In Farewell to Reason, Paul Feyerabend examines cultural variety and considers the problem of the “objective” claims of science in the broader context of whether any given society consistently benefits from scientific objectivism, given how often science is wrong, how little science is able to consider. Feyerabend wonders how much a society should permit others to dominate it simply on a claim that those proposing the domination are “scientists” or who employ scientists and therefore should have authority to dictate how and what a society chooses to do.
Feyerabend points out four ways a society might respond to something new:
- Persistence (decline to change; maintain present behaviors and values);
- Opportunism (adopt the juicy bits and leave the rest);
- Relativism (live and let live; allow for choices); and
- Argument (debate values and choices to reach resolution).
If we consider university technology transfer’s standard model in this context, we find that it comes within a narrow version of Feyerabend’s Opportunism. The idea is that if a university discovery is presented to others, such as folks in the “society” of “industry” or of “investment,” then those others will naturally hop to it and adopt the discovery, resulting in wealth creation, economic vitality, innovation, and all sorts of other good things. In its most general formulation, the premise is that discovery is good and technology transfer is a matter of inducing others to agree that discovery is good, to everyone’s benefit. What must be consternating to the university technology transfer folks and those that accept the standard model is how few people have any interest in adopting university discoveries.
The argument goes that of course academic discoveries won’t be adopted unless each new discovery comes with a patent and bureaucrat attached.
That should do it. Yes. Add a patent and a bureaucrat. That’s the fundamental premise of university technology transfer as it is now expressed in most university policies and practices. From the perspective of Feyerabend’s Opportunism, it’s difficult to understand who in the real big wide world exactly prefers a discovery with a patent and bureaucrat to the discovery on its own, or in a publication, or with, say, an inventor. Candy coat this nougat how you will, it reduces to an absurdity, worse than a rain dance. On par with cargo cult science.
If we reduce the university interpretation of Bayh-Dole to its stark form, we see that academic discovery must first become capital–that is, the purpose of patenting is to convert new knowledge into a capital asset that can be traded and used to exclude labor (that is, use by others) until that labor is controlled by someone with sufficient wealth to obtain the patent. The bureaucrat then is necessary to manage the capital asset, which becomes more important and more complicated than the practice of the discovery itself.
The academic study of university technology transfer, and the various forms of debate trying to link university research with economic vitality end up as discussions of better ways to attach the patents and bureaucrats to discoveries. Same for reorganizing university tech transfer programs. Same for expanding university claims to own research assets, including non-patentable ones. Ownership without an underlying theory of ownership is simply an assertion of power. In the old days, that would have been a function of noble title. Perhaps the status of the university is as close as one can come to this old form of capital.
A freedom to innovate approach, by contrast, argues that opportunism is a matter for the adopting society and is rarely enhanced by patents and bureaucrats unless the adopting society happens to value bureaucrats bearing patents–say, third-tier speculators.
If you happen to work in university technology transfer, let me assure you that the effort to make new technology, discoveries, inventions, and ideas broadly available for use is a worthy activity. You should be proud to have a role to play. But you should not for a moment think that you can reason from a noble cause to the primary methods of management that universities have imposed on their creative class. Technology does not transfer better because it is turned into capital reserved for wealthy speculators. Technology does not become adopted faster because it comes with a bureaucrat attached. Stay true to the purpose, but be clear about what methods work and what methods are sophisticated foolishness, replacing headphones with coconuts, thinking that if you patent it, they will come.