[SustainableTompkins] CORPORATIONS GAINING CONTROL OF UNIVERSITY RESEARCH AGENDAS

[Tony Del Plato]

From: Center for Science in the Public Interest, Jan. 21, 2008


*CORPORATIONS GAINING CONTROL OF UNIVERSITY RESEARCH AGENDAS*

WASHINGTON -- American universities may be jeopardizing their academic
integrity by giving oil, gas, and other polluting industries
unprecedented influence over the research those companies fund on
campus, according to a report
<http://www.precaution.org/lib/big_oil_u.080119.pdf> released today by
the nonprofit Center
for Science in the Public Interest.

CSPI surveyed nine major universities that recently inaugurated
industry-funded research programs on biofuels or other aspects of
global warming. In return for accepting grants from industry, the
universities are variously letting corporate representatives sit on
governing boards (six out of nine universities), giving companies
first rights to intellectual property (five), or letting companies
review and possibly delay publication of studies (five). In some
cases, such as Georgia Tech and the University of California-Davis,
the universities give corporations a direct role in deciding which
specific research projects are funded. And while industry enjoys the
green patina that sponsoring university research into global warming
confers, companies actually spend very little on research and
development, particularly that relate to clean alternative energy
technologies.

"It's a cheap subterfuge for carbon-emitting companies," said Merrill
Goozner, director of the CSPI's Integrity in Science Project. "They
get the prestige of associating themselves with major respected
universities, yet can control the direction of research and get first
rights to intellectual property while delaying any finding that
doesn't help the bottom line. Meanwhile, the p.r. blitz surrounding
these programs masks the fact that the carbon-emitting industries
actually are spending much less on research and development than they
did 10 or 15 years ago."

Among the grants highlighted in CSPI's report, Big Oil U.:

** University of California at Berkeley, the University of Illinois,
and Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories: To manage British Petroleum's
grant of $500 million over 10 years to these institutions, Berkeley's
Energy Biosciences Institute set up a 10-member panel, which includes
two scientists from BP, to review all grant proposals. That group's
final list of potential grantees is then submitted to an 8-member
governance board made up of four BP officials and four university
officials, effectively giving either BP or the university veto power
over the direction of the program.

** Stanford University's 10-year, $225 million Global Climate and
Energy Project, funded by ExxonMobil, Toyota, General Electric, and
oil services giant Schlumberger, gives an exclusive, five-year right
to a royalty-free license to the companies that fund any research that
leads to a university-patented invention. Researchers at 20
universities outside Stanford have applied for grants from the
program, thus extending this perk far beyond Stanford's walls.

** The Georgia Institute of Technology's 5-year, $12 million grant
from Chevron Corp. for biofuels research eschews open competition for
grants and gives the company officials the final review for every
project funded by the program. "It's their money," said Roger Webb, a
retired professor of electrical engineering who runs the program at
Georgia Tech.

** University of California at Davis: Chevron's 5-year, $25 million
grant to U.C. Davis, also for biofuels research, gives the company an
unusually long period of three to four months to review research
results to remove confidential business information and to identify
potential intellectual property worthy of filing for patents.

According to CSPI, the industry-academic partnerships highlighted in
Big Oil U. represent a strategic shift for the industry. Instead of
discrediting the science behind global warming, companies increasingly
want to be seen as part of the solution. Between 1998 and 2005, Exxon
gave more than $19 million to groups that promoted the idea that
global warming was a hoax. Yet beginning in 2006, ExxonMobil ads
proudly touted the company's funding of the Stanford program: "Today
an energy company and a leading university share a common goal. The
common good." Another ExxonMobil ad bore the Stanford University seal.

But David Ritson, emeritus professor of physics at Stanford, calls the
program a fig leaf: "It does play into the hands of the Bush
administration's view that if we just leave it up to industry and the
private sector, everything will be fine." At some programs, corporate
sponsors may be able to influence the direction of research by
evaluating proposals before school officials decide which projects
receive funding.

Corporate sponsors have also been given exclusive rights to
commercialize any inventions that result from the program's research,
which has the appearance of transforming the university from a bastion
of independent scholarship into a contract research organization for
industry. ExxonMobil and other corporate sponsors are given the right
to delay publication of research while they finalize patent
applications for such inventions.

CSPI also examined corporate sponsored energy programs at Princeton,
MIT, Rice, Caltech, and Carnegie Mellon. Princeton, whose Carbon
Mitigation Initiative is supported by BP and Ford, has strong no-
strings-attached funding policies to ensure the academic freedom of
its researchers, according to CSPI. MIT has strong policies in place,
but, coincidence or not, the latest reports from its Joint Program on
the Science and Policy of Global Change have supported coal and
nuclear power.

CSPI recommends that universities accepting corporate funding adopt
policies to protect their autonomy and preserve their researchers'
autonomy. Those recommendations include:

** Prohibiting representatives of corporate donors from sitting on
research programs' governing boards;

** Prohibiting industry donors from controlling the content and
direction of research programs;

** Eliminating "first rights" intellectual property clauses from donor
agreements; and

** Ensuring that company representatives cannot make substantive
editorial changes in manuscripts or delay their publication.

Center for Science in the Public Interest 1875 Connecticut Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20009 (202) 332-9110 cspinews at cspinet.org



-- 
The wages of sin are death, but by the time taxes are taken out, it's just
sort of a tired feeling.
 - Paula Poundstone