The Herald reported this past week that the hiring of new Chief Information Officer Ravi Pendse may spur an increased emphasis on corporate funding of university research. Such funding is particularly attractive during this period of economic hardship — federal research agencies experienced significant cuts this past year, which were in turn passed on to the universities whose work they sponsor. It is completely natural for researchers to seek out alternative funding sources in the wake of sequester-induced uncertainty, but collaborations between universities and corporations are fraught with potential impropriety and perverse incentives. Private funding of scientific research is a necessary evil and one that calls for constant monitoring — and the University should be cautious with any increase in this practice.
Questions of outside infringements on academic freedom are nothing new, and critics who call for a complete halt on all university-industry collaborations are naive to the reality of the situation. While the University may bemoan its relatively small endowment compared to those of its peer institutions, at $2.5 billion dollars, it is roughly the size of the Gross Domestic Product of the entire nation of Aruba. The University itself is a brand, and research advancements not only provide public recognition but also attract high-quality students and faculty members, along with further funding for research. Our collaboration with corporate partners is miniscule compared to Stanford University’s — the school just announced it is creating a start-up incubator, StartX, that will actually invest in its own students’ companies. A New Yorker profile this week described Stanford’s computer science department as the “Kentucky basketball team” of the school, a “way station for the country’s finest talent,” as it questioned whether the heady influence of Silicon Valley would fundamentally change its approach to undergraduate education.
Industry funding may provide stability in a financially unstable time, but such security comes with significant ethical concerns. Recently, the University itself has experienced two events that illustrated the risks involved in accepting private funding: one in the 90’s with Associate Professor of Medicine David Kern, and the other in 2001 with Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and Human Behavior Martin Keller, department chair at the time. Kern was fired by Memorial Hospital of Rhode Island, an institution that is affiliated with the Alpert Medical School, after publishing a report implicating Microfibres, Inc., a donor to Memorial Hospital, in creating an unsafe work environment that led to dangerous lung conditions. Keller, who retired last year, accepted money from GlaxoSmithKline to fund a pharmaceutical study eventually determined to be fraudulent and guilty of understating the risk of adolescent suicide in the antidepressant Paxil. Such incidents demonstrate that there are not only ethical and academic risks to participating wholeheartedly in the rise of the university-industrial complex, but also that such events may result in publicity so negative it defeats the purpose of participating in corporate-funded research in the first place.
If we are to continue to pursue and expand outside sources of funding, we must ensure that our regulation of potential conflicts of interest keeps pace. Lawrence Larson, dean of the School of Engineering, acknowledged in last week’s article that “there are risks any time you have sponsored research,” but he added that the University “mitigate(s) those risks carefully.” This minimizing of risks must be continual and thorough in order to protect the University from allying itself with morally dubious sources.
Editorials are written by The Herald’s editorial page board: its editor, Rachel Occhiogrosso, and its members, Daniel Jeon, Hannah Loewentheil and Thomas Nath. Send comments to editorials@browndailyherald.com.
A previous version of this article incorrectly labeled former Associate Professor of Medicine David Kern as a former University employee. In fact, Kern, a former clinical faculty member, was employed and fired by Memorial Hospital of Rhode Island, an institution that is affiliated with but distinct from the Alpert Medical School. The Herald regrets the error.
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