Blunting the sword of truth - on educated guess - Brief Article

Matrix: The Magazine for Leaders in Education, Sept, 2001 by Christopher R.L. Blake

As more money pours onto campus for basic research from private and corporate sources, how far is academic integrity and freedom being compromised? That question is staring us in our faces from several cases of recent months. Three of those, reported widely in the media, are worth reviewing briefly.

First, the example of David Healy, a leading British psycho-pharmacologist and author of a definitive work on the history of anti-depressant drugs. Healy claims that Prozac, which grosses billions of dollars for pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly, causes suicide in a minority of patients. According to Healy, a quarter of a million people worldwide taking Prozac have attempted suicide, and 25,000 have succeeded.

Healy's work earned him the interest and favor of the Center for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) at Toronto University, where he was offered a professorship. But Healy's high profile also upset others at Toronto, where Eli Lilly has funded $1.5 million in recent years.

After a conference in which Healy further publicized his research, CAMH rescinded the job offer, explaining that his approach was not "compatible with the goals for development of the academic and clinical resource that we have."

Secondly, the story of cancer victim Bob Lange, one of many who were proscribed a bogus cream for treatment of skin cancer as part of a funded project at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Despite the knowledge that the drug had no effect, the researchers maintained the fraud of its success to both patients and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, in order not to jeopardize the university's relationship with BioCryst Pharmaceuticals, the state's most prominent biotech company. As W. Mitchell Sams, former chair of the university's Dermatology Department, put it, "we succumbed to the siren songs of scientific advances, political power and, worst of all, financial success."

Finally, Richard Smith and British-American Tobacco. Smith, editor of the British Medical Journal, was a professor of medical journalism at the University of Nottingham, which recently accepted $5 million from BAT, the world's second biggest tobacco company.

A poll conducted by Smith on the Journal Web site indicated that 84 percent of respondents wanted the university to return the money to BAT.

Whilst the university defended its right to obtain funding from diverse sources, Smith argued that in accepting the BAT donation the university was offering the tobacco industry "at a cheap price a respectability it doesn't deserve." Smith has since quit his part-time post at Nottingham.

Funding Pressures

These cases each reveal the tension of funding in applied and basic research. We have accepted the premise of the legitimacy of funded research without consideration of its impact on the nature and purpose of the knowledge it produces. This is not to suggest that we should avoid private funding, or that public funding via state and federal sources is somehow immune from bias and interference in the work of the academy. But it does show three issues that the university must consider before taking the money. First is the replacement of public funding with private. How is the expectation, process, selection and dissemination of knowledge skewed by this shift? Second is the conflict of interest that arises when the results of academic research question the validity or ethics of the funding sponsor and its products. Third, and perhaps most important, is the constraint upon researchers when the outcome of their work is so powerfully connected to future funding. The pressure is enormous to produce results that keep the sponsors happy and their checkbooks open.

The day of `pure research' is long gone, and probably not missed. But, there is still an essential, democratic task in research, and that is ultimately about investigating and telling the truth, even when it hurts. That is a sword that should never be blunted by self-interest and compromise.

Christopher R.L. Blake chair of education department and director of teacher education Mount St. Mary's College, Emmitsburg, Md.