The objectivity of university research is under growing threat from the influence of industry, governments and other outside pressure groups.

That was the conclusion of scholars gathered for the second Harry Crowe Foundation conference on Protecting the Integrity of Academic Work, held recently in Ottawa. Cosponsored by CAUT, the three-day event drew more than 90 researchers, teachers and students from universities and institutes in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom.

According to keynote speaker Sheldon Krimsky, universities in the U.S. and Canada “have become too easily colonized by corporations and turned into academic enterprise zones. New revenue streams for academia have come at the expense of integrity, autonomy and free and open exchange of knowledge.”

Krimsky, a professor of urban and environmental policy at Tufts University and author of Science in the Private Interest: Has the Lure of Profits Corrupted Biomedical Research?, also said the “egregious” conflicts of interest in science and medicine within government and universities have affected the “objectivity of research studies and impaired public confidence in these fields.”

While most conference participants generally agreed that massive funding injections tied to private corporate donors potentially lead to conflicts-of-interest, there was less agreement about possible solutions.

Krimsky and other speakers suggested full disclosure may be an important step, but some situations will still call for a total prohibition of donor-linked funding.

Arthur Schafer, a professor of philosophy and director of the Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics at the University of Manitoba, said disclosure should never be considered an appropriate solution, in part because conflicts may be denied by researchers, but remain subconsciously present nonetheless and capable of skewing judgment.

“We simply can’t allow outside funding,” Schafer said in arguing for an outright ban. “Research must be paid for with public dollars.”

CAUT executive director James Turk said that such a position, however desirable, was unrealistic.

“Since funding from outside sources such as foundations and corporations makes necessary research possible, we need to implement a series of protections to help ensure the integrity of research,” he said.

According to Turk, protection measures include universities refusing to accept funding from any organization wanting to restrict the freedom of researchers to publish their findings and a requirement that researchers have unfettered access to all data collected and sole authority for the analysis of the data.

Other issues raised in the conference were the unbundling of faculty work, academia’s production-driven research culture and academic legitimacy as a commodity sought by outside interest groups.

Harry Crowe Foundation

The Harry Crowe Foundation, named for the person whose academic freedom case helped shape CAUT, was established in 2002 to carry out education and research on the role
of post-secondary teaching and research in contemporary society.

Latest News

At the foundation’s annual general meeting in November, Howard Pawley was reelected president of the board of directors and University of Toronto professor of medicine Brenda Gallie was reelected vice-president.

Foundation board members Jon Thompson (University of New Brunswick) and Arpi Hamalian (Concordia University) continue and David Johnson (University of Alberta) was newly-elected to the board.