Another summary of “bad science”, this time in bright graphics with emphasis on biomedical and clinical psychology. If 1 in 3 scientists are cooking their results a little longer than they should, should technology transfer offices be a lot more skeptical of claims made in disclosures of “inventions” and a lot more reserved in presenting “technology” available for license?
It’s an unmanaged organizational conflict of interest. One cannot insist on research integrity if you are trying to make money or claim program successes because the technology you own is just a bit truer or sooner than the other person’s technology, and that’s your competitive advantage.
And one cannot use the excuse of money-making from patent positions (enhancing the “value” of the technology) to withhold data and IP rights from arm’s length use by industry, where the peer review has enough riding on it that industry cannot afford to cook the books on itself.
Commercialization and research access have to be separated. Make-use commons. Research uses have to be separated from evaluation to take a commercialization license. A technology transfer office cannot be expected to offer peer review research licenses if it believes these may hurt its chances to get a lot of money later from an exclusive commercialization license or create a startup. Organizational conflict of interest is compromising the cream of the output of the entire university research enterprise–billions of dollars a year. And yet senior university administrators defend their tech transfer policies and practices. No wonder. They also share this organizational conflict. If they cannot bring themselves to have the courage to do the right thing, then there needs to be outside action that restricts their powers or removes technology transfer, or research, from their operations. Which one do they want to hold on to?
When a company obtains a “technology” and finds that it just doesn’t work as advertised, that’s where the peer review happens. Universities should release all “technology” rights for company testing and review, without requiring a laborious process of negotiation or demand for payment, and without limiting review to consideration of entering into a commercialization license. Further, universities must reserve these rights in any exclusive license deal, and announce the availability of these rights no later than filing a patent application–as soon as disclosure would be better–and best of all, encouraging researchers to make data available to industry as soon as it has been compiled, as part of peer review, with appropriate standards of non-publication and non-public use to preserve patent rights, if patent rights are the thing.