Module 005 – Scientific Research

This module contains the following topics:

1. Funding and Conflicts in Scientific Research
2. Research Data Recording
3. Societal Responsibilities of Scientists and Science

Funding and Conflicts in Scientific Research

From the October 2007 Issue of Discover Magazine, an article entitled, “Science’s Worst
Enemy: Corporate Funding” had this to say regarding funding and conflicts in research:
“In recent years there have been a number of highly visible attacks on American science,
everything from the fundamentalist assault on evolution to the Bush
administration’s strong-arming of government scientists. But for many people who pay
close attention to research and development (R&D), the biggest threat to science has been
quietly occurring under the radar, even though it may be changing the very foundation of
American innovation. The threat is money—specifically, the decline of government support
for science and the growing dominance of private spending over American research.
The trend is undeniable. In 1965, the federal government financed more than 60 percent of
all R&D in the United States. By 2006, the balance had flipped, with 65 percent of R&D in
this country being funded by private interests. According to the American Association for
the Advancement of Science, several of the nation’s science-driven agencies—the
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Department of Agriculture, the Department of
the Interior, and NASA—have been losing funding, leading to more “outsourcing” of what
were once governmental science functions. The EPA, for example, recently began
conducting the first nationwide study on the air quality effects of large-scale animal
production. Livestock producers, not taxpayers, are slated to pay for the study. “The
government is clearly increasing its reliance on industry and forming ‘joint ventures’ to
accomplish research that it is unable to afford on its own anymore,” says Merrill Goozner, a
program director at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer advocacy
group.
Research universities, too, are rapidly privatizing. Both public and private institutions now
receive a shrinking portion of their overall funding from government sources. They are
looking instead to private industry and other commercial activities to enhance their
funding. Last summer, an investigation by the San Jose Mercury News found that one-third
of Stanford University’s medical school administrators and department heads now have
reported financial conflicts of interest related to their own research. These included stock
options, consulting fees, and patents.
Is all this truly harmful to science? Some experts argue that corporate support is actually
beneficial because it provides enhanced funding for R&D, speeds the transfer of new
knowledge to industry, and boosts economic growth. “It isn’t enough to create new
knowledge,” says Richard Zare, a professor of chemistry at Stanford University. “You need
to transfer that knowledge for the betterment of society. That’s why I don’t want to set up
this conflict of interest problem to such a heightened level of hysteria whereby you can’t
get universities cooperating with industry.”
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Even many industry leaders worry that the current mix of private and public funding is out
of balance, however. In 2005, a panel of National Academies (the National Academy of
Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine) that included
both industry and academic members (including Zare) concluded that corporate R&D
“cannot and should not replace federal R&D.” Norman Augustine, the panel’s chairman and
a former CEO at Lockheed Martin, noted that market pressures have compelled industry to
put nearly all its investment into applied research, not the riskier basic science that drives
innovation 10 to 15 years out.
Others fear that if the balance tips too far, the “public interest” side of the science system—
known for its commitment to independence and objectivity—will atrophy. Earlier this year,
former FDA commissioner Jane Henney remarked that “it’s getting much more difficult to
get that pure person with no conflicts at all. . . . The question becomes both one of
disclosure and how much of a conflict you can have and still be seen as an objective and
knowledgeable reviewer of information.” More than half the scientists at the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service who responded to a survey conducted by the Union of Concerned Scientists
in 2005 agreed that “commercial interests have inappropriately induced the reversal or
withdrawal of scientific conclusions or decisions through political intervention.”
Merrill Goozner argues that the danger runs deeper. “In many precincts of the scientific
enterprise, the needs of industry have become paramount,” he says, turning science into “a
contested terrain” where facts are increasingly contingent on who is funding the research.
“The whole scientific revolution, which was a product of the Enlightenment, is threatened
when you commercialize science,” he warns.
So is private funding a boon or a bane for American science? The answer, like good science
itself, requires looking carefully at how the phenomenon is playing out in the real world.
Steven Nissen is perhaps the most prominent physician speaking out about the
pharmaceutical industry’s growing influence over medical research. An esteemed
cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic, Nissen has written more than 300 articles and served
as the immediate past president of the American College of Cardiology. Working in a
bustling academia-affiliated medical center has given Nissen a unique perspective on the
benefits and risks of privatization.
In the past, academic medical investigators strove to maintain “arm’s-length relationships
with their corporate sponsors,” says Marcia Angell, a former editor in chief at The New
England Journal of Medicine. That changed with the rise of biotechnology and the passage of
landmark congressional legislation known as the Bayh-Dole Act. Passed in 1980, the act
granted universities and their professors automatic rights to own and commercialize
federally funded research. The goal was to unlock financial incentives that would speed the
pace of American scientific innovation. Overnight, many of the cultural taboos associated
with overt commercial profiteering on campus began to evaporate.
Nissen believes that interactions between academia and industry are crucial to the
development of new treatments. He also accepts sponsored research grants from industry,
both to test drugs and develop new treatments, although he tries to limit his personal
financial conflicts of interest by requiring that any other consulting fees and honoraria be
given directly to charity. Still, he is clearly troubled by the threat that privatization poses to
academic autonomy—and to research objectivity. “We can only make good decisions in
science when all of the information is available for physicians, scientists, and patients to
review,” he says. But drug companies are increasingly keeping physicians and their
patients in the dark.
 Last year, Nissen grew suspicious about possible health risks associated with
GlaxoSmithKline’s top-selling diabetes drug, Avandia. “We requested access to the original
patient-level data,” he says, but “we were not afforded access.” Nissen wasn’t surprised; for
years he has perceived a growing tendency by the drug industry to suppress negative
research data.
Searching the Internet, Nissen stumbled upon a remarkable cache of data belonging to
Glaxo. His search unearthed 42 Avandia clinical trials—only 15 of which had ever been
published. Nissen didn’t know it at the time, but the reason Glaxo’s data were just sitting
there on the Web was the outcome of a lawsuit filed by former New York attorney general
(and current governor) Eliot Spitzer in 2004. The lawsuit alleged that Glaxo had concealed
negative trial data associated with its popular antidepressant drug, Paxil. When the data
were properly analyzed, they showed that children given Paxil were actually two times
more likely to experience suicidal thinking and behavior than children given a placebo, or
sugar pill. When Glaxo settled the suit, it denied having suppressed data and consented to
posting results of all its clinical trials online—including its data on Avandia.
Nissen knew there were limitations to the public information he had. He lacked any original
patient-level information, and a meta-analysis of prior drug studies is always less powerful
than a large prospective, randomized clinical trial. This May, however, Nissen felt
compelled to alert doctors and patients to what he had found.
Publishing in The New England Journal of Medicine, Nissen reported that Avandia raised the
risk of heart attacks in patients by 43 percent. The news made front-page headlines. Two
days later, the FDA, which had already been assessing the health risks of Avandia, imposed
its toughest warning label, the “black box,” on the drug, as well as on Actos, another drug
used to treat diabetes.
At a subsequent congressional hearing chaired by Representative Henry Waxman, it came
to light that the FDA had known about Avandia’s risks for some time. Rosemary Johann-
Liang, a former FDA drug safety supervisor, had recommended a black box warning label
for Avandia due to its harmful effects on the heart one year prior to Nissen’s publication.
Glaxo’s own meta-analysis, presented to the FDA in 2006, showed a 31 percent increased
risk of heart attacks. Yet according to Johann-Liang, “my recommending a heart failure box
warning was not well received by my superiors, and I was told that I would not be
overseeing that project.” She was also told to obtain her supervisors’ approval before
making any future black box recommendations. After the hearing, the FDA completed its
own meta-analysis of the original patient data and found virtually the same heart risks
Nissen had reported.
Nevertheless, Nissen found himself under attack, often by people with explicit financial ties
to the drug industry. His challengers have included Valentin Fuster, who wrote a critique of
Nissen’s work in Nature Clinical Practice Cardiovascular Medicine. Fuster receives Glaxo
funding and serves as the chairman of Glaxo’s Research and Education Foundation. Peter
Pitts wrote a stinging attack on Nissen in The Washington Times; he is a senior vice
president at the PR firm Manning Selvage & Lee, which represents Big Pharma, including
Glaxo. Douglas Arbesfeld, a senior communications consultant at the FDA, disparaged
Nissen in a biting e-mail to the media. He formerly worked as a spokesman for Johnson &
Johnson.
Press reports over the last 15 years detail how whistle-blowers inside academia and within
the FDA who have attempted to expose drug-research and safety issues have been
pressured. Some were threatened with legal action, others punished by their superiors and
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discredited. “Whenever we’ve raised safety questions about drugs,” Nissen says, “there’s
always been a reaction like this. Exactly the same thing happened in 2001 when we
published a manuscript that suggested that Vioxx might be causing excess heart attacks.”
Nissen was coauthor of one of the first studies on the dangers of Vioxx. Three years later,
Merck pulled the drug from the market. By that time, one FDA analyst estimates, the drug
had contributed to up to 139,000 heart attacks. (A Merck representative states that the
paper from which the estimate of 139,000 was derived had “serious limitations” and did
not necessarily reflect the views of the FDA.)
Experiences like these have bolstered Nissen’s position that the independent research
system needs to be protected and preserved. “I think having independent physicians
leading the study and analyzing the data is the best way to protect against biases in the
reporting of results.” But increasingly, he says, the pharmaceutical industry is farming out
its clinical trials to for-profit entities, known as contract research organizations.
Independent academic investigators are getting shut out.
The numbers bear Nissen out. Big Pharma now finances approximately 70 percent of the
nation’s clinical drug research. In the past, most of this sponsored-research money went to
academic medical centers; today an estimated 75 percent flows to for-profit contract
research firms.
Even when academic physicians are involved, often they don’t enjoy anything close to true
research independence, Nissen says: “Academic physicians are still involved in the
leadership of the study, but not fundamentally in the design of the study, or in the key
aspects of the execution of the study.” Often, he notes, the industry sponsor will prevent the
academic investigator from performing any independent analysis of the complete raw data
related to his or her research. “The physician gets a printout of the main results,” Nissen
says, “but the actual analysis itself is done by statisticians within the companies.”
Read further through this link: http://discovermagazine.com/2007/oct/sciences-worst-
enemy-private-funding
Furthermore, an article about government-funded research, the first one in a four-part
series described the current situation of research today:
“Throughout the ages, science has moved forward with boosts from many well-heeled
patrons, from monarchs to millionaires. Galileo’s heretical revelation that the Earth
revolves around the sun would have been unlikely if not for his education at the University
of Pisa, which was founded by Pope Clement VI, remembered even today as a devoted
patron of the arts and learning. Four centuries after Clement, German universities adopted
the notion that it was the academy’s responsibility to advance the understanding of science,
a conviction that we take for granted today. We also think that the government should pay
for university research—and it does pay for the vast majority of it. But since government
funding flatlined several years ago, scientists at BU and universities across the country are
worried, very worried, not just about their research, but about the future of science in
America.
“The situation is serious,” says Gerald Denis, a BU School of Medicine (MED) associate
professor of pharmacology and medicine in the Cancer Research Center and a fellow of the
Obesity Society. “The last few years of funding uncertainties have been deadly, and several
investigators I know have lost their jobs because grants were terminated. Cancer cohorts
have been lost, long-term studies decimated. Who will be around to make the next set of
American medical discoveries and advances? This is no way to maintain international
scientific leadership.”
 Richard Myers, a MED professor of neurology and the author of more than 250 papers, says
his funding “came to a screeching halt” in 2008. On those rare occasions when he is funded,
he says, the money is likely to be reduced year after year until he ends up with just over
half of what he requested. “I know what good science is,” says Myers. “And that
compromises the science.”
Gloria Waters, vice president and associate provost for research, says finding funding
sources other than the federal government has become “a top priority” of the University. In
spring 2014, Waters’ office launched a series of workshops designed to help researchers
with such things as Humanities Proposal Writing and Working with Federal Agencies.
Every one, she says, was “extremely-well attended,” so well-attended that her office
recently ramped up the program to include eight events per semester.
At BU, whose researchers study an enormous range of subjects, from the birth of frogs to
the birth of planets, about 80 percent of the roughly $350 million for sponsored research
received in FY 2014 (down from a 2010 peak of $407 million) came directly from the
federal government, and another 10 percent originated in government grants and came to
BU through other institutions, such as Harvard or MIT. About 45 percent of that money
went to researchers at MED, where, according to Karen Antman, MED dean and Medical
Campus provost, funding anxiety is at an all-time high. Antman says grants to the Medical
Campus dropped $30 million in 2013 because of sequestration, although the money
bounced back in 2014 when sequestration was put on hold. “These types of fluxes in
research budgets produce a lot stress for faculty,” she says.
Some observers of the funding dilemma take a more sanguine approach. One Washington
insider, an expert on US research funding and a BU alum, who requested anonymity
because of his position, says that “research and development funding generally does pretty
well in the government’s budget process,” because the government branches agree it’s
important to stay competitive in science and technology. But looming over every budget
decision, this expert says, is a broader debate about what the size of the government should
be and how the government should spend its limited research budget.
In other words, some legislators wonder why the government should pay for so much
university research. Waters offers some good reasons. She points out that the other likely
source of research funding—industry—prefers to direct its money to projects that affect
the bottom line. “Industry is focused on applied research that will result in the
development of products with immediate commercial application,” she says. “But
fundamental or basic research is needed in order to create the knowledge base that leads
to more applied research. For example, in the area of medicine, specific treatments for
many diseases cannot be developed until we know much more about the basic cellular and
molecular changes involved in the development of the disease. Social science research has
also played an extremely important role in addressing national security challenges. In a
similar vein, scholarship in the humanities is critical to creating a broadly educated
workforce and our ability to engage with other areas of the world.”
Continue reading the article through this link:
http://www.bu.edu/research/articles/funding-for-scientific-research/

Conflicts of Interest
A number of sciences and professions have recently become aware of and concerned
about the extent to which corporate funding has influenced or will influence their
activities and directions. For example, the 54th Annual Meeting of the American

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Institute for Biological Sciences was entirely devoted to bioethics in a changing world
and the responsible conduct of science and included a plenary session titled Public
Citizenship and the Duties of Scientists: Avoiding the Best Science Money Can Buy
(Shrader-Frechette, 2003). Various medical journals have had difficulty finding
reviewers who are independent of pharmaceutical funding and have published new
guidelines for reviewers.
Philip Zimbardo, then president of the American Psychological Association (APA),
was appalled by the extravagant exhibits sponsored by pharmaceutical companies at
the 2002 convention of the American Psychiatric Association (as were newspaper
reporters; see Seligman, 2003; Vedantam, 2002). His concern that prescription
privileges for psychologists would be accompanied by increasing pharmaceutical
industry interest in funding APA activities led to discussions with the Board of
Directors and to the appointment of the APA Task Force on External Funding. The
purpose of the task force was to review the experiences of other organizations,
sciences, and professions receiving corporate funding; to consider relevant scientific
literature bearing on this issue; and to suggest policies and procedures to protect the
integrity of the association without unnecessarily restricting APA activities.
Problems may arise, of course, as a consequence of outside funding from any source
when the values of the donor and those of the recipient are either in conflict or
incompatible. It is sobering to note, however, that a broad range of industries,
including tobacco (Bero, 2003), lead (Markowitz & Rosner, 2003), food (Simon,
2006), real estate development (Ottaway & Stephens, 2003a, 2003b, 2003c), and
pharmaceuticals (Angell, 2004; Mundy, 2001; Rennie, 2003), have used similar and
often hidden strategies to influence a range of sciences and professions. Front
organizations—industry-funded grassroots, consumer advocacy (Herxheimer, 2003;
Mundy, 2003; Stern, 2003), research, and educational organizations whose primary
goal is to promote marketing, influence regulations, or advance other industry
interests—are among the strategies intentionally designed to obscure the actual
sources and amounts of funding for activities favoring corporations (Beder, 2002;
Center for Science in the Public Interest [CSPI], 2003a). In fact, much of the
knowledge available to investigators about such industry-funded activities has come
through documents only made available in the discovery process of litigation
(Castleman, 2003). This is true of the pharmaceutical industry as well as the lead and
tobacco industries.
The task force reviewed the consequences of external funding of a range of activities
across several sciences and professions but chose to focus on pharmaceutical funding
as a case example for three reasons. First, the effects of pharmaceutical funding on
the science and profession of medicine have been very well-documented and provide
a telling example of the distortions and unintended consequences that can occur
when academic centers, scientists, and practitioners become overly dependent on
for-profit industries. Second, pharmaceutical companies have expressed interest in
funding activities of the APA (and, in fact, have already done so to a limited extent),
and that interest is expected to increase as more psychologists obtain prescription
privileges. Finally, the pharmaceutical industry is of interest because it has been
enormously wealthy and politically influential and therefore has the potential to
exert a significant impact on the field of psychology.
Many readers may find it difficult to understand how the distortions that arose
within the field of medicine could occur in such a well-established and powerful
profession. That may be because they do not fully comprehend the size and scope of
 the pharmaceutical industry, the significant role that it has come to play in the cost of
medical care, or how it has benefited from a very favorable social and political
climate in the United States. The result has been an enormously powerful industry
with virtually unprecedented financial resources to pursue its own agenda. The
pharmaceutical industry is so profitable and so influential that it is unlikely that APA
or any similar organization is going to change it or succeed in preventing its
influence on the health care system or on psychology as the number of interactions
with drug manufacturers increases. What psychologists can do is inform themselves
of the nature of this business and make certain that they have adopted appropriate
policies and procedures to help avoid the more egregious mistakes of others.
Continue reading the document through this link:
https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/amp-6291005.pdf
Transparency and objectivity are essential in scientific research and the peer
review process.
When an investigator, author, editor, or reviewer has a financial/personal interest or
belief that could affect his/her objectivity, or inappropriately influence his/her
actions, a potential conflict of interest exists. Such relationships are also known as
dual commitments, competing interests, or competing loyalties.
The most obvious conflicts of interest are financial relationships such as:
 Direct: employment, stock ownership, grants, patents.
 Indirect: honoraria, consultancies to sponsoring organizations, mutual fund
ownership, paid expert testimony.
Undeclared financial conflicts may seriously undermine the credibility of the journal,
the authors, and the science itself. An example might be an investigator who owns
stock in a pharmaceutical company that is commissioning the research.
Conflicts can also exist as a result of personal relationships, academic competition,
and intellectual passion. An example might be a researcher who has:
 A relative who works at the company whose product the researcher is
evaluating.
 A self-serving stake in the research results (e.g. potential promotion/career
advancement based on outcomes).
 Personal beliefs that are in direct conflict with the topic he/she is researching.
Not all relationships represent a true conflict of interest–conflicts can be potential or
actual. Some considerations that should be taken into account include: whether the
person's association with the organization interferes with their ability to carry out
the research or paper without bias; and whether the relationship, when later
revealed, make a reasonable reader feel deceived or misled.
Full disclosure about a relationship that could constitute a conflict–even if the person
doesn't believe it affects their judgment–should be reported to the institution's ethics
group and to the journal editor to which a paper is submitted. All publishers require
disclosure in the form of a cover letter and/or footnote in the manuscript.
A journal may use disclosures as a basis for editorial decisions and may publish them
if they are believed to be important to readers in judging the manuscript. Likewise,
the journal may decide not to publish on the basis of the declared conflict. According
to the U.S. Office of Research Integrity, having a conflict of interest is not in itself
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 unethical, and there are some that are unavoidable. Full transparency is always the
best course of action, and, if in doubt, disclose.
Guide to Conflict of Interest and How to Prevent It

Research Data Recording

Surrey’s web library has this to say for those handling qualitative research data.
1. Researchers can either take notes during their interviews (transcribing) or
observations, or take a recording
2. Using a tape recorder:
3. The benefits tape recording include:
1. The researcher can concentrate and listen and respond better
2. The discussion flows better when there are no distractions
3. In note taking there is an increased risk of the researcher being more
subjective
4. The entire interview/observation is recorded, which gives a better, more
holistic picture of what is going on
5. The participants may feel less observed if the tape recorded is used in a a
discreet way
6. During analysis, the researcher has the opportunity to go back over material
4. Transcribing:
1. Transcribing the interview involves taking notes of the interview...it is the
full 'script' of the interview and the aim is to take a full written version of the
interview
2. Transcribing an interview is very time consuming, with an estimated time
ratio of 5:1 (i.e. 5 hours of transcribing a one hour interview)
 5. Tape analysis can be used, which is a combination on the two and involves the
researcher taking notes from the recording
6. Bias must be considered when taking notes or using tape analysis
7. Good quality transcribing relies on skills beyond just taking notes and there is often
space for subjectivity

Societal Responsibilities of Scientists and Science

At the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS, publisher
of Science Careers) Annual Meeting in Boston this afternoon, Mark S. Frankel, the director
of the Scientific Responsibility, Human Rights, and Law Program at AAAS, made a case for
scientists to think more deeply about their social responsibilities.
Right now, much of the emphasis in science is on the professional responsibility of
scientists to stick to "standards agreed upon by the scientific community" regarding how
research should be conducted, Frankel said. He called these responsibilities "internal." But
scientists also have "external," social responsibilities "toward the larger community,"
Frankel argued—and "it is no longer acceptable to focus on internal responsibilities."
Science depends on public money, affects policy decisions, and offers risks and benefits to
society. "The communities in which you live and the communities much farther out … are
ultimately affected by the work that you do."
Frankel would like to see three core ideas integrated into graduate education. The first is
that "science is a social institution, with a mission and 'baggage' like all other social
institutions created by human beings," he said. By that, he means that graduate students
should be given the opportunity to explore the values and expectations inherent to their
specific fields and to consider whether these are consistent or in conflict with broader
social values. Graduate students should also seek to grasp the social aspects and
implications of scientific issues and be given the opportunity to "gain a good understanding
of what it means to be a socially responsible scientist in this day and age."
Frankel's second core message was that young scientists should appreciate the global
dimension of science. They should be "looking beyond themselves," he said, and should
"use their skills to help with global problems." Last, they should realize that their education
and research are being subsidized by society, and take into account society's expectations
of how they should be using this knowledge in the future. "We must educate graduates to
be vitally concerned with not only how to apply their knowledge and skills, but also to
consider the value of what they do for others," Frankel said.
Scientists should also be prepared to confront situations where their internal
responsibilities clash with their external responsibilities. One key professional
responsibility for scientists, for example, is to publish their results so they can be reviewed
and help science move forward. But in some cases, publication of sensitive information has
the potential to cause harm to society. Frankel took the example of the avian flu research
that in 2011 sparked a fierce debate about whether it should be published, given that it
identified mutations that could make the H5N1 virus much more transmittable to humans.
Scientists have the "social responsibility to make sure that this information is not used by
those who can do harm," such as bioterrorists or countries with ill-equipped safety
laboratories, Frankel says.
Sometimes, different social responsibilities can clash, as also happened with the avian flu
study. Scientists had "the social responsibility to give [the information] to those who need
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it to prevent an epidemic," Frankel said. Scientists' decision to impose a moratorium was "a
very profound thing to do," with "probably profound effects on their careers and funding."
The decision was an "exemplar" of how to deal with the issues. "We need to be thinking
about ways to train [students] about social responsibilities along [with] those internal
responsibilities." (Pain, 2013)
The Researcher in Society
The public appreciates the scientific and technological advances contributing to
improving their well-being. The scientific community should not “overreact” to the
uncertainty and even resistance with which society sometimes responds to
scientific or technological developments. Instead, it should try to understand the
basis and the meaning of such reactions, by creating an open, non-paternalistic
dialogue with the public.
Some segments of the public do not appreciate with clarity that there is no absolute
certainty in scientific theories and models (i.e. results that are immune to being
changed by subsequent theories). Likewise, they do no understand that “zero risk”
is unattainable (as much as risk is, and should be, reducible to socially acceptable
levels). Scientists, on their part, all too frequently seem to be disconcerted by ethical
debates on research, and often attribute them merely to the public’s lack of
information. The effect of the combination of these two attitudes on controversial
science-related subjects could erode the “intangible asset” of the public’s confidence
in the scientific community.
Researchers have to be aware of concerns and attitudes in the social environment
that are relevant to some aspects of their work. They should take advantage of any
available opportunities to inform society of how researchers incorporates the
public’s concerns, preferences, and requirements into its work and decision-making.
Another important aspect of researchers’ social commitment relates to the public
origin of the funds used for their work. It should be clear to the scientific community
that using public resources entails certain indissoluble, inherent principles of
reciprocity, such as explaining the efficient use of resources in terms that can be
understood by society that provides them. This task may be conducted by research
organizations through activities such as: open-house days, electronic information
resources, disseminating reports of activities undertaken and outlining researchers’
principles of conduct. This institutional support would in no way substitute for the
responsibility of individual researchers.
The researcher as a teacher and spokesperson
It is important and urgent to make a lasting and effective effort to increase
society’s knowledge and interest in the culture’s scientific foundations and
science’s contribution to their development. This may also help the younger
generation decide on taking up scientific careers. Initiatives should tackle many
aspects such as:
1. Providing an intelligible and attractive description of the creative
function of scientific knowledge and the impact of scientific and
technological advances on growth and well-being.
2. Stimulating scientific interest and scientific knowledge at all
educational levels, according to the specific characteristics of each
level.
 3. Communicating information about the methods and elements that
typify scientific research, such as: curiosity and a desire to understand
the world, the role of doubt, attention to empirical evidence,
uncertainty, risk, perseverance, and critical analysis of the arguments
of others, and, more importantly, one’s own arguments.
A clear and explicit commitment to valuing and encouraging researchers’
work in this area has to be made by the scientific community and the
scientific institutions with competence in the area of science policy. They
should provide specific, professional and financial incentives to researchers
carrying out this task.
The researcher as advisor in public matters
The number of channels for managing and applying scientific knowledge
should be increased. Channels should be formalized and made transparent
(or institutionalized). They should not only be available in crisis situations,
but also for the daily management of the public’s interests.

Any research organization requires generous measures of the following:

 social space for personal initiative and creativity;
 time for ideas to grow to maturity;
 openness to debate and criticism;
 hospitality toward novelty; and
 respect for specialized expertise.
[These] may sound too soft and old-fashioned to stand up against the cruel modern
realities of administrative accountability and economic stringency. On the contrary, I
believe that they are fundamental requirements for the continued advancement of
scientific knowledge—and, of course, for its eventual social benefits.
—JOHN ZIMAN, Prometheus Bound: Science in a Dynamic Steady State, Cambridge
University Press, New York, 1994, p. 276.

References and Supplementary Materials

Online Supplementary Reading Materials
1. Science’s Worst Enemy: Corporate Funding;
http://discovermagazine.com/2007/oct/sciences-worst-enemy-private-funding;
November 7, 2017
2. Who Picks Up the Tab for Science?; http://www.bu.edu/research/articles/funding-
for-scientific-research/; November 7, 2017
3. Corporate Funding and Conflicts of Interest;
https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/amp-6291005.pdf; November 7, 2017
4. Conflict of Interest;
https://www.elsevier.com/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/92476/ETHICS_COI02.pdf;
November 7, 2017
5. Handling qualitative research data;
http://libweb.surrey.ac.uk/library/skills/Introduction%20to%20Research%20and%
20Managing%20Information%20Leicester/page_73.htm; November 7, 2017
Course Module
6. Managing your research data; http://www.research.uwa.edu.au/staff/human-
research/managing-data; November 7, 2017
7. The Social Responsibilities of Scientists;
http://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2013/02/social-responsibilities-scientists;
November 7, 2017
8. Science for society: the social responsibility of scientists;
https://www.upf.edu/pcstacademy/_docs/cosce_en_02.pdf; November 7, 2017
9. The responsibility of scientists to society;
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~zcapf71/The%20responsibility%20of%20scientists%20to%
20society.pdf; November 7, 2017
10. The Scientist in Society; https://www.nap.edu/read/4917/chapter/13; November 7,
2017
11. Science and Responsibility;
http://www.ppu.org.uk/learn/infodocs/st_science_res.html; November 7, 2017