Distinction between academic and public research helps to ensure disinterestedness of academic research
Public and academic research can only be ethically correct on the fundamental level, if it is not seen as a market commodity, but as the universal, disinterested human search for new scientific knowledge for the good of humanity. This scientific ideal has been debated and formulated by scientists like Merton and Humbold and in the Charta of Magna Charta Universitatum and in the idea of “academic freedom” and has been widely recognised in its various forms for centuries. Nevertheless it should not be kept alive due to historic romanticism, but should be reformulated into an obligation for public universities and research institutes to provide to the society. Only then can public science be a pillar of liberal democracy.
“Classical” research in liberal capitalist democracies
In light of this ideal and to reduce conflicts of interests research has been done in three different institutions in most western liberal democracies:
1. academic research driven by human curiosity mostly at public universities
2. public research for the public good mostly at governmental research institutes
3. industrial research for shareholder profit at the research laboratories of corporations.
Academic researchers try to understand how things work and their results lay often the foundation of further research in public laboratories if relevant for the society or in industrial research institutions if industrially relevant. For example, an academic researcher might find the cause of a disease. A public research laboratory might then use this knowledge to monitor the found cause in the population and industrial research institutions might compete to innovate a drug based on this finding. They can then apply for patents for their products.
Academic and public research is a social and universal human enterprise guided by the ethical values of communism (later communalism), disinterestedness, universalism and organised scepticism according to the American sociologist Robert Merton. The distinction between academic and public research helps to ensure disinterestedness of academic research, as it is not under the direct control of the government, but success is measured by the impact and the number of peer reviewed publications. Its funds are allocated with the help of a peer review process and science councils, so that scientists without political and administrative pressure and not politicians evaluate scientists (Haldane principle). Contrary, public research institutes are supposed to help the government to serve its citizens and to base its policies more on evidence than ideology. Furthermore, they create the evidence for the electorate to base opinions on and to judge government policies. As the government is accountable to the citizens and their research is funded by taxes, public research institutes are indirectly accountable to public. Therefore public access to the results of their research and data bases is vital for public scrutiny of both the government and the research institutes. They are more directly controlled by the government than academic institutes and work often on tasks directly assigned by the government like space programs and the development of weapons, but the political influence is nevertheless restricted to ensure trustworthiness. They often monitor long term changes in the society (poverty, fertility, crime, health, …), and in nature triggered by natural and human influences (climate change, earthquake activity, weather, pollution, …).
Academic researchers try to understand how things work and their results lay often the foundation of further research in public laboratories if relevant for the society or in industrial research institutions if industrially relevant.
This basic distinction has never been as clear in praxis as laid out here and Merton’s ethical principles have never been reality, but they have been viewed as an ideal worth striving for. Today however, even this ideal has consciously been abolished by neo-liberal thinking, probably most prominently in Canada under the Harper government, but as well in Sweden, Great Britain, Austria and Australia. For example, the Harper government voted down a resolution merely stating “That, in the opinion of the House: (a) public science, basic research and the free and open exchange of scientific information are essential to evidence-based policy-making; (b) federal government scientists must be enabled to discuss openly their findings with their colleagues and the public; and (c) the federal government should maintain support for its basic scientific capacity across Canada(…).” In congruence of these governments’ focus on the welfare of the economy than the welfare of the society (often called as referred to as trickle down policies), the aim of public and academic research has shifted from for the public good to economical good. Public and academic research budgets have been cut for basic research, redirected to applied research and replaced by corporation funding, severely affecting the disinterestedness. Furthermore, new media directives demand scientific staff to recite pre-scripted statement by the ministry, often contradicting their own research. In 2013 the newly elected Austrian government abolished the ministry of science and research and made it a subdivision of the ministry of industries and economy, once more emphasising the neo-liberal notion that all human activities have to be evaluated under economical terms. This shift in ideology does not only abolish an ideal, but converts public research from an enterprise for the benefit of the society and for the creation of knowledge for its own sake, into a tool for the affluent against the rest of the society.
Research, science, society and democracy
Science shows us our place in the environment and time. We know today that we are not the centre of the universe and that our ancestors’ decisions and lifestyles influence the quality of our lives and that the lives of our off-spring depend on our choices and lives. There is ample evidence that economic interests in capitalist societies and the societies’ interest do not align, but collide on a fundamental level. The quest for profit and the quest for a “good life” for all humans overlap by design only for the privileged, but overlap only by chance for the rest of humanity and even contradict each other. Science has shown that the underprivileged bear the burden of economic development in the form of noise level, pollution and climate change, when corporations are not hindered from externalising costs and profiting from the earth’s resources without sharing their value. In this way science speaks for the marginalised.
Even if we do not see the integrity of the environment and living creatures as an intrinsic value, we still have to allow all humans and the coming generations a good live. Science helps the society to identify threats to the environment, prevent damage and provide repair solutions. It thereby cuts t costs for the society by either hindering damage at the first place or by providing cheaper and more holistic repair solutions, than often provided by the profit oriented industry. Science shows as well that unequal wealth distributions threatens everybody’s health, lowers life expectancy, increases crime levels and drug abuse and thereby increases suffering and the cost of a good life.
Academic and public research is a social and universal human enterprise guided by the ethical values of communism (later communalism), disinterestedness, universalism and organised scepticism according to the American sociologist Robert Merton.
The industry only selectively invests into applied science and technology, and prefers rather small research projects with short term goals and small risks, instead of looking at the “bigger picture”. It marginalises or even oppresses science, when the evidence shows that (parts of) the profit is generated at the society’s cost or the cost of following generations. Furthermore, corporations do usually not want to share their research results with the public due to competition and term it intellectual property, or to obscure the failures or hazardousness of the products. The market fails by default to allocate resources for independent research, no matter in which institution the research is carried out, a corporation or an “independent” research institute, which in reality depends on its industrial funders. The results of scientific studies depend strongly on the interests of the funding interest group, even when conducted at public institutes or universities. Therefore the university and public research institutes have to be funded by the whole society and any funding by other interest groups has to be prohibited. Not even the revelation of funders and conflicts of interest reduce this problem to an unacceptable level. It is better to not create a conflict of interest in the first place, instead of conducting research with an openly declared conflict of interest and thereby significantly reducing trustworthiness, and maybe even preventing independent research.
Only independent research institutions that are not part of the market economy, do not need to sell their results and ideas and are free of disproportionate influence of the affluent, get funded independently of their ideas and results and can freely speak about their results, can overcome this conflict. In liberal democracies the state is the organisational unit that is supposed to fulfil this task with the help of the tax payer’s money. To improve the openness, the universality and the disinterestedness of public science, science has often been conducted at three different institutions, as explained above. If the state promotes and finances research mostly in the fields that the industry regards as profitable, the state violates its democratic duty on a fundamental level. Due to the power differences between the affluent, the ordinary people and the marginalised the state is in constant danger of becoming an oligarchy (according to research at Princeton the USA has already become one) and has to be constantly reminded of its role as being the organisation unit of all people in a country.
During the last decades the gap between rich and poor in western liberal democracies has widened dramatically, and at the same time public science for the public good has been severely reduced, and universities have been reduced to knowledge and research service providers for the industry. The university has become a player in the “knowledge economy”. This approach deprives the tax payer of money, the consumer of informed consumer choices, the citizen of influence and fact based dissent, the voter of an evidence based political discourse and in the end of an informed vote. The voter even unintentionally elects a party against his own interests. Suppression of independent public research correlates with the suppression of democracy, as the society walks blind.
