Funding Science with Evil Corrupt Profit Making Corporations
Over at personal responsiblity Darwin writes:
I agree that scientists on public money have to go out of their way to adress topics of interest - that’s why every study looking at face processing has to have a paragreaph about autism in the proposal - but I’m not sure that that affects the results of the studies. Marlboro clearly has a stake in the results of a study into the health effects of smoking; but while the government may want to look good by allocating a certain amount of money to autism research, I don’t think they care whether it ends up being caused by a problem in the fusiform or in the amygdala or in prefrontal cortex or whatever.
If a bureaucrat ends up having family member with autism he might be more eager to shift funding to researchers that have found promising results for new autism therapy. Smart labs pursuing other forms of therapy would begin to shift there work to this therapy as a means to stay funded. One might be even tempted to fix some of the data to secure a large project grant from this particular bureaucrat.
I suspect, though I have no evidence to back it up, that most corporate research is actually performed by university labs. If this is the case, its hard to see researchers treating data sets differently simply because of differentiation in funding. When they are publicly funded the researchers are honest about the results and when they are privately funded they lie. Take for example Lihong’s work. At least one of her projects was funded by a pharmaceutical company. If memory serves me correctly, that particular study failed to show the effects the company wanted. Yet from what I could see no one in our lab was fixed the data. It seemed to me that our lab was treating that privately funded data set in the same way it treats publicly funded data sets.
It’s less likely that individual researchers change their ethics based on funding and much more likely that a small set of researchers behave unethically irrespective of funding. This small set of unscrupulous scientists would be willing to fix their data regardless of the study being privately or publicly funded. I see no reason to believe privately funding research would draw more or less unethical researchers then publicly funded studies. What reason would you give?
Even in cases were a corporation has its own division conducting studies on its products the science itself still has to pass through peer review if its to be published in a reputable journal. You suspicion about corporate funded research ignores this rather obvious point. Unless of course you are suggesting that corporate funded research is a threat precisely for the fact that it ignores peer review. In which case your observation is trivial since all studies that ignore peer review should be looked at with skepticism and disbelief regardless of how it was funded.
I can’t help but think there is underlying assumption in your position, one that seems to inform many, if not all of your positions. That underlying assumption is that profit is a bad thing. That somehow driving to acquire more resources is bad. Or if you prefer, that greed is bad. In the case of privately funded research one can’t help to characterize your argument in this way.
1. Profits make people do unethical things
2. Private companies fund studies to make profits
3. Therefore, privately funded studies will make researchers behave unethically.
You no doubt regard this argument as unfair characterization of your position. I eagerly await a revision.
In the meantime I want to address that first assumption. Profits make people do practically anything. That’s why free markets are so damn effective. Do profits drive people to behave unethically? Absolutely. Do profits force people to behave unethically? Absolutely not.
You wish to ascribe unethical behavior as a function of profit making. This explains your aversion to privately funded research. I won’t deny that profit making gives incentive for some people to behave unethically. However I don’t think the actual profit making causes the unethical behavior, it simply encourages it. Understanding the cause of unethical behavior requires making sense of genetics, family structure, historical context and myriad of other factors. Some people will have a disposition to behave unethically and in a profit making context will express that unethical behavior as means to acquire profit.
Profit making generates incentive for action. Regrettably some of that action will be unethical. Fortunately the vast majority of it will be both ethical and innovative. The cost of innovation is profit making. To throw out profit making simply to prevent unethical behavior seems foolish for two reasons.
First, it’s unclear why other non-profit making systems (socialism, communism, and to certain extent mixed economies) will reduce the propensity for unethical behavior. Particularly when you consider that those systems consolidate more power into less hands thereby reducing accountability.
Second, to reduce profit making is to reduce innovation. Inevitably this innovation enables everyone to enjoy a higher standard of living even those that make that make the least profit from that innovation. Ironically, others systems criticize profit making on the basis that’s its incentive system actually harms those that make the least from the system. You have made this argument countless times. This turns out to be patently false. Compare the standard of living of the poorest in countries that emphasize profit making to those that reduce it. Very quickly one can see just how much harm a profit making system in comparison to non profit making system is for the least advantaged in each system.
You, much like many people, need to reign in the negative conations you associated with profit making. Profit making is not bad. Some will acquires profit in an unscrupulous way but many more will find novel and innovative ways to acquire that profit inadvertenly increasing the standard of living for all . Profit making is arguably the single hand most important drive a system can tap into to improve the lives of everybody.
February 5th, 2007 at 8:15 am
Too many points in that one, so I’m going to respond to individual sections:
“If a bureaucrat ends up having family member with autism he might be more eager to shift funding to researchers that have found promising results for new autism therapy… One might be even tempted to fix some of the data to secure a large project grant from this particular bureaucrat. ”
I agree, if individual bureaucrathad the power to dole out money to individual projects, then the system would have the exact same problems as the prviate model. But then it wouldn’t be a bureaucracy- the whole point of bureaucracy is to prevent any given individual from having that much power. hopefully the giant NSF committee and multi-level review process will serve to mitigate these types of influences. Also don’t say that corporations have similar large boards because the entire board in that case still has a single motivation- ie, the outcome which gets the most profit for the company.
“I see no reason to believe privately funding research would draw more or less unethical researchers then publicly funded studies. What reason would you give?”
I often see ‘experts’ on tv who are affiliated with universities but are the one guy in 500 who disagree with all their peers and support some bogus science a special interest group supports. The special interest group then parades them around on TV all the time to make it look like there’s total disagreement and controversy in the scientific community on this issue. I don’t see any reason corporations wouldn’t go out of their way to find similarly biased researchers, even in academia, and give their studies to those people over and over.
Also to your point about Lihong doing drug testing, a drug company has a very good motive to test a drug realistically before marketting it, beause it either won’t succeed economically or will get them sued if it doesn’t work. Marlboro has already sold thier cigarrettes to millions of people for decades, so they don’t have a motive to have it revealed that they ause cancer. Ditto for already established coal/oil companies and global warming.
“In which case your observation is trivial since all studies that ignore peer review should be looked at with skepticism and disbelief regardless of how it was funded. ”
The problem there is that internally conducted research (and maybe even privately-funded university research? I don’t know) doesn’t need to be published if it doesn’t support your hypothesis. If we use a signifigance threshold of .05, then a company just needs to run 20 small-n studies, using perfect, unobjectionable methodology, and then publish the one that disagrees with the other 19. I’m not neccesarily saying I think they do this all the time, but it shows how the idea of peer review doesn’t neccesarily inconsequnetiate all other concerns.
“I can’t help but think there is underlying assumption in your position… that profit is a bad thing. ”
Let me be very clear on this, because you’ve said it before and if you think that you’re really misunderstanding me. I don’t think that profit is bad.
What I think is: Not every profitable action is by definition good.
You seem to simply trust corporations and th free market to do what is best for everyone, as if we never need to question any corporate action because the free market will sort it out in the end. I agree the fre market is awesome, it’s a great way in which to turn self-motivated behavior into good results for everyone. However, there is no reason, at all, why any individual action within the free market, just neccessarily be a good action or produce a good outcome for everyone. We should still be able to question individual actions and try to decide for ourselves whether they’re good or not.
Honestly, I think this is much more of an underlying assumption in your posts than in mine: that anyting which happens within a free market will automatically be good for everyone. I think that’s insane- I see how, agregated over billions of decisions and actions a day for decades, the net average is a positive gain for humanity. I see no reason why any individual, day-to-day action should neccesarily be good or bad.
“Some people will have a disposition to behave unethically and in a profit making context will express that unethical behavior as means to acquire profit. ”
I agree. And in a context where there are no profits to be made, it’s my contention that fewer people with such potential dispositions will actually give in and behave unethically, because they have no motivation for doing so in this particular context.
“The cost of innovation is profit making. ”
Unfortunatley there’s a big differnece between the new product a company puts out for purchase, which they want to be innovative as hell in order to make money, and a scientific study in a scientific journal, which they want to say that the product they put out for purchase is great, so that they can make money.
If companies were seeling the results of their scientific studies, I absolutely believe thos studies would be innovative and accurate. But they’re not seeling those studies, and therefore there’s no profit to be made from them being innovative. The profit comes from those published studies supporting their publivc image and their commercially available products.
“First, it’s unclear why other non-profit making systems (socialism, communism, and to certain extent mixed economies) will reduce the propensity for unethical behavior. Particularly when you consider that those systems consolidate more power into less hands thereby reducing accountability.”
I don’t think any of those systems would produce less unethical behavior. Also it should be noted that gaining power is as good a motivator for unethical behavior as gaining money, and since some of those systems alow for much gereater atatainment of power, it’s easy to se why they could encourage very unethical behavior.
When I say that I’m concerned that privately funded research might be biased, please do not infer that I’m calling for an overthrow of our entire way of life and the installment of a communistic regime. If I want to overthrow anything, I’ll say so for myslf.
“You, much like many people, need to reign in the negative conations you associated with profit making. Profit making is not bad. ”
You, like Ayn Rand, need to reign in the idea that every individual event that happens within a free market is a priori a good thing, just because the net outcome of free markets is better than what we would get under communism. Nothing run by humans is ever perfect, and questioning every aspect of the power structure at all times is how we make sure that it is continuing to function properly.