From: AlterNet
April 22,
2013
In April of 2010, British Petroleum's offshore
drilling unit Deep Water Horizon exploded in the Gulf of
Mexico. Eleven workers died, 210 million gallons of oil
leaked into the ocean, and 665 miles of coastline were
contaminated. It was the biggest accidental marine oil
spill in US history.
Just one month after the ruptured well was sealed,
UC Berkeley ecologist Terry Hazen made a groundbreaking
discovery: He identified a new microorganism that was
eating the spilled oil and breaking it down into CO2 and
water. The microbe was so active that, according to
Hazen and his team of scientists, the vast plumes of oil
in the gulf had "went away fairly rapidly after the well
was capped." Hazen's findings were published in the
academic journal Science, and subsequently
reported by most major media outlets. One fact, however,
was often omitted: The research was funded by BP.
Such a pairing is possible because in 2007, UC
Berkeley, the University of Illinois, and BP signed a
ten-year, $500 million research agreement that funded
work on biofuels and genetically modified organisms
(GMOs). "When people read the Science report,
they thought they were reading a Berkeley professor's
research," said Ignacio Chapela, professor of microbial
ecology at UC Berkeley. "They didn't realize it was also
BP saying, 'You shouldn't worry about the oil spill
anymore.'"
Over the past fifteen years, UC Berkeley has
experienced an explosion in privately funded research.
In 2002, the engineering department's CITRIS lab, which
conducts energy, transportation, and medical research,
received an initial investment of $75 million from
dozens of industrial partners. The lab continues to
secure roughly $50 million a year in both federal and
private grants. In 2012, the Energy Biosciences building
was constructed with more than $90 million from numerous
private investors. And last spring, Texas Instruments
gifted $2.2 million to UC Berkeley's engineering
department to upgrade classrooms and labs.
The infusion of corporate cash at UC Berkeley also
has drastically changed the type of research being done
at the university. For decades, much of the research on
campus was federally funded and driven primarily by
scientific curiosity. The results of this basic research
allowed the public to better understand such concepts as
genetics, the origins of humanity, and the laws of
physics. It also won UC Berkeley numerous Nobel prizes.
Federal agencies still fund the majority of research
at UC Berkeley. But the university, and others like it
across the nation, have experienced a forty-year decline
in federally supported basic science research because of
government cutbacks. The rise of corporate funding, in
turn, has spawned a dramatic increase in the amount of
applied research on campus. It's typically funded by
industry and aims to develop products that can be
quickly brought to market — and create corporate
profits.
This fundamental overhaul of scientific inquiry at
the nation's top research universities has many
concerned that the public-service element of science is
dying. At the same time, some pragmatic researchers have
accepted the new private-public paradigm and are working
to identify the right safeguards to ensure that industry
doesn't wield too much power over academia. "You can
have private money in the sciences, it just has to be
done right," argued engineering professor David
Dornfeld, faculty head for the Advanced Manufacturing
Partnership, a massive public-private partnership
currently being drafted at UC Berkeley. "You have to be
careful how it's perceived, you have to have oversight,
it has to be transparent, and it has to be consistent
with the core mission of the university."
Nonetheless, some students say that, even with
protections in place, the presence of corporate
sponsorships on campus impacts decision-making, as more
researchers gravitate toward projects that are
well-funded and could result in industry jobs down the
road. In short, scientific research at the university
level is at a crossroads, and the direction UC Berkeley
chooses to take will have implications that reach far
into the future.
Until the 1940s, all university research was
essentially financed by private industry. However, just
before the US entered World War II, President Franklin
Roosevelt began enlisting academic scientists to support
the wartime effort. Shared facilities — in which
researchers from across the country collaborated with
the US military to develop weapons — were built.
The success of these programs prompted the federal
government to rethink its involvement in the sciences.
In a 1945 report, "Science: The Endless Frontier,"
Vannevar Bush, head of the US Office of Scientific
Research and Development, explored the possibility of
creating government agencies to fund basic research at
universities. He argued that "scientific progress is one
essential key to our security as a nation, to our better
health, to more jobs, to a higher standard of living,
and to our cultural progress." Therefore, Bush believed,
"the federal government does not only have the authority
but, indeed, the obligation to support research,
particularly basic research, in universities."
By 1950, the federal government had established a
number of agencies to award research grants to
universities. And by 1953, it was funding 55 percent of
the research performed in US universities. By 1970, it
had grown to 70 percent. At that point, industry funded
just 3 percent of research conducted at US universities.
The Fifties and Sixties were commonly referred to as
the "golden era" of science. Universities made numerous
groundbreaking discoveries, and American scientists led
the world in the number of Nobel prizes collected.
However, between 1970 and 1995, government funding
for research and development fell by more than 50
percent. While it rebounded slightly between 2001 and
2005, it has since resumed its long-term decline. And
the recent automatic federal budget cuts known as
sequestration could lead to a loss of an additional $8.6
billion in federal research grants in the coming year.
The impacts of the sequester can already be felt at
UC Berkeley, where federal support for the sciences has
dramatically shrunk for the 2012-2013 academic year.
Some UC officials are asking Congress to reconsider
these cuts, as they will have a devastating impact on
research. "The UC is playing a leading role in our
nation's economic recovery, and it's a critical engine
of innovation," said Gary Falle, vice president for
Federal Governmental Relations at UC. "We will ...
continue to advocate for strong funding for basic
research so that scientific discoveries can continue to
move forward."
In the past three decades, privately funded applied
research, however, has skyrocketed at US universities.
Between 1985 and 2005, it increased by 250 percent, from
$950 million to $2.4 billion.
This explosion of corporate dollars being directed
to universities has also sparked controversy and raised
concerns about scientific bias. A 2006 investigation by
the San Jose Mercury News found that one-third
of Stanford University's medical school administrators
and department heads reported financial conflicts of
interest related to their own research. And another
report by the British Medical Journal in 2010
found that pharmaceutical-industry-
The first big public-private partnership came to UC
Berkeley in 1997, when the Swiss biotech company
Novartis entered a five-year, $25 million contract on
GMO research with the biology department. It was the
first time that nearly an entire academic department
signed an agreement with a single firm.
At the time, Professor Chapela was the biology
department's faculty representative, and he heard a
plethora of concerns from professors regarding the
agreement. Some disliked that Novartis would receive
intellectual property rights to research results. Others
worried that layers of confidentiality agreements went
against the core principles of academia. "Still, the
administration seemed ready to go ahead," said Chapela.
"There was this feeling that there was nothing we could
do about it because the decision had already been
reached."
But the deal also generated widespread protest from
students, faculty, and community members, who felt that
the university's academic reputation was tainted by the
partnership. "There are intellectual spaces that should
be absolutely clean and protected from the influences of
private partners," said Chapela, "and I don't see any
way in which you can do that when you have money
directly given to a program. ... Once you start working
to promote the industrial sector, there are certain
questions you're not allowed to ask."
Over the course of five years, the research deal
produced no dramatic discoveries and Novartis didn't
license any products. In other words, it was a financial
bust for the corporation. Plus, it was a loss for the
university. A 2004 UC-funded review of the Novartis
agreement found that the damage done to Cal — including
infighting among faculty and negative press coverage —
didn't justify the money that it received.
Lawrence Bush, the study's principal investigator,
wrote that the agreement was a "lightning rod for
numerous concerns about the role and purpose of the
university," and that before UC Berkeley embarks on
future public-private partnerships, it should have an
open dialogue about the goals of working alongside
industry. "As a recognized national leader in higher
education, with a strong and vibrant tradition of
faculty governance, UCB is perhaps best situated as a
place to begin a serious debate," concluded Bush, "and,
as a leader, perhaps it has an obligation to do so as
well."
The UC system is projecting a $2.5 billion
structural shortfall by 2015, and the university's
financial managers have no concrete plans to address the
crisis. As a result, private money has continued to flow
into Berkeley's hard science departments with little
public input.
To deal with this new funding model, many professors
are trying to ensure that academic integrity remains
intact. And with the exception of the BP agreement, they
have — by and large — been successful. Most
public-private partnerships at Cal involve multiple
companies, don't encompass entire departments, and
include safeguards to ensure that the basic principles
of academia are preserved. In turn, many professors
believe that the situation has improved: "In the old
days, there was an element of people doing superb
research and then publishing it in the literature and
then hoping something good would happen," said Paul
Wright, director of the engineering department's CITRIS
lab. "Now, organizations like ours have developed, and
we can more easily take those brilliant research ideas
and turn them into commercially oriented products."
CITRIS is a seven-story glass edifice in the middle
of the engineering quadrant. The lab receives between
$50 and $60 million a year in research grants, roughly a
quarter of which comes from its 36 corporate partners,
including IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and Intel. Despite being
heavily funded by industry, CITRIS is a public good,
Wright said. "Everything we do has to be a part of the
open literature .... None of it is exclusive, it can be
licensed by anybody."
Some other public-private partnerships, such as the
one Cal has with BP, designate a portion of the research
results as property of the investing company. Wright
also noted that professors have full autonomy in
choosing what to research at the CITRIS lab. "No one is
telling me what I should work on as a faculty member,
and the students have the same freedom as well."
During the fall semester, I spoke with a half-dozen
graduate students after a class at CITRIS. All of them
believed that, thanks to the protections put in place by
Wright and his colleagues, the benefits of working
alongside industry outweigh the dangers. But it was also
apparent that the presence of corporate sponsors on
campus is affecting students' views of basic science
research. "As an undergraduate, you learn all of this
theory and it's nothing practical," said Alex Heller, an
engineering Ph.D student. "With these corporate
entities, though, I can see where this skill set is
practical, and where I can use it in the future."
Mark Fuge, a third-year engineering Ph.D student,
said that having corporate sponsors gave him a certain
level of financial security that he would otherwise
lack. "It's a couple thousand dollars for a company to
sponsor a team," he said. "That's nothing for them, but
for the teams, having a working budget to develop these
technologies is everything."
One student noted that having access to private
funding also affects choices made on campus. "A lot of
times, without even noticing it, I chose to work on
something just because it will let me be funded," said
physics Ph.D student Shiry Ginzaw. She added that she
doesn't do basic science, in part, because there's
likely no financial payoff in the near- or long-term. "I
think basic research is interesting, but I don't do it
because I wouldn't be paid as a physics student, and I
probably wouldn't find a job afterwards. ... A lot of
the choices I've made are because the money is in one
place and it's not in another."
During the 1970s, roughly 62 percent of
government-funded research was basic research — science
for the sake of science. Between 2000 and 2010, that
number dropped more than 12 percentage points.
Government, in other words, has not only cut scientific
funding overall, but the research it is funding
is increasingly geared to help corporate America compete
in the global marketplace.
At UC Berkeley, a school once dedicated to pursuing
long-term scientific discoveries, research is more often
viewed today as an engine for economic growth. As one
English professor put it during a panel discussion on
the future of the UC last year, "administrators are
attempting to turn the university ever more completely
into an institution of global capitalism."
UC Berkeley's Energy Biosciences Institute, for
example, is the largest public-private partnership of
its kind in the world. Primarily funded by BP, the
institute is trying to develop cheaper and more
efficient biofuels. While the resulting technology could
provide widespread benefits, BP's main goal is to
position itself as a leader in the potentially lucrative
world of alternative energy technologies.
Another growing field of applied research on campus
is robotics. The global market for robots is expected to
grow from $1.3 billion in 2009 to more than $5 billion
in 2015. The CITRIS lab recently partnered with Silicon
Valley robot developer Willow Garage to create a robot
that can fold clothes. CITRIS researchers are also
working to develop a robot that can assist in surgery.
The Berkeley Laboratory for Automation Science and
Engineering also specializes in robotic research, and
has eight corporate partners.
The Advanced Manufacturing Partnership (AMP) is
another example of a market-driven research project.
However, unlike some other public-private partnerships,
the AMP is composed of a wide range of public and
private agencies, nonprofits, and universities,
including Cal. Although its goal is much loftier than
creating profitable products for individual companies,
it nonetheless emphasizes applied research rather than
basic science. The AMP is designed to help reinvigorate
the nation's advanced manufacturing sector, and in the
process, stabilize the economy. "Our mission is not to
do core fundamental research," explained Berkeley
engineering professor David Dornfeld, who is the faculty
spokesperson for the partnership, "but instead to
transfer research into practice."
According to a federal report released last year,
advanced manufacturing is the most productive industry
in the country — for every high-end manufacturing job,
sixteen other jobs are created. Over the past decade,
however, the nation has lost one-third of its
manufacturing workforce, due in large part to its
inability to compete globally. As a result, President
Barack Obama drafted a proposal last year to invest $1
billion in the AMP.
The AMP hopes to create a more efficient pipeline
between academia and industry. Under the current system,
a good amount of research gets bogged down in what's
often referred to as "the valley of death" — the
nebulous period between design and manufacturing. "We're
going to build a bridge between the research that's
going on in universities and small companies, finding a
way to scale that up into production," said Dornfeld.
The partnership also proposes rewriting domestic and
international tax policies, which would create a more
favorable business climate nationwide.
While the nature of the AMP is to create
commercialized products, its structure will ensure that
no single investor wields too much power. Along with
Berkeley engineers, the partnership will include dozens
of small- to mid-size industrial firms, a few major
companies, and officials at the National Institute of
Science. Local community colleges will also be included
in the partnership, and a nonprofit will coordinate all
the research. "It won't be as directly tied to the
bottom line of any single company as some of the other
[public-private partnerships] might appear to be," said
Dornfeld. "It's not going to be like, 'I'm giving you
millions of dollars, now I want to have first dibs on
the next product you create.' It's going to be more of a
traditional, consortium-based research group."
In short, while the AMP continues the shift toward
market-driven applied research, its supporters maintain
that academic integrity will not be harmed. And by
folding a wide range of partners into the AMP, and
spurring widespread economic growth, supporters say the
research will stay true to UC Berkeley's public-service
mission.
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