Masters of the universities For sale: academic integrity. In the second extract from his new book, George Monbiot describes how our ivory towers of learning were taken over by industry Education Unlimited Monday September 11, 2000 The Guardian For most of the 20th century, scientists in British universities were discouraged from engaging with industry, for fear that such contact would persuade them to concentrate on immediate technological needs rather than on the more profound scientific questions. Today, by contrast, contact between government-funded researchers and industry is, in effect, compulsory in many departments. The result is that there is scarcely a university in the UK whose academic freedom has not been compromised by its funding arrangements. Business now inhabits the cloisters of even the biggest and richest institutions. Cambridge University, for example, possesses a Shell chair in chemical engineering, BP professorships in organic chemistry and petroleum science, an ICI chair in applied thermodynamics, a Glaxo chair of molecular parasitology, a Unilever chair of molecular science, a Price Waterhouse chair of financial accounting and a Marks & Spencer chair of farm animal health and food Science. Rolls-Royce, AT&T, Microsoft and the biotechnology company Zeneca have all set up laboratories in the university. In June 1999, BP gave the university �25m to fund work across five departments. In November 1999, Cambridge set up an �84m joint venture, funded largely by the British government, partly by industry, with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Its purpose is to "change the face of business and wealth creation in the UK" by stimulating "research spin-offs" and "training the business leaders of the future". Cambridge's vice chancellor explained: "We may once have been thought of as an ivory tower - today we are a tower of high technology and business prowess." Oxford University has accepted �20m from Wafic Said to build a business school which will bear his name. Said was named in the Commons inquiry into the sale of a "supergun" to Iraq, as the agent responsible for brokering Britain's �20bn arms deal with Saudi Arabia. In 1998, he reached a �2m settlement with the Inland Revenue after investigators found that his companies had not paid the necessary British taxes. Lord Jenkins, the chancellor of the university, announced that the gift would place Said among those "to whom Oxford has given immortality". The university has allowed Rupert Murdoch, a man whose contribution to the language has been, shall we say, resourceful, to endow a chair in English and a visiting professorship in the broadcast media. The first beneficiary of the professorship is David Elstein, who used to run Murdoch's channel Sky One. I have been unable to find a university anywhere in the UK which does not accept corporate money for research in which the companies involved have an immediate interest. The independent researchers Greg Muttitt and Chris Grimshaw have examined the influence of oil companies on British universities. They identified nearly 1,000 research projects being conducted for oil and gas firms. Some university faculties, they discovered, have become largely dependent upon industrial money. Aberdeen's geology department, for example, boasts that "Industrial contracts and sponsorship now account for more than two-thirds of our research income, support over one-third of our lecturing staff, fund nearly all our postgraduates, and even provide appropriate components of our undergraduate training." There are BP professorships, fellowships or lectureships at seven British universities, including both Oxford and Cambridge. A director of BP sits on the Council for Science and Technology. Until the end of 1998, the director general of the UK's Research Councils was Sir John Cadogan, formerly BP's research director. The chairman and chief executive of Esso UK sits on the Higher Education Funding Council for England. Lord Oxburgh, the rector of Imperial College, is a director of Shell. The result of such corporate involvement, the researchers found, was a significant distortion of the research agenda. Five times as much money is spent in British universities on research into oil and gas as on research into renewable sources of energy, even though renewable energy, which is an emerging industry, requires a great deal of research as it approaches its take-off phase, while oil and gas extraction, a mature industry, could be expected to need far less. But while the acceptance of corporate money might encourage researchers to change the way they view the world, the acceptance of public money is now scarcely less hazardous. The main source of funds for biologists working in Britain's universities is the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), a government body with an annual budget of �190m. Its chairman is Peter Doyle, formerly an executive director of the biotechnology company Zeneca. Among the members of its council are the chief executive of the pharmaceutical firm Chiroscience; the former director of research and development at the controversial food company Nestl�; the president of the Food and Drink Federation; a consultant to the biochemical industry; and the general manager of Britain's biggest farming business. The BBSRC's strategy board contains executives from SmithKline Beecham, Merck Sharpe & Dohme and AgrEvo UK. The research council has seven specialist committees, each overseeing the dispersal of money to different branches of biology. Employees of Zeneca, according to the council's website, sit on all of them. When the BBSRC was established in 1994, it took over the biological funding programme previously run by the Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC). SERC's purpose was to advance knowledge of all kinds, whether or not it had an immediate commercial application. The BBSRC's purpose, it maintains, "is to sustain a broad base of interdisciplinary research and training to help industry, commerce and government create wealth and improve the quality of life". As well as diverting large sums of public money which would once have been spent on blue-sky biological research into genetic engineering, the BBSRC also funds the secondment of academics into corporations. Such schemes, the council enthuses, help "companies establish long-lasting personal and corporate linkages with academics/higher education institutions" and to "influence basic research relevant to company objectives". The council has launched a Biotechnology Young Entrepreneurs Scheme, "aimed at encouraging a more entrepreneurial attitude in bioscientists". It has paid for researchers to work for Nestl�, Unilever, Glaxo Wellcome, SmithKline Beecham, AgrEvo, DuPont, Rhone-Poulenc and, of course, Zeneca. More disturbing than the activi ties of the research councils, however, are the priorities of the parliamentary office of science and technology's 16 foresight panels. The foresight panels scarcely pretend to promote either academic objectivity or the wider public interest. Though they are official sources of scientific advice to both central government and to the research councils, they are largely controlled not by scientists but by business people. The food and drink foresight panel, for example, is composed of eight representatives of food companies and trade bodies, and three members of university departments, as well as members of the BBSRC and the Medical Research Council, who are expected to respond to its demands. It has several subcommittees, whose purpose is to identify "research priorities". One is called the alcoholic drinks panel. The report it produced was drawn up in consultation with five trade associations, three industry- sponsored research institutes, 15 drinks companies and no one else. Its report called for "a sophisticated understanding of individuals' eating and drinking behaviour" to assist "product development". The report of the fruit and vegetables subcommittee suggested that "Irradiation may be re-examined for extending shelf life." The dairy subcommittee concluded that "More effort should be put into publicising the health benefits of milk in the human diet." The meat subcommittee complained that "criticisms of meat production from an animal-welfare and environmental-impact perspective, and of high levels of red meat consumption as potentially damaging to human health, gained credence from some scientific work". It called for research into "manipulation of the immune system" and the "application of physical or chemical treatments of carcasses". "Concern that the outcome may not be acceptable in the current climate," it asserted, "should not... hold back the related basic research." Until the day before he became minister for science and technology in July 1998, Lord Sainsbury chaired another subcommittee, the food chain group. His report, published like all the others by the government's Department of Trade and Industry, expressed the hope that in the future, "the expensive precautionary principle is abandoned". (The precautionary principle declares that if there is scientific doubt about the safety of a product or practice, it should not be deployed until that doubt has been dispelled.) "The most progressive farms," the report suggested, would be those on which "herbicides are applied by robots under the management of satellites." Sainsbury and John Battle, then a minister at the DTI, attended a food chain group summit in March 1998 which concluded that this government-funded research programme should involve "influencing and anticipating future behaviour of consumers". Summing up, Sainsbury told the delegates: "It is important for food chain companies to establish better contact with scientists and the people that provide public funds for research. OST [the office of science and technology] and MAFF [the Ministry of Agriculture] can help you make contact with the right people." Lord Sainsbury's former interests continue to feature prominently in the department he runs. He presents the prizes to the winners of his ministry's bioscience business plan competition, which is sponsored by Glaxo Wellcome and the Gatsby Charitable Foundation, the science-funding body he established before he became a minister. The chairman of the Institute of Arable Crops Research, appointed by the BBSRC, was previously chairman of the Sainsbury laboratory. An employee of J Sainsbury plc sits on the food and drink foresight panel. At the end of 1998, as public concern about the government's science policies began to emerge, Sainsbury announced a "nationwide consultation" to "explore the wider implications of scientific progress". He explained that "Our long-term aim is to build public confidence in the government's use of scientific information." The consultation was designed by an advisory group of six people. One of the members of the group was, of course, a senior manager at Zeneca. Another was an employee of J Sainsbury plc. As big business infiltrates the research agenda, ever wider zones of inquiry are placed off-limits. Some of the key questions are left for amateurs and voluntary organisations to investigate. Friends of the Earth and Newsnight studied the pollen flow from the government's test sites for genetically modified crops, for example, only because government researchers were not examining the issue. It was a retired GP, Dr Dick van Steenis, who discovered that the number of primary schoolchildren using asthma inhalers was directly proportionate to the levels of pollution to which they were exposed. Science tells us who we are and how we can live better. It is the glass through which we perceive the world. If distorted, it twists our understanding of the ways in which we might progress, of the alternatives to existing models of development. When our universities are offered for sale, objectivity and intellectual honesty become surplus to requirements. � This is an edited extract from The Captive State: The Corporate Takeover of Britain by George Monbiot (Macmillan, �12.99). To obtain a copy at the discount price of �9.99 plus 99p p&p, phone Guardian CultureShop on 0800 3166 102, or send a cheque to Guardian CultureShop, 250 Western Avenue, London W3 6EE. � Copyright Guardian Media Group plc. 2000 Masters of the universities For sale: academic integrity. In the second extract from his new book, George Monbiot describes how our ivory towers of learning were taken over by industry Education Unlimited Monday September 11, 2000 The Guardian For most of the 20th century, scientists in British universities were discouraged from engaging with industry, for fear that such contact would persuade them to concentrate on immediate technological needs rather than on the more profound scientific questions. Today, by contrast, contact between government-funded researchers and industry is, in effect, compulsory in many departments. The result is that there is scarcely a university in the UK whose academic freedom has not been compromised by its funding arrangements. Business now inhabits the cloisters of even the biggest and richest institutions. Cambridge University, for example, possesses a Shell chair in chemical engineering, BP professorships in organic chemistry and petroleum science, an ICI chair in applied thermodynamics, a Glaxo chair of molecular parasitology, a Unilever chair of molecular science, a Price Waterhouse chair of financial accounting and a Marks & Spencer chair of farm animal health and food Science. Rolls-Royce, AT&T, Microsoft and the biotechnology company Zeneca have all set up laboratories in the university. In June 1999, BP gave the university �25m to fund work across five departments. In November 1999, Cambridge set up an �84m joint venture, funded largely by the British government, partly by industry, with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Its purpose is to "change the face of business and wealth creation in the UK" by stimulating "research spin-offs" and "training the business leaders of the future". Cambridge's vice chancellor explained: "We may once have been thought of as an ivory tower - today we are a tower of high technology and business prowess." Oxford University has accepted �20m from Wafic Said to build a business school which will bear his name. Said was named in the Commons inquiry into the sale of a "supergun" to Iraq, as the agent responsible for brokering Britain's �20bn arms deal with Saudi Arabia. In 1998, he reached a �2m settlement with the Inland Revenue after investigators found that his companies had not paid the necessary British taxes. Lord Jenkins, the chancellor of the university, announced that the gift would place Said among those "to whom Oxford has given immortality". The university has allowed Rupert Murdoch, a man whose contribution to the language has been, shall we say, resourceful, to endow a chair in English and a visiting professorship in the broadcast media. The first beneficiary of the professorship is David Elstein, who used to run Murdoch's channel Sky One. I have been unable to find a university anywhere in the UK which does not accept corporate money for research in which the companies involved have an immediate interest. The independent researchers Greg Muttitt and Chris Grimshaw have examined the influence of oil companies on British universities. They identified nearly 1,000 research projects being conducted for oil and gas firms. Some university faculties, they discovered, have become largely dependent upon industrial money. Aberdeen's geology department, for example, boasts that "Industrial contracts and sponsorship now account for more than two-thirds of our research income, support over one-third of our lecturing staff, fund nearly all our postgraduates, and even provide appropriate components of our undergraduate training." There are BP professorships, fellowships or lectureships at seven British universities, including both Oxford and Cambridge. A director of BP sits on the Council for Science and Technology. Until the end of 1998, the director general of the UK's Research Councils was Sir John Cadogan, formerly BP's research director. The chairman and chief executive of Esso UK sits on the Higher Education Funding Council for England. Lord Oxburgh, the rector of Imperial College, is a director of Shell. The result of such corporate involvement, the researchers found, was a significant distortion of the research agenda. Five times as much money is spent in British universities on research into oil and gas as on research into renewable sources of energy, even though renewable energy, which is an emerging industry, requires a great deal of research as it approaches its take-off phase, while oil and gas extraction, a mature industry, could be expected to need far less. But while the acceptance of corporate money might encourage researchers to change the way they view the world, the acceptance of public money is now scarcely less hazardous. The main source of funds for biologists working in Britain's universities is the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), a government body with an annual budget of �190m. Its chairman is Peter Doyle, formerly an executive director of the biotechnology company Zeneca. Among the members of its council are the chief executive of the pharmaceutical firm Chiroscience; the former director of research and development at the controversial food company Nestl�; the president of the Food and Drink Federation; a consultant to the biochemical industry; and the general manager of Britain's biggest farming business. The BBSRC's strategy board contains executives from SmithKline Beecham, Merck Sharpe & Dohme and AgrEvo UK. The research council has seven specialist committees, each overseeing the dispersal of money to different branches of biology. Employees of Zeneca, according to the council's website, sit on all of them. When the BBSRC was established in 1994, it took over the biological funding programme previously run by the Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC). SERC's purpose was to advance knowledge of all kinds, whether or not it had an immediate commercial application. The BBSRC's purpose, it maintains, "is to sustain a broad base of interdisciplinary research and training to help industry, commerce and government create wealth and improve the quality of life". As well as diverting large sums of public money which would once have been spent on blue-sky biological research into genetic engineering, the BBSRC also funds the secondment of academics into corporations. Such schemes, the council enthuses, help "companies establish long-lasting personal and corporate linkages with academics/higher education institutions" and to "influence basic research relevant to company objectives". The council has launched a Biotechnology Young Entrepreneurs Scheme, "aimed at encouraging a more entrepreneurial attitude in bioscientists". It has paid for researchers to work for Nestl�, Unilever, Glaxo Wellcome, SmithKline Beecham, AgrEvo, DuPont, Rhone-Poulenc and, of course, Zeneca. More disturbing than the activi ties of the research councils, however, are the priorities of the parliamentary office of science and technology's 16 foresight panels. The foresight panels scarcely pretend to promote either academic objectivity or the wider public interest. Though they are official sources of scientific advice to both central government and to the research councils, they are largely controlled not by scientists but by business people. The food and drink foresight panel, for example, is composed of eight representatives of food companies and trade bodies, and three members of university departments, as well as members of the BBSRC and the Medical Research Council, who are expected to respond to its demands. It has several subcommittees, whose purpose is to identify "research priorities". One is called the alcoholic drinks panel. The report it produced was drawn up in consultation with five trade associations, three industry- sponsored research institutes, 15 drinks companies and no one else. Its report called for "a sophisticated understanding of individuals' eating and drinking behaviour" to assist "product development". The report of the fruit and vegetables subcommittee suggested that "Irradiation may be re-examined for extending shelf life." The dairy subcommittee concluded that "More effort should be put into publicising the health benefits of milk in the human diet." The meat subcommittee complained that "criticisms of meat production from an animal-welfare and environmental-impact perspective, and of high levels of red meat consumption as potentially damaging to human health, gained credence from some scientific work". It called for research into "manipulation of the immune system" and the "application of physical or chemical treatments of carcasses". "Concern that the outcome may not be acceptable in the current climate," it asserted, "should not... hold back the related basic research." Until the day before he became minister for science and technology in July 1998, Lord Sainsbury chaired another subcommittee, the food chain group. His report, published like all the others by the government's Department of Trade and Industry, expressed the hope that in the future, "the expensive precautionary principle is abandoned". (The precautionary principle declares that if there is scientific doubt about the safety of a product or practice, it should not be deployed until that doubt has been dispelled.) "The most progressive farms," the report suggested, would be those on which "herbicides are applied by robots under the management of satellites." Sainsbury and John Battle, then a minister at the DTI, attended a food chain group summit in March 1998 which concluded that this government-funded research programme should involve "influencing and anticipating future behaviour of consumers". Summing up, Sainsbury told the delegates: "It is important for food chain companies to establish better contact with scientists and the people that provide public funds for research. OST [the office of science and technology] and MAFF [the Ministry of Agriculture] can help you make contact with the right people." Lord Sainsbury's former interests continue to feature prominently in the department he runs. He presents the prizes to the winners of his ministry's bioscience business plan competition, which is sponsored by Glaxo Wellcome and the Gatsby Charitable Foundation, the science-funding body he established before he became a minister. The chairman of the Institute of Arable Crops Research, appointed by the BBSRC, was previously chairman of the Sainsbury laboratory. An employee of J Sainsbury plc sits on the food and drink foresight panel. At the end of 1998, as public concern about the government's science policies began to emerge, Sainsbury announced a "nationwide consultation" to "explore the wider implications of scientific progress". He explained that "Our long-term aim is to build public confidence in the government's use of scientific information." The consultation was designed by an advisory group of six people. One of the members of the group was, of course, a senior manager at Zeneca. Another was an employee of J Sainsbury plc. As big business infiltrates the research agenda, ever wider zones of inquiry are placed off-limits. Some of the key questions are left for amateurs and voluntary organisations to investigate. Friends of the Earth and Newsnight studied the pollen flow from the government's test sites for genetically modified crops, for example, only because government researchers were not examining the issue. It was a retired GP, Dr Dick van Steenis, who discovered that the number of primary schoolchildren using asthma inhalers was directly proportionate to the levels of pollution to which they were exposed. Science tells us who we are and how we can live better. It is the glass through which we perceive the world. If distorted, it twists our understanding of the ways in which we might progress, of the alternatives to existing models of development. When our universities are offered for sale, objectivity and intellectual honesty become surplus to requirements. � This is an edited extract from The Captive State: The Corporate Takeover of Britain by George Monbiot (Macmillan, �12.99). To obtain a copy at the discount price of �9.99 plus 99p p&p, phone Guardian CultureShop on 0800 3166 102, or send a cheque to Guardian CultureShop, 250 Western Avenue, London W3 6EE. � Copyright Guardian Media Group plc. 2000
