Rubber Stamp-type Decisions for Funding of Academic Research: Paradigms and Conflicts of Interest

Abstract

In review of Guardians of Science: Fairness and Reliability of Peer Review (Daniel, 1993), it was suggested that some of the peer review decisions discussed in the book might be of a type of rubber stamp approval... (Moran, 1995, p. 92). decisions in question related articles published in honor of Prof. Jan Thesing. Some of these articles were funded by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinshaft (DFG), Fonds der Chemischen Industrie (FCI), and the chemical company, Merck. Thesing's career included high positions at DFG, FCI, Merck, and on the editorial board of Angewandte Chemie (the chemical journal in which these articles in honor of Thesing were published).The rubber stamp aspect of peer review decisions in this case is based on overlapping, interlocking industrial-governmental-academic complex... (Moran, 1995, p. 91), in which prestigious professors, experts in their field, have key positions in funding agencies, professional and learned societies, industrial companies, and editorial leadership at prestigious academic journals. It would appear that situations such as these would lead type of rubber stamp peer review decision process (both for approvals and rejections) regarding funding of research as well as publications of research results.In fact, very strong recent trends in academia toward university-industrial partnerships (and various types of collaboration that result in financial gain for the university) increase the possibility and likelihood for rubber stamp-type funding decisions. Much has been written on the subject, often referred as academic capitalism. One of the most penetrating studies in this field is the book by Sheldon Krimsky (2003), Science in the Private Interest: Has the Lure of Profits Corrupted Biomedical Research? word corrupted in the subtitle indicates that issues relating information ethics are directly involved, including clash between the traditional academic ethic of search for the truth and the primary business motive of financial gain. Such clash involves questions of bias, conflicts of interest, etc.Paradigms and Academic ControversiesIn general, much research funding is awarded and distributed for studies that conform paradigms of specific academic disciplines. In academic controversies, grant applications for research and studies that contest the reigning tend get rubber stamp rejection. notion of paradigm can extend specific agenda, or position in research (so-called advocacy research.) Along this line, the John Templeton Foundation recently gave very large sum the Gruter Institute For Law and Behavioral Research, as grant to develop that will investigate the role of values in free economic system (Gruter Institute, 2005, p. 1). Most likely, proposal study The Virtues of Marxism and the Evils of Capitalism would receive rubber stamp rejection from Gruter.Also within the realm of paradigms is what Broad and Wade (1982) describe as old-boy in which, for example, at the National Science Foundation, program managers rely on trusted friends in the academic community.... These friends recommend their friends as reviewers, resulting in a monopoly game of grantsmanship (pp. 100-101). In such network, members are drawn from the same elite groups and institutions that end up receiving the of the grants (p. 100). In this and similar settings, the terms monopoly, and bulk of, would go hand in hand with rubber stamp grant approval.In Hans Ruesch's (1992) Naked Empress: Or the Great Medical Fraud, chapter subtitle is Stop Funding Dissenters. Ruesch describes how Irving Bross received no National Cancer Institute (NCI) funding after Bross released findings that were critical of some of NCI's policies and operations. (pp. 76-77). And Ruesch states that an NCI official, Gio Gori, was fired after he contested some aspects of the cancer research (p. …