as government-funded science dwindles
February 8, 2016 5:46 PM   Subscribe

 
"Dwindles" is a generous interpretation. Here in Australia, the PM is rolling his sleeves up to gut the CSIRO.
posted by turbid dahlia at 6:00 PM on February 8, 2016 [3 favorites]


If there are future generations, they're not going to think very highly of us at all.
posted by tobascodagama at 6:40 PM on February 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


Historian of economics Philip Mirowski has been talking about this issue for some time, if you want more:

The Modern Commercialisation of Science is a Passel of Ponzi Schemes (mp3)(pdf)
A Neoliberal Economics of Science(book review)
The Global Restructuring of Science as a Marketplace of Ideas (video)
posted by sneebler at 7:04 PM on February 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


Neuromancer wasn't supposed to be an instruction manual.
posted by Sangermaine at 7:08 PM on February 8, 2016 [3 favorites]


So, these mercenaries attempt to squeak these false articles at the ass-end of the scientific literature (Critical Reviews in Toxicology is a Taylor and Francis journal with an impact factor of 5; by comparison, Nature has an impact factor of 41.5, and if you could actually prove that asbestos is not a factor in mesothelioma, believe me you'd have a Nature article on your hands) in naked exchange for dollars. Dr. Goodman has a PhD in Toxicology from Johns Hopkins. Incredible that she'd be willing to drag that degree through the mud to such a degree.
posted by Existential Dread at 7:41 PM on February 8, 2016


Universities need to start revoking doctorates from people who pull this kind of shit.
posted by ocschwar at 7:49 PM on February 8, 2016 [7 favorites]



So, these mercenaries attempt to squeak these false articles at the ass-end of the scientific literature (Critical Reviews in Toxicology is a Taylor and Francis journal with an impact factor of 5


While I agree with your conclusions about Critical Reviews in Toxicology specifically, and agree that the behaviour of these scientists is indefensible, I would like to note that Taylor and Francis is quite respectable, and in the humanities an impact factor of 5 would be amazing. I just want to note that so that readers who don't know so much about impact factors or journals won't automatically dismiss other articles in the future if they are published in a T&F journal or with one with an impact factor of <5 (or in my discipline, the top journals have impact factors of less than 1!)
posted by lollusc at 8:02 PM on February 8, 2016 [8 favorites]


I don't actually believe in Hell but I sure as shit understand the appeal.
posted by Pope Guilty at 8:32 PM on February 8, 2016 [2 favorites]


Yeah, the top public health journals have IFs between about 5 and 10, and that's including the big review journals (which have higher citation rates than data journals, and thus higher IFs). The absolute IF is less relevant than the ranking. By that standard, Critical Reviews in Toxicology does okay, 7/88 in the Toxicology category - but Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology comes in at #56.

Leaving aside the quality of the journals, if it's that easy to buy scientists, it isn't going to be that hard to buy reviewers. Or just make them up, with journals that encourage authors to propose their own reviewers - even fancy-pants Nature Publishing Group has trouble with compromised peer review.
posted by gingerest at 8:58 PM on February 8, 2016 [3 favorites]


It's going to be easier and easier to buy scientists as funding for legitimate research grows a bit scarcer and the number of scientists we train (and we're training far too many) goes way over what government funding and legitimate industry can support. I mean, you want to think you wouldn't do this - but if you've got an advanced degree, possibly some hefty loans, and the options were to either do this shit for decent money or work at Starbucks, would it really be easy to refuse?
posted by Mitrovarr at 9:23 PM on February 8, 2016 [3 favorites]


I can't speak to anyone else's training but at both my grad schools we talked a fair amount about ethics and obligation to the profession of public health, and the challenges that come from, amongst other things, lending expertise to shaping policy, court cases, and social advocacy. It's not like I am suddenly up against the decision to sell out without ever having thought about it before. Even the decision to do studies with corporate sponsors is something I have given a lot of thought to, well in advance of it coming up in my career.
posted by gingerest at 10:57 PM on February 8, 2016


Everything about that article was so frustrating. The manipulation was so brazen and it seems like they're just getting away with it even after someone took the time to nail them. One sleazy lawyer got made into a scapegoat, but as far as I can tell Valberg and Goodman are carrying on?
posted by mark k at 11:16 PM on February 8, 2016


Another side of this whole thing is that university administration pretty much everywhere (in my experience: US, UK, NL, Germany) are placing a lot of direct pressure on their researchers to actually go out and solicit corporate buy-in for their research. Increasingly, the ability to earn "external" funding has become the most important metric for tenure reviews and promotions (where 'external' originally means public/gov't grants and now points towards private-sector money). If the 'CEO'-style presidents of today's universities had their way, we would all be doing nothing but research-on-demand for private interests.

So, keep in mind that there are a lot of researchers out there who are resisting this trend and often paying for it, professionally. Someone was saying upthread that we should revoke the PhDs of people who work as 'white coats for hire', but ironically it's the ones who refuse to play in this emergent perverse knowledge-economy who are the ones subject to sanction.
posted by LMGM at 12:49 AM on February 9, 2016 [8 favorites]


OK so--- you remember how batman bought the supplies and paid his bud to build all that cool stuff? So... those of you with gabillions of dollars-- let's fun ethical science yay! If somebody would hire all those well educated scientists debating working at starbucks or doing this crap- maybe they could actually get to work solving real problems and doing awesome superhero sciency stuff YAY!!

Ok I admit this is not my most well thought out idea it just sounds really cool. I just need to get a gazillion dollars and I'm totally on it!!!!!!!!!
posted by xarnop at 4:40 AM on February 9, 2016


Ok so the super hero scientists could develop better restraint and capture technology-- like think- a drone that can identify a human and restrain them with an instarope contraption??! Scientists could work on research in prevention and identifying CAUSES of diseases which gets a tiny fraction of funding and rarely gets used for much, so that information could be actually used, we could research human development and social well being and create school environments that actually meet physical, emotional, social, and cognitive needs at individual paces, we could expand on research we already have on birth and bonding and early childhood attachment---- a lot of this is just getting the research we already have into the hands of people doing work that they really should know this-- but all the better reason to have scientists who read and do this research ACTUALLY EDUCATING people in these fields so they can do a better job, instead of producing research that drops into the abyss of nothingness and never gets seen. Science heros! YAY!

I'm excited. Ya'll should join me in my imagination it's so much better than reality with all the suck in it.
posted by xarnop at 5:40 AM on February 9, 2016


Oh and they could design green tech with the standard set at - what materials are actually renewable, what materials can we harvest without harming the earth or the workers extracting them (different kinds of materials contain different human and environmental costs)- they could design production around human health and well being in the production process, they could work on product design that starts with the assumption the ingredients of products need to be ethically sourced and the products need to be safe for human use and the environment- why don't we just select the least likely to be toxic products instead of just assuming everything is safe until all the people are sick like children should be unwilling guinea pigs is these evil industry favoring experiments of how much toxic nastiness can we shove into people until they get sick, how much can we shove into the environment before it collapses? Like the idea of going into the forest and leaving it as much like it already was, instead of how much can I destroy until it collapses, let's start at do the least impact possible and then our bases are as covered at they can be, because life is precious and taking this risks just for financial gain needs to stop. Ok last comment-- everyone else seems to have stopped talking so I just thought, why don dream big while dreaming... you can't do something if you start off thinking it's impossible... I believe!
posted by xarnop at 6:32 AM on February 9, 2016


xarnop.... that work is the subject of the article. Assessing safety is what risk-assessment work is. Risk assessment for new products does assume bad until proven good generally, but there are a lot of products in that were assumed to be ok, or at least not terribly bad, but have, with the passage of time and better data and models, been found to be real problems. Asbestos, the subject of a large part of the article is exactly one such of those products.

The hard part is teasing out the established commercial interests and their hired guns from good science and data. That's largely done through public funding, either by grants or directly in government labs.

The major thing the article doesn't talk enough about, in my experience, is the regulatory side, and how that's equally open to capture by industry. It's all too common to see folks like Rhomberg, mentioned in the article, who go from public regulator to private mercenary, but even worse to see the folks who go the other way. Their typical career arc is a five or ten year stint in the public service, then a return to a cushy private sector job, typically at an industry association or "non-profit".

The effects on public policy by these industry plants are, I think worse. They're often the ones who put their thumbs on risk assessments, and who politicize the publication, i.e. non-publication, of uncomfortable truths. They're the ones in government arguing for the Potemkin-village science produced by for-hire consultants like Gradient.
posted by bonehead at 8:59 AM on February 9, 2016 [3 favorites]




« Older This will tide me over until the Olympics.   |   Murray Perahia on Bach Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments