Academia Puts Profit Ahead of Wonder: Unintended Consequences
Dear HumanDHS network friends
Please find below some excerpts from an article at: http://tinyurl.com/6q2jbu. Many thanks to Linda Hartling!
Kind regards
Brian Ward
Academia Puts Profit Ahead of Wonder; unintended consequences;
This morning’s *New York Times* includes an article: “When Academia Puts
Profit Ahead of Wonder” by Janet Rae-Dupree.
Here are some excerpts:
[begin excerpts]
THE law of unintended consequences is perhaps less a “law” than a simple
statement of fact: We cannot accurately predict all the results of our
actions. We may do something with the best of intentions, and sometimes
even accomplish the good toward which we aim. Yet, at the same time, we
are all too often surprised by results that didn’t occur to us beforehand.
The Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 started out with the best of intentions. By
clearing away the thicket of conflicting rules and regulations at
various federal agencies, it set out to encourage universities to patent
and license results of federally financed research. For the first time,
academicians were able to profit personally from the market transfer of
their work. For the first time, academia could be powered as much by a
profit motive as by the psychic reward of new discovery.
University “tech transfer” offices have boomed from a couple dozen
before the law’s passage to nearly 300 today .
Professors are stepping away from the lab and lecture hall to navigate
the thicket of venture capital, business regulations and commercial
competition.
None of these are necessarily negative outcomes. But more than a
quarter-century after President Jimmy Carter signed it into law, the
Bayh-Dole Act, sponsored by the former Senators Birch Bayh, Democrat of
Indiana, and Robert Dole, Republican of Kansas, is under increasing
scrutiny by swelling ranks of critics.
The primary concern is that its original intent — to infuse the American
marketplace with the fruits of academic innovation — has also distorted
the fundamental mission of universities.
In the past, discovery for its own sake provided academic motivation,
but today’s universities function more like corporate research
laboratories.
Rather than freely sharing techniques and results, researchers
increasingly keep new findings under wraps to maintain a competitive
edge. What used to be peer-reviewed is now proprietary. “Share and
share alike” has devolved into “every laboratory for itself.”
In trying to power the innovation economy, we have turned America’s
universities into cutthroat business competitors, zealously guarding the
very innovations we so desperately want behind a hopelessly tangled web
of patents and royalty licenses.
Even before the Bayh-Dole Act, pharmaceutical companies were eagerly
trolling campuses, looking for projects to finance. After the law was
passed, they stepped up their efforts, but now with renewed zeal for
keeping potential trade secrets from competitors.
While patients have benefited from the growing supply of new
medications, the universities have obtained patents not only for the
actual substances but also for the processes and methods used to make
them, potentially hampering discovery of even more beneficial treatments.
“Bayh-Dole tore down the taboos that existed against universities
engaging in overtly commercial activity. Universities really thought
that they were going to make it rich,” said Jennifer Washburn, author of
“University Inc.: The Corporate Corruption of Higher Education” (Basic
Books, 2005). “Each school was convinced that if they came up with that
one blockbuster invention, they could solve all their financial problems.”
Ms. Washburn says that was “extremely wrong-headed.” Initially reacting
to the law by slapping patents on every possible innovation,
universities quickly discovered that patents were an expensive
proposition. The fees and legal costs involved in obtaining a single
patent can run upward of $15,000, and that doesn’t count the salaries of
administrative staff members.
To date, Ms. Washburn says, data gathered by the Association of
University Technology Managers, a trade group, show that fewer than half
of the 300 research universities actively seeking patents have managed
to break even from technology transfer efforts. Instead, two-thirds of
the revenue tracked by the association has gone to only 13 institutions.
Part of the problem has been a lingering misunderstanding about where
the value lies in innovation.
Patenting a new basic science technique, or platform technology, puts it
out of the reach of graduate students who might have made tremendous
progress using it.
Similarly, exclusive licensing of a discovery to a single company
thwarts that innovation’s use in any number of other fields. R. Stanley
Williams, a nanotechnologist from Hewlett-Packard, testified to Congress
in 2002 that much of the academic research to which H.P. has had
difficulty gaining access could be licensed to several companies without
eroding its intellectual property value.
“Severe disagreements have arisen over conflicting interpretations of
the Bayh-Dole Act,” he said. “Large U.S.-based corporations have become
so disheartened and disgusted with the situation, they are now working
with foreign universities, especially the elite institutions in France,
Russia and China.”
THE issue is further clouded by “reach through” licenses, complex
arrangements used by many tech transfer offices. A reach-through lets
the patent holder claim a share of any profits that result from using,
say, an enabling technology, even if those profits come several steps
down the market transfer line. Several universities are already
embroiled in messy lawsuits trying to sort out who is entitled to what.
Perhaps the most troublesome aspect of campus commercialization is that
research decisions are now being based on possible profits, not on the
inherent value of knowledge. “Blue sky” research — the kind of basic
experimentation that leads to a greater understanding of how the world
works — has largely been set aside in favor of projects considered to
have more immediate market potential.
In academia’s continuing pursuit of profit, the wonder of simple
serendipitous discovery has been left on the curb.
[end excerpts]
Ken Pope
Ethics of Practice Survey–Beliefs & Behaviors of Psychologists As
Therapists (*American Psychologist*):
“In real life, of course, it is the hare who wins. . . . Look around
you. And in any case, it is my contention that Aesop was writing for
the tortoise market.”
–Anita Brookner