Researchers Tell of Battling for the Right to Publish Negative Findings
By GOLDIE BLUMENSTYK
Cambridge, Mass.Two professors who found themselves battling their corporate patrons -- and their own universities -- for the right to publish controversial research findings called on institutions and scholars to take a stronger stand if companies try to quash negative results.
The calls came Monday as part of a wide-ranging conference on "Secrecy in Science," sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science and held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
One of the professors, Nancy Olivieri, a medical researcher at the University of Toronto and the Hospital for Sick Children there, had published findings last August from a clinical trial that showed some toxic reactions to an experimental hemoglobin treatment. She published the study over the objections of the trial sponsor, a Canadian company called Apotex, which claimed that she was forbidden to do so because she had signed a non-disclosure agreement in 1993. The company threatened to sue her. Although Dr. Olivieri maintained that such a clause was unenforceable, neither the university nor the hospital did anything to back her.
Instead, she said, the hospital removed her as director of the department of haemoglobinopathy. She was reinstated in January, after the president of the university, Robert Prichard, intervened, later acknowledging that "unreasonable restrictions" had been placed on Dr. Olivieri's right to publish her findings. A number of academics from around the world had urged him to act.
"It's a minor triumph, but it's not really the issue at hand," said Dr. Olivieri. She said the controversy would not have escalated "without the support for the company by the university and the hospital." At the time of the dispute, she said, the university was hoping for a gift of more than $20-million from the company.
David G. Kern, an associate professor of medicine at Brown University and director of a program on occupational health, told a similar story. In 1996, he was hired by a Pawtucket, R.I., nylon-manufacturing company called Microfibres to help determine the cause of lung ailments affecting a few workers. Ultimately, he said, he identified a high incidence of illness and sought to publish a study reporting the findings. Company officials claimed that a non-disclosure agreement he had signed in 1994 prohibited him from publishing his results, but Dr. Kern maintained that the agreement was intended to insure only that he didn't reveal the company's trade secrets and that it preceded his consulting arrangement with the company.
The university and its affiliated Memorial Hospital backed the company. Even if the agreement did have legal standing, which he insists it doesn't, "ethics required something else of us," he said. At the time, neither Brown nor Microfibres acknowledged any wrongdoing.
One week after presenting his findings at an international meeting, Dr. Kern was informed by the university and the hospital that his contract, due to expire this year, would not be renewed. (He has since been offered an extension to 2000, but has not decided whether to take it.)
Drummond Rennie, deputy editor of The Journal of the American Medical Association and an adjunct professor of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco, called the cases "sad, frightening, and shocking." He said that one way to improve openness in medical research would be to require drug companies to publicize all clinical trials, to insure that results, including negative findings, are not covered up. Glaxo Wellcome, the giant British drug company, recently announced plans to follow such a policy he said.
Other speakers also urged universities to hold tight to policies on protecting academic freedom and the right to publish without unreasonable delays, even if corporate sponsors push for looser rules. "Universities can, should, and better get started in holding the line," said Lita Nelson, director of the licensing office at M.I.T.