Long-run trends suggest a broad shift is taking place in the institutional financing structure that supports academic research. According to data compiled by the OECD reported in Figure 1, industry sources are financing a growing share of academic research while “core” public funding is generally shrinking. This ongoing shift from public to private sponsorship is a cause for concern because these sponsorship relationships are fundamentally different. Available evidence suggests that industry financing does not simply replace dwindling public money, but imposes additional restrictions on academic researchers. In particular, industry sponsors frequently limit disclosure of research findings, methods, or materials by delaying or banning public release.
Recent economic research highlights why public disclosure of academic research is important. Disclosure permits the stock of public knowledge to be cumulative, accessible, and reliable. It limits duplication of research efforts, allows new knowledge to be replicated and verified by professional peers, and permits access and use by other researchers which enhances opportunities for complementary research. Some work finds that greater access to ideas and materials in academic research not only increased incentives for direct follow-on research, but led to an increase in the diversity of research by increasing the number of experimental research lines. Other work, examining the theoretical conditions supporting “open science” versus “secrecy”, stressed that maintaining and growing the stock of public knowledge requires a limit on the private financial returns obtained through secrecy.
To better understand the potential implications of increased industry funding, we implemented a research project that examined the relationship between industry sponsorship and restrictions on publication disclosure using individual-level data on German academic researchers. Germany is an apt setting for examining this relationship. It has a strong tradition of public financial support for academic research and, according to the OECD, Germany experienced the most dramatic growth in its share of industry sponsorship, an 11.3 percentage point increase from 1995 to 2010 (see Figure 1).
German academic researchers were surveyed about the degree of publication disclosure restrictions experienced during research projects sponsored by government, foundations, industry, and other sources. To examine if industry sponsorship jeopardizes disclosure of academic research, we modeled the degree of restrictiveness (i.e. delay and secrecy) as a function of the researcher’s budget share financed by industry. This formulation allows us to examine two potential effects of industry sponsored research contracts. The first is an adoption effect that takes place when academic researchers commit to industry funding. The second is an intensity effect that captures how publication restrictions depend on the researcher’s exposure to greater ex post review and evaluation by industry sponsors. Our models include covariates that control for non-industry extramural sponsorship, personal characteristics, research characteristics, institutional affiliations, and scientific fields of study.
Both the descriptive and regression results show a positive relationship between the degree of publication restrictions and industry sponsorship. The percentage of respondents who reported higher secrecy (partial or full) is significantly larger for industry sponsored researchers than it is for researchers with other extramural sponsors, 41% and 7% respectively. Controlling for selection, adopting industry sponsorship more than doubles the expected probabilities of publication delay and secrecy. The intensity effect is positive and significant with a larger effect on publication secrecy than on publication delay when academic researchers become heavily supported by industrial firms. These results are robust to the possibility that researchers self-select into extramural sponsorship and to the possibility that the share of industry sponsorship is endogenous due to unobserved variables.
Based on our analysis, the shift from public to private sponsorship seen in the OECD aggregate data reflects changes in the microeconomic environment shaping incentives for disclosure by academic researchers. On average, academic researchers are willing to restrict disclosure in exchange for financial support by industry sponsors. Our results shed light on an important challenge facing policymakers. Understanding the trade-off between public and private sponsorship of academic research involves gauging the impact of disclosure restrictions on the quantity, quality, and evolution of academic research to better understand how these restrictions may ultimately influence innovation and economic growth.
Image credit: Computer research, © Jürgen François, via iStock Photo.
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The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells was just one of those classics I felt I had to read. And I'm glad I did. It had me laughing the whole way! I'm not sure if this was Wells' intention, but that's surely what happened. I just couldn't stop imagining this man running around naked because he'd be seen if he were wearing clothes! I can't imagine how frustrating that must have been for Griffin, the invisible man. He thought up this great idea of how to turn himself invisible, but he can't be invisible completely unless it's a sunny day or pitch dark night....and he's naked.
Aside from the fact you have to live life naked, if you do put clothes on, your face is still not really visible and that's a problem for the average person. So, you're a person stuck between two worlds: never able to fully belong to either (at least not comfortably or without freaking people out).
And if that wasn't enough, he starts to go mad because of this inability to live his life. The rawness of this character opens insight into the psyche of humans. What would any of us have done in the same situation? Unable to show ourselves as we truly are and unable to live a life of secrecy. Running from the world that wants to destroy you because you created something no one else can even imagine. The readers are swept up into a whirlwind of emotions from the side of the invisible man himself and the people affected by his actions. A true tale of what could happen if too much power is put into anyone's hands.
David Michaels is a scientist and former government regulator. During the Clinton Administration, he served as Assistant Secretary of Energy for Environment, Safety and Health, responsible for protecting the health and safety of the workers, neighboring communities, and the environment surrounding the nation’s nuclear weapons factories. He currently directs the Project on Scientific Knowledge and Public Policy at The George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services. His most recent book, Doubt is Their Product: How Industry’s Assault on Science Threatens Your Health explains how many of the scientists who spun science for tobacco have become practitioners in the lucrative world of product defense. Whatever the story- global warming, toxic chemicals, sugar and obesity, secondhand smoke- these scientists generate studies designed to make dangerous exposures appear harmless. Earlier today we excerpted from the introduction to the book, the excerpt below is from Michaels recommendations to reform the courts’ role in our public health system.
Courts are a repository of large amounts of information that is potentially important in public health protection. Every chapter of this book contains material that was uncovered during the discovery process in a legal proceeding: documents that prove industry campaigns to manufacture uncertainty; others that prove corporate knowledge of significant health hazards years, if not decades, before they were acknowledged; and vital scientific studies that should have been in the literature but were hidden by their corporate sponsors. It is almost always in the public’s interest to place these documents in the public domain, but defendants, who want to avoid bad publicity and the encouragement of additional lawsuits, are often willing to offer the plaintiff a more generous settlement in return for secrecy. Seduced by the larger settlements, plaintiffs and their attorneys have little incentive to oppose the practice, and judges benefit by clearing their dockets of complex, time-consuming litigation. So the deal is done, and the documents are sealed from public view, sequestered forever. The loser is society. Secrecy diminishes our ability to both identify public health and safety hazards and prevent further harm.
Protective orders and secrecy agreements have hidden critical evidence of hazards associated with dozens of materials, products, and processes: automobiles, medicines, child car seats, BB guns, toys, cigarette lighters, 
school lunch tables, water slides, and many more. No price is paid by the parties involved to the contrary, it is a win-win deal for them—while the public and regulators are left in the dark. Secrecy agreements are a nefarious practice, and the courts have the means of limiting if not eradicating them. Some do so. The judges of the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina have issued rules ‘‘disfavoring court-ordered secrecy in cases affecting public safety,’’ but they appear to be in the minority on the federal bench. Judges in toxic tort cases may consider this issue in approving secrecy agreements, but such consideration does not carry the day often enough.
How could the courts put some teeth into rules to discourage the sealing of important documents? Dan Givelber, former dean of the Northeastern University School of Law, and Tony Robbins, former head of NIOSH, the U.S. National Vaccine Program, and two state health departments, have coauthored an intriguing proposal. They suggest that, if harm has been caused by a hazard that was the subject of previously sealed documents, a jury could use that earlier secrecy agreement as good cause for assessing punitive damages in this later case. With such a rule in place, secrecy agreements would not be a risk-free default position; for hiding the truth, the corporation could pay a steep price the next time around.
Ending this practice will come down to the judges and the rules established for them. It is their responsibility to protect the public. They should do so.
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