The Threat to Public Research

Public-private partnerships in university research are on the rise. Private corporations have taken advantage of public-private funding models to save money and generate proprietary research outcomes.

The federal government has contributed to the rise of private influence in Canadian universities by introducing programs intended to maximise the commercialisation of research. By stipulating that research projects must have a private sponsor before receiving matching public funds, programs such as the Canadian Foundation for Innovation have vastly increased corporate involvement.

As research institutions have become more reliant on private sector money, private corporations have come to influence both the direction and the reported results of research. Some researchers who have been unwilling to tailor their work to the needs of private sponsors have become the targets of academic censorship and, in some cases, reprisals and public smear campaigns. Student researchers are particularly vulnerable because they lack the protection of mechanisms like collective agreements.

Sounding the Alarm on Corporate Influence

Over the last decade, the negative effects of corporate sponsored research have become apparent. A recent survey of researchers in the United States revealed that scientific misconduct had become commonplace.1 Of the researchers surveyed, 33% had engaged in some kind of significant misconduct including data falsification, plagiarism, and violation of ethical requirements. 15.5% of respondents had changed the research design, methodology, or results because of pressure from a funding source.

The research community has become more vocal over its concerns with the private sponsorship of university research. In a letter to the journal Science, 40 prominent scientists wrote that matched funding requirements were “eschewing scientific excellence”2 by prioritising funding those projects deemed commercialisable. The Canadian Society of Biochemistry, Molecular, and Cellular Biology is petitioning the federal government to address these concerns.3