Here are two important reports as folks get ready for the May 25 day of global action against corporate science and GM crops. These raise disturbing problems, but are each important.
1. Publication shenanigans: The progress of many types of research is also stifled inside of universities through what I call "profitable pieties." Subordinate members of research teams, those who generate the best original ideas, are steered away or prohibited from the best designs and new ideas because of these pieties and the power of department heads in the money stream. The current science of teacher evaluations is an obvious example. Peer evaluations of professionals are an important part of ongoing development. But it's impossible and absurd to create quantifiable assessment gimmicks to "reliably and validly" catch "bad teachers." Yet, it would be heresy to even suggest that a primary goal of university/corporate research funding is a complete dead end. Developing a responsible evaluation protocol to advance teacher development or criticism of the quantification piety, would stop a career in its tracks! But good principals need to develop their own evaluations independently, which will almost always be superior to the academic nonsense.
Think too of Penn Praxis and its "budget advice" to Philadelphia government about "community engagement" and its "findings." Consider these examples as you read about the ubiquitous infiltration of profit motive on scientific method and the role of universities in corporate science!
"...To do so would require confronting the fundamental problem that academic science now largely makes its money from exploiting conflicts of interest. This has become the underlying business model of science. Universities offer ‘independent’ advice to governments while taking corporate money for ‘research’. Corporations offer that money to universities, not for the knowledge it generates, but primarily for the influence it buys...
...These same incentives are reinforced at the personal level as well. Individual scientists occupy taxpayer-funded academic positions while benefitting from patents, stocks and industry consultancies. If journals and government agencies took action to eliminate conflicts of interest, the corporate money for science would dry up, because industry-funded scientists would lose influence...
...These examples show that the threat to scientific publishing from industry influence is real. The avenues for researchers to publish critical views in science are already few. This is especially true for the high-impact journals that the media notices and that therefore influence public discourse. Equally problematic is that few scientific institutions will support researchers whose findings contradict industry viewpoints..."
2. This report has been out a few weeks. It raises some serious issues and need for further research!
"The results of these experiments challenge the longstanding scientific presumption holding that animal experiments are of direct relevance to humans. For that reason they potentially invalidate the entire body of safety information that has been built up to distinguish safe chemicals from unsafe ones. The new results arise from basic medical research, which itself rests heavily on the idea that treatments can be developed in animals and transferred to humans."
