University researchers and lab workers receive on average $33,417 per year in payments from the drug and medical device industry; researchers who lead medical trials fare even better, earning more than $110,000 per year, more than a quarter of their total funding. This is according to a survey of more than 3000 life science faculty at 50 leading universities, published yesterday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Academics and medical researchers frequently claim that industry ties have no effect on their objectivity or results, but the report tells a different story: Researchers with ties to industry exhibited “a substantially greater portion of documented positive outcomes,” the report notes. Other studies have made similar findings.
Basically, researchers backed by industry have little incentive to report negative results that could derail the profitable commercialization of their products. With university-corporate partnerships corrupting the ivory tower, the Center for Science in the Public Interest has called for the government to step in. Since the Vioxx scandal of 2005, it has pushed the Food and Drug Administration to conduct its own in-depth safety trials before drugs are approved. But that would mean creating a larger government health bureaucracy. And we all know how that’s going.
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