|
November 19, 2005
A nice quote about the new academia where the argument for partnership between sceince and commerce is reasonable. It is held that science aims to acquire knowledge but needs money to invest in research. Industry wants to develop products for a profit, but needs a sound base of knowledge on which to do so. In other words, both activities need each other and their interests are complementary. The quote is from this review
Consider a naive undergraduate student embarking on a career in biomedicine, seeking to 'make a difference' and 'do good work' in 'the public interest'. It is likely that she will have to spend many years earning her academic spurs, first as an impoverished graduate student, then through a seemingly endless series of postdoctoral positions. Now at the zenith of her career in a top university, our scientist is faced with having to find funds to buy the latest new piece of equipment, to keep her laboratory stocked with reagents and to support the next generation of keen young post docs, graduate and honours students. Public funding is getting more and more scarce and funding agencies are requiring evidence of national benefit. The university's technology transfer office requires her to report any commercial opportunity likely to arise out of her team's research, no matter how remote. Collaborations with industry partners are viewed favourably in promotion applications and patents are becoming recognised measures of academic excellence. Colleagues are seen to be reaping the benefits of entering into commercial arrangements, both professionally, through increased research funding, and personally, through shareholdings, consultancy fees and the like. It is not surprising that our scientist might seriously consider a move to the 'dark side'.
This is the new commercial reality in which university science becomes entangled with entrepreneurship; knowledge is pursued for monetary value; expertise with a point of view can be purchased and science seeks an immediate economic payoff.
The above quote is an example of how universities have become instruments of wealth. This shift in the ethos of academia away from disinterested inquiry and free expression of opinion works against the public interest because universities have sacrificed their larger social responsibilities to accommodate the privatization of knowledge---by engaging in multimillion-dollar contracts with industries that demand the rights to negotiate licenses from any subsequent discovery.
This is the argument of Sheldon Krimsky in his Science in the Private Interest: Has the Lure of Profits Corrupted Biomedical Research? Universitieiss have moved away from an ethos based on the education of students to be informed and capable democratic citizens to producing people who can contribute to a knowledge economy. In this economy where knowledge is just one more commodity to be traded, we have drug company marketing dressed up as legitimate medical science.
|
If the reality of scientific work has become thick connections to industry and commercial value, we can look at it two ways. We can either lament the passage of free research, or we can decide that this is only an intensification of always implicit tendencies in the structures of scientific knowledge-production.
However, this is what's important- if we take the second route, we can look at science as a style of production, knowledge production, with an incredibly privileged position in the economy. In the modern American economy, in which the mainstay of economic development is based in research, scientists can position themselves politically using the importance of their work for production.
So, for instance, instead of just building research ties to corporate funders, scientists can go another route, and replicate models in Europe in which networks of small, democratic firms share research and advertising, allowing them to compete with corporate business models. One of the best examples for this is found in Emilia-Romagna, Italy, whose economy is dominated by small firms and employee-owned cooperatives. These firms are tied to research universities who focus their work on the needs of these industries, but they focus them broadly and share the research among all the firms. This allows a thriving, progressive economy based in small firms and employee cooperatives that compete and cooperate for innovation.
Now, if science institutionally accepts that it is bound to the interests of the world, it can use its incredible power of knowledge-production to help craft that world in a more just, creative, empowering fashion. Universities could work not only with corporate research prerogatives, but with unions, labor lawyers, environmetnalist groups, etc., utilizing direct connections with these more democratic and empowering groups to generate knowledge and technology. If knowledge-production will be political and tied to commerce, they have the chance to make that political connection democratic and progressive.