A while ago, ALLEA (the alliance of European science academies) published a statement on ethical problems in collaborations between academia and commercial parties.*
With this post, I want to draw attention to this topic (my impression was that it got a bit overshadowed by all the horrible attacks on academic freedom and academic institutions that are currently happening in the US – ALLEA also published a statement on academic freedom in response), but also raise some more questions.
In the Dutch context, about two years ago, there was quite some discussion about two issues: 1) money flowing from fossil fuel companies, in particular Shell, to research institutions, often without transparency; 2) climate change activists who participated in blockades in their academic gowns, the traditional symbol of full professors that is otherwise only worn for PhD defenses or inaugural lectures. My focus will be on the former, but there is also a connection with the latter, in the sense that it raises questions about the role that academics should or shouldn’t play in the public discussions – and let’s name it openly, conflict – between those who want a quick transition to a fossil-free economy and those who want to continue making money by exploiting fossil fuels.
Among colleagues and friends, we had lots of discussions about these issues. Some universities, for example Wageningen, produced documents that were meant to probe such collaborations, trying to sort good from bad forms of collaborations. Candidates for “good” collaborations might be R&D collaborations on green energies – even if paid for by “bad” companies, or so defenders would claim. The obviously “bad” type of collaborations included projects on increasing the efficiency of, say, gas extraction by fracking. But of course, there is a huge grey area in the middle, and there is a considerable risk that even “good” projects are used for “greenwashing”: to make a company look better, in public, than it really is, maybe also to attract university graduates as future employees.
In the discussions in the ALLEA working group, we wanted to discuss the topic on a somewhat broader basis, considering not only fossil-fuel companies, but commercial actors in general. (One might argue that with regard to fossil-fuels, a policy of “no collaboration at all” is the most ethical line, but that’s not necessarily the right response for all collaborations with all kinds of commercial parties). There was quickly consensus that we would not be able to provide clear-cut rules, set in stone once and for all, about the ethicality of research projects in collaboration with commercial parties, because so much depends on context. What was also clear, however, was that researchers and university leaders should look beyond the immediate and direct effect of project funding, to take into account the broader implications for academic freedom, research integrity, and public trust in science. The ALLEA statement discusses such broader considerations, with the hope that it will lead to more thorough discussions about concrete cases.
Do I think that this will be effective? I have some hope that it can help conscientious players in universities to lead discussions in a constructive way. It can be an incredibly awkward situation among academic colleagues if one person wants to take money from a source that others find problematic, but without being able to say exactly where their unease comes from. Uttering doubts can quickly lead to suspicions of envy – or there is self-censorship in anticipation of such suspicions, which can nip any discussion in the bud. The categories and arguments from the ALLEA statement can hopefully help pin down why exactly a certain source of funding might be problematic, and this might help come to better decisions (which would, in practice, often mean a refusal to accept funding from certain sources).**
But of course, there is a huge coordination problem – even if one researcher, or institution, rejects money from a problematic source, others might still take it, and that might be an argument for the first one to say, “then we might as well take it.” In a climate in which public funding is becoming scarcer and ever more competitive, and yet many researchers continue to be evaluated in terms of the money they bring in, the temptation can become very strong to take money from problematic sources even if one agrees, deep down, that they are problematic. The statement says that there should be “no disadvantages for the career trajectories of researchers who refuse to participate in industry collaborations and therefore bring in less research funding” – but that’s not the reality we see in many academic systems. And as long as departments, faculties, and universities are also ranked on (and sometimes draw their self-esteem from) amounts of money brought in, without asking any questions about what this money really says about their quality, the coordination problem will be hard to tackle. In my wild dreams, I hope that universities might enter a process to coordinate their responses (and maybe that the ALLEA statement can help with such a process). But that’s a tall order.
Lastly, a friend pointed out a topic to me that the ALLEA statement does not discuss directly, but which is worth also drawing attention to: the way in which commercial parties sometimes sponsor research in ethics, in order to look good in public, and to give the impression that they belong to the “good guys.” Such “ethics washing” seems to be particularly strong in research on AI and digital ethics. This is quite understandable if one considers the combination of 1) genuinely interesting new ethical challenges arising from the use of digital tools and AI, 2) companies with tons of money, 3) the push, in many academic systems, to do applied research that “serves society,” and 4) the scarcity of public funding. Related questions arise in research in economic philosophy, where libertarian agendas have long been pushed by money from private foundations with a free-market leaning (see this excellent piece – already somewhat older, but still relevant, I think).
Why bother about all these questions in times in which the public attacks on academia, in many countries, are so dramatic that many other things pale in comparison? Well, that very situation may put pressure on universities to look for alternative sources of funding, and therefore people will look for more opportunities to collaborate with private companies.*** Not all of them need to be ethically wrong. But there might be a silent normalization process in which it becomes a matter of fact that academics accept money from commercial parties. And that would, in the long run, be extremely dangerous – especially for the humanities, but arguably also for many other fields. Not only would topics that do not please these funders disappear from the official research agendas; there is also a risk that the public trust that academia still enjoys would be completely eroded if we get to be seen as the court jesters of big corporations. We better do discuss these questions openly, now!****
*Full disclosure: I was part of the working group that wrote it, which is also responsible for the European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity (but I only joined it for the latest round of revisions).
**Note that there are also complicated questions about who should make such decisions – individual researchers (in the name of academic freedom?) or research groups or institutions? I’m not sure what the best answer is, it seems to depend a lot on the context.
***An additional factor currently playing in Europe is the move towards a new geopolitical paradigm, with a much stronger focus on military research. The role of universities within this field is, of course, a complex topic – but in any case, one that should be addressed in open discussions, rather than through a creeping normalization that pushes all ethical problems to the side.
**** I would like to Constanze Binder for comments on a draft version of this post, and many earlier discussions.
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