Abstract
The aim of this paper is to identify and evaluate the theoretical justification for the commercialization of science – particularly the form of commercialization that is currently prominent in the U.S. In the first part of the paper, I examine the arguments put forward by one of the most prominent early proponents of commercialization, George Keyworth II, who served as Presidential Science Advisor to Ronald Reagan and Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy from 1981 to 1985. An examination of Keyworth’s arguments reveals the profound role that neoliberal political and economic thought played in his defense of the commercialization of science. On his view, Reagan’s science and technology policy would stimulate creative research and economic growth by expanding the domain of voluntary exchange in which scientists operate – i.e., by removing the government-imposed barriers between scientific research and the marketplace. The result, he argued, would be to facilitate the flow of information between sectors that were previously cut off from one another, thereby encouraging the sharing of expertise, expediting the transfer of scientific research into marketable products, and ultimately, promoting social progress. In the second part of this paper, I argue that there are strong reasons to question this conclusion. These reasons concern the biasing effects of conflicts of interest, the inhibition of the free flow of information that results from the proliferation of patenting and licensing, and the restrictions on scientific freedom that result from greater corporate control over scientific decision making.
It is no coincidence that our present troubles parallel and are proportionate to the intervention and intrusion in our lives that result from unnecessary and excessive growth of government…. In the days ahead I will propose removing the roadblocks that have slowed our economy and reduced productivity…. Progress may be slow, measured in inches and feet, not miles, but we will progress. It is time to reawaken this industrial giant, to get government back within its means, and to lighten our punitive tax burden. And these will be our first priorities, and on these principles there will be no compromise.
– Ronald Reagan, First Inaugural Address (January 20, 1981)
This paper developed out of my participation in the research group, Science in the Context of Application, at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF) at Bielefeld University. The paper benefited greatly from the comments of the organizers of the group, Martin Carrier and Alfred Nordmann, and from the rest of the Fellows, especially Torsten Wilholt.
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- 1.
- 2.
According to the editors of the New England Journal of Medicine, it is now almost impossible to find biomedical scientists to write review articles who do not have financial conflicts of interest with industry (Drazen and Curfman, 2002, 1901).
- 3.
The commercialization of science is also having a profound impact upon the ways in which industrial research is conducted. For discussion, see Mirowski and van Horn (2005).
- 4.
The linear model refers to Vannevar Bush’s argument in Science: The Endless Frontier (1945), according to which generous government funding for basic scientific research will lead inevitably to technological progress. The “assistance” in Etzkowitz’s assisted linear model comes in the form of the expertise of industry.
- 5.
See, for example, Rosenzweig (1984, 42–43). In addition, those who pushed for legislative changes to American S&T policy, such as Birch Bayh and Bob Dole, justified the need for such changes by appealing to the deteriorating condition of the U.S. economy (Washburn, 2005, 60). The Bayh-Dole Act is discussed in Section “The Bayh-Dole Act”.
- 6.
The Bayh-Dole Act and the legislative initiatives that followed it have been discussed extensively elsewhere. For a discussion of the Bayh-Dole Act and the Congressional debate leading up to its passage, see Washburn (2005, 60–69). See Slaughter and Rhoades (2004, Chapter 2) for a discussion of additional pieces of legislation.
- 7.
As originally passed, the bill allowed only universities and small businesses to obtain title to research that was funded by the public; large corporations were specifically excluded, in part to appease critics of the legislation. Shortly after the passage of the original bill, an attempt was made to extend the bill to include large corporations, but it failed to make its way through Congress. It was only through a 1983 Presidential Memorandum by Reagan, which directed executive agencies to extend the policy to large corporations, that this extension took place. A 1987 Executive Order eventually made the extension permanent (Washburn, 2005, 60–69).
- 8.
- 9.
It is worth noting that the 5-year deal between Berkeley and Novartis was not renewed. While the reasons for this are complex, the fact that the deal was not, in the end, financially profitable to Novartis, as well as the fact that the university received intensive negative publicity from the deal, no doubt contributed to the decision.
- 10.
The story of the sequencing and patenting of BRCA1 and BRCA2 is told in Dalpé et al. (2003).
- 11.
- 12.
See Kevles (1998) for discussion.
- 13.
Michael Polanyi and Bush were highly critical of the claims of Bernal and Kilgore, respectively, that the government should play a role in the planning of science. Both Polanyi (1962) and Bush (1945) maintained that scientists alone should decide which areas of research are pursued. See McGucken (1978) for a discussion of the Bernal-Polanyi debate and Zachary (1997, 232–234) for a discussion of the Bush-Kilgore debate.
- 14.
There are reasons to question even this claim. See Section “The Anticommons” for discussion.
- 15.
In this vein, Keyworth writes: “In February I wrote an editorial [Keyworth (1983a)] in which I addressed the notion that federal support for R&D is an entitlement, that it is going to come off the top of the budget independent of economic pressures or national priorities. If my message in that editorial seemed harsh, it is because I see that attitude as being destructive for science and for the nation. The research community has an important role to place in this country’s future, but it has to come to grips with the realities of the 1980s” (Keyworth, 1983b, 1123).
- 16.
- 17.
Recall also Keyworth’s previously cited statement that, while government should play a role in R&D, it should play a “properly limited role…, one that makes sense for a free-enterprise economy” (Keyworth, 1982, 607).
- 18.
The complete mission statement can be found at: http://www.pff.org/about/ (accessed March 10, 2008).
- 19.
For a discussion of the kinds of bias that can result from such relationships, see Wilholt (2009).
- 20.
- 21.
One could object to this line of reasoning by acknowledging that a correlation exists between industry funding and industry-friendly conclusions and explaining this correlation with the following hypothesis: industries are so careful about which drugs they research that they only pursue studies of those drugs that have a very high probability of being safe and effective (Bok, 2003). This objection is problematic for a number of reasons, the strongest being that it cannot explain the results of the quantitative studies discussed above. Consider, again, the study by Stelfox et al. (1998). The results of this study cannot reasonably be explained by appealing to the expertise of industry in predicting the outcomes of future research, for if the relevant industries rightly predicted that their CCBs would be safe and effective, then the vast majority of all of the scientists evaluating these drugs – regardless of their source of funding – should come to the same conclusion. Obviously, this was not the case.
- 22.
For further discussion of institutional conflicts of interest, see Task Force on Research Accountability (2001).
- 23.
For discussion of the kinds of patents allowed by the PTO, see the section of the United States Human Genome Project website devoted to gene patenting: http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/elsi/patents.shtml (accessed 6 August 2008).
- 24.
For further discussion of reach-through license agreements, and material transfer agreements more generally, see Mirowski (2008).
- 25.
Krimsky (2003) argues that the commercialization of scientific research is bringing about the demise of public-interest scientists, or scientists who work on problems that are solely in the public interest, rather than in the interest of a private entity. While he does not distinguish between the two versions of the criticism that corporations are gaining too much influence over the choices of problems to address, he discusses examples that support both versions.
- 26.
This criticism does not assume that scientists prior to commercialization had complete scientific freedom. On the contrary, scientific decision making – including decisions regarding which problems to address – have virtually always been constrained by moral, social, political, and economic factors. What this criticism asserts is that the commercialization of research reduces the freedom that scientists have, and that this reduction of freedom will likely have important social and epistemic consequences.
- 27.
This case is discussed in Washburn (2005, 122–123), among other places.
- 28.
The Olivieri case is discussed in Krimsky (2003, 45–47), among other places.
- 29.
Krimsky further notes that Apotex “made the gift contingent on the university’s lobbying the Canadian government to delay regulations that were unfavorable to the generic drug industry” (2003, 46).
- 30.
Further information on these inquiries can be found on the website of the Canadian Association of University Teachers: http://www.caut.ca/pages.asp?page=199&lang=1 (accessed August 24, 2008).
- 31.
- 32.
Ibid.
- 33.
I argue for this claim in another context in Biddle (2007).
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Biddle, J. (2011). Bringing the Marketplace into Science: On the Neoliberal Defense of the Commercialization of Scientific Research. In: Carrier, M., Nordmann, A. (eds) Science in the Context of Application. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 274. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9051-5_15
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