Scientists Sharing Fewer Discoveries

Scientists depend on openness for their research advances--many of which the public underwrites. More and more, however, they are keeping information about their discoveries to themselves, new surveys show.

In the first detailed look at how scientists share information, analysts at Harvard University Medical School and the Massachusetts General Hospital questioned 1,800 geneticists and others in the life sciences at the 100 U.S. research universities that receive the most public funding from the National Institutes of Health.

They found that almost half of the scientists had been denied access to information about published research. Their findings were recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Assn.

The survey adds to a growing body of research over the past decade that documents greater secrecy among scientists and greater corporate control of university research.

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University in 1990, for example, studied 1,058 research centers sponsored by industries at 203 universities and found that a third of the agreements governing research at the centers allowed the industrial sponsor to suppress research.

In all, those agreements covered about 36,000 researchers--15% of the U.S. scientific and engineering workforce.

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Checking the Results

The trend toward secrecy in science means that it is harder for scientists to check each other’s experiments for mistakes and ensure the integrity of published research. It also is more difficult for competing laboratories to build on the advances of others, several policy analysts said.

“Ultimately, it is going to have an impact on the quality of science,” said Tufts University analyst Sheldon Krimsky, who monitors research ethics and conflicts of interest.

Traditionally, many scientists kept their work to themselves until their experiments were completed and their findings could be made public. But once they published their findings, they also released the details of how they achieved their results. That allows other scientists to settle their doubts about new findings by duplicating the work, checking it for mistakes and independently verifying each new claim.

Now that practice is becoming a thing of the past. The custom is changing at a time when university research has become a booming commercial enterprise. University-based research generates about $40 billion in annual economic activity and thousands of new patents every year, according to the Assn. of University Technology Managers.

In 1980, Congress loosened legal restrictions on how scientists could profit from their publicly funded research. Since then, federal spending on biomedical science has grown from $3 billion a year to more than $20 billion last year.

Commercial research spending has grown even faster. Drug companies spent $22.4 billion in 2000, much of it through grants, consulting fees and partnerships with campus researchers.

As the boundary between academia and industry blurs, the new possibilities for personal profit may be changing the way researchers behave.

In the Harvard study, researchers found that:

* Almost one of every two genetics researchers who had asked other faculty in the last three years for more information, experimental data or research materials relating to published scientific findings were turned down at least once.

* Almost one in three had been unable to duplicate published research findings because the scientists who conducted the work would not share sufficient details of the experiments.

* Almost one in four had delayed their own research publications because their colleagues withheld data. An equal number stopped working with someone because the scientist refused to share data.

* One in five abandoned a promising line of research.

* Of those who admitted they withheld information, eight in 10 said they refused to share data with other scientists because it was too much work. Half said they were trying to protect their own lead in research they hoped to publish later.

* One in three said the problem had gotten worse over the last decade.

“When people don’t share published resources, it may slow the rate of scientific advance,” said Eric G. Campbell at Massachusetts General’s Institute for Public Health Policy and the Harvard University Medical School, who led the survey team. “Geneticists said it had slowed the progress of their research.”

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Focusing on Geneticists

The Harvard analysts focused on the behavior of geneticists because the field has become a hotbed of university and commercial research. Moreover, the federal government and the leading research publications, mindful of the potential for conflicts and secrecy in genetics, have gone to great lengths to ensure that all the information about published findings will be freely available.

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Biologists Pledged to Release DNA Data

An international group of molecular biologists even took the unusual step two years ago of pledging to immediately release all DNA sequence data from all organisms into the public domain.

For that reason, bioethics expert George Annas at Boston University found the survey results all the more surprising.

“Given the incredible amount of public funding,” Annas said, “I would have thought the geneticists would have done better, to be sharing their data more freely.”

Instead, the research extended the findings of earlier studies that have documented how scientists appear to place less and less value on openness.

The surveys, which the Harvard researchers have conducted since 1997, encompass thousands of scientists at hundreds of research campuses.

Many of those surveyed have admitted delaying publication of research to protect a scientific advantage or to slow dissemination of undesired results.

Secrecy also is interfering with education of graduate students and hindering those seeking to launch their research careers, a related Harvard survey of scientists at 233 medical schools shows.

To complicate matters, much of the most advanced science in genetics and other important areas of medical research today is conducted by commercial firms, which can prize market performance over more traditional academic research values of openness.

In the last two years, a private firm, Celera Genomics, played an important role in completing the Human Genome Project and a Massachusetts-based company, Advanced Cell Technology, now is taking a lead role in research that may lead to human cloning. A third firm, PPL Therapeutics--which helped breed the first cloned mammal, Dolly the sheep--is helping to pave the way for transgenic animals that can be used for human organ transplants.

To preserve a competitive advantage, each firm jealously guards details of its research findings.

The companies often have announced scientific accomplishments through press releases, rather than through more traditional peer-review publication that would ensure that other scientists could independently verify the results.

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Restricting Openness

Many university researchers today also may have a financial stake in their own work that can lead some to withhold data or make misleading claims about their work.

Others face restrictions on what outside employers and patrons allow them to talk about openly--rules that greatly hinder the free exchange of scientific information.

To counter the trend, three influential medical groups --the American College of Physicians, the American Board of Internal Medicine and the European Federation of Medicine--this month published a new code of professional conduct. Among other things, it emphasizes the importance of scientific knowledge and the need to better handle conflicts of interest.

Withholding data is a problem, said Harvard health care policy expert Dr. David Blumenthal: “We can document that.

“Does it slow the pace of science? It is fair to say there are adverse effects.”