14 DAY TRIAL // Undoubtedly, the pace of innovation is accelerating. The past few decades have seen more and more inventions hitting the market, but, around the world, scientists have been raising their eyebrows at the direction in which science in general is going. There is very little emphasis being placed on the common good at this point, and research teams doing this are unfortunately the exception, not the rule. The state of affairs can be attributed to creeping corporate and commercial influence on scientific research, as well as the strides for implementing commercial mentalities in the scientific community.
As ethicists say, inventions and innovations must not address only the commercial sector, but also everyday life directly. In a new report from the Scientists for Global Responsibility (SGR), by experts Stuart Parkinson and Chris Langley, the influence of five commercial sectors on the scientific community is analyzed. While the negative influence of the pharmaceutical and tobacco industries has been studied before, this investigation is among the first to look at the oil and gas, defense and biotech sectors, which have largely escaped scrutiny, NewScientist reports.
One of the most negative consequences that corporations and industries had on research was forcing scientists to turn their attention from the actual work to producing patentable materials, as well as prioritizing their work in a manner that would yield the most short-term financial gain. There is virtually no university engineering department in the United Kingdom that does not receive funds from the arms industry, the report exemplifies. Joint research projects have brought experts so close to corporations, that it's virtually impossible to separate the two, and look at the scientists as independent.
The ensuing conflicts of interests are beginning to be addressed in the field of medicine by dedicated journals, but, in other fields, the phenomenon is not even studied, let alone acted against. There have been numerous instances in which so-called scientists have drawn conclusions from the available data in such a way that the people funding them benefited. In other researches, the terms of the problems being studied are changed themselves, until the “desired” result is obtained. This “sponsorship bias” also manifests itself when scientists do not report negative test results against their funders.
This has been known to happen primarily with the pharmaceutical, oil & gas, and the tobacco industry, which spread disinformation about their products in every conceivable way. Even Wikipedia entries were edited by representatives from various companies, so as not to display negative data about a product, the health implications of smoking, or the side-effects of a new drug. The last two sectors also fund various lobby groups, which are used to spread misleading and false information about the same issues, questioning true science being carried out elsewhere.
Another negative example given in the report is the fact that most agricultural research done at this point goes into genetically altered foods, and in high-energy agriculture, which requires pesticides and other chemicals to be placed in the ground. Parkinson and Langley say that concrete results could also be obtained from other approaches, and from a low-tech kind of agriculture. They add that even public funds are being directed towards genetics, and not only private ones.
The team says that the only thing that could revert this situation is a widespread reform, of all parties involved in the research community. From government policy to individual research studies, people need to realize the importance of having independent science conducted with the general interest in mind, and not just for the immediate profit of a few.