and] ... to promote
collaboration between commercial concerns and nonprofit organizations,
including universities."
Greenberg then says: "At that pace of growth and financial level ...
[billions per year] ... science spending became conspicuous and
politically interesting. Scientific inquiry as a manifestation of the
human spirit is an inspiring notion, but politicians wanted tangible
results, not just arcane research papers."
The act gives universities ownership of patents
generated by federal support but allows the government royalty-free
rights to use of the patents. At the same time, the scientist(s) whose
work created the patents could arrange with their universities to start
spin-off companies and enrich themselves, if successful, by either
selling out to a larger company or, in the style of Microsoft and
Google, growing their companies to extreme value.
Bayh-Dole mandates that patents generated with government support be
offered to commercial interests. Just how strongly this and other
provisions of the act are enforced is uncertain, but it is clear that,
if unheeded, serious legal complications could result. One outcome has
been the growth of technology-transfer offices in almost every
university with a research program in science and/or engineering.
Greenberg is vitriolic over the Association of University Technology
Managers (AUTM) for overblowing the success of technology transfer as
mandated by the Bayh-Dole Act. Greenberg says sarcastically, "In AUTM's
version of the story, the Bayh-Dole Act is an unalloyed success,
undeserving of the reservations and criticisms by theory-blinkered
economists and antediluvian purists ... nostalgically on a long-ago
gentlemanly era of science."
Whether or not such sarcasm is warranted, it is a fact that
relatively few technology-transfer offices produce large returns, and
the patent, legal, and other expenses of these offices can minimize or
outweigh returns. Although early on AUTM emphasized the financial gains
to be achieved in technology transfer, it and the universities are now
converted to extolling the broad societal gains rather than desired
financial outcomes. Nonetheless, the author reports in detail on
Washington University in St. Louis and Georgia Institute of Technology
as prime examples of institutions that have thoroughly embraced the new
reality of tech transfers and that profit financially from them.
As for "follow the money," Greenberg describes situations where
ethical concerns, conflicts of interest, legal battles, unauthorized or
authorized advertising statements implying university endorsement for
particular uses of licensed patents, and the like have tarnished great
institutions or affected involved faculty. Several cases detailed by the
author will be found by the interested reader to include such examples
as Novartis/Syngenta with Berkeley, Johns Hopkins University and a skin
care product, and large consulting contracts for senior NIH personnel
with pharmaceutical companies.
Part 2 of Greenberg's book takes a different tack in
which 70 pages of interesting material, well worth reading, have been
gleaned from six veterans of the technology-transfer revolution. Most of
the interviews are two or more years old, and minds may not be the same
today. Included are bitter remarks by chemistry professor Robert Holton
of Florida State University on dealing with pharmaceutical companies
with regard to Taxol; a different experience with professor Robert M.
Dickson of Georgia Tech on imaging techniques, with a surprise ending to
an open conversation; professor William S. Wold with conflict of
interest in biomedical research at Saint Louis University; Timothy
Mulcahy, then of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, on internal
university relations associated with tech-transfer activities; and a
conversation with Drummond Rennie, who has been connected with the New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association,
with deep concerns for possible bias in reporting on tests of the
efficacies of drugs, where the authors represent institutions or others
who have financial interests in those tests.
The final part of the book consists of two essays: "What's Right and
Wrong, and How To Make It Better" and a tasteless parable of the
exploits of "Grant Swinger." The first essay confronts scientific fraud,
which embarrasses the scientific community even though-considering the
yearly volume of published papers—high—profile cases, mostly driven by
failures to reproduce important experimental results, are relatively
few. The level to which small fudges occur in published data can hardly
be expected to be known. However, this essay deals mainly with "wrongs,"
which range over topics already discussed or alluded to. Substantial
criticism is also directed toward the unwillingness of the University of
Pennsylvania to reveal its financial agreements with industrial
sponsors, which makes it difficult to "follow the money."
Justification for such practices is easily constructed, but is this
the proper stance for either public or private universities to take? It
is now mandatory for many journals to include footnotes with information
about conflicts of interest with regard to the subject matter of
submitted papers, but Greenberg notes a trend to ignore regulations
about conflicts of interest. He reports that in a study of 3,200
scientists, many said they had changed details of their papers as a
result of persuasion from a funding source.
Among corrective measures for conflicts of interest, one procedure
adaptable from information technology is "open source" collaborations
through which intellectual property will be free for academic and
commercial uses. In such arrangements, the universities do not own
patents and avoid many problems. To extend open source to pharmaceutical
research is a different matter, but Greenberg suggests that changes in
the patent system itself could have many advantages. Other measures
could include the aforementioned need for transparency of agreements
between industry and universities, tightened internal scrutiny by
universities of their own research operations, and continued efforts of
journal editors to stem the tide of deceit in research publications.
This reviewer was disappointed with part 1, which was highly critical
of the compensation of university presidents, even though their levels
of compensation are hardly commensurate with upper-level industrial
management. One should expect that university presidents are likely to
have more workhours and a greater variety of responsibilities than
company CEOs. Universities and their biology departments are also
strongly criticized for not being able to provide tenure-track positions
until postdoctoral fellows reach their late 30s or early 40s. But the
author fails to recognize that biology and other sciences are victims of
their own success. Success here means wonderful science to work on and
capable postdoctoral fellows, but they are too many to be easily
assimilated by the number and sizes of existing academic departments and
facilities. Yet in other places in the book, the author sharply
criticizes universities for pushing to keep expanding.
The book is clearly an interesting read, even if it may raise
temperatures under the collars of many company personnel and the faculty
and university administrators with high stakes in technology transfers.
John D. Roberts is Institute Professor of Chemistry emeritus at California Institute of Technology.
C & EN (Chemical & Engineering News) March 24, 2008, Volume 86, Number 12, pp. 70-72
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