Public University Hostage to Big Tobacco

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Imagine being a professor at a public university. You write a paper and want to publish it. Only you can't because your school has signed a deal with Philip Morris giving them final review of all your work.

That's what's happening at Virginia Commonwealth University, per this expose in today's New York Times.

The contract bars professors from publishing the results of their studies, or even talking about them, without Philip Morris’s permission. If “a third party,” including news organizations, asks about the agreement, university officials have to decline to comment and tell the company. Nearly all patent and other intellectual property rights go to the company, not the university or its professors.

This is a public, not private, university here ladies and gentlemen.

Even more remarkable is that the agreement with Philip Morris violates many of the university's guidelines on ethical research. How does the university explain it?

“There is restrictive language in here,” said Francis L. Macrina, Virginia Commonwealth’s vice president for research, who acknowledged that many of the provisions violated the university’s guidelines for industry-sponsored research. “In the end, it was language we thought we could agree to. It’s a balancing act.”

"Agree," as in, they're paying us enough money to throw our ethics out the window.

Read the article. It's astonishing and frightening.