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Jennifer Washburn, a fellow at the New America Foundation has written an opinion piece for the Mercury News about the increasing conflicts of interest at America’s best universities. It is worth reading. We’ve excerpted below a section about Exxon Mobil’s unusual relationship with Stanford, and the propaganda generated with Stanford’s seal — literally — of approval.
In 2002, Stanford signed a 10-year, $225 million deal with Exxon and other energy companies to fund a Global Climate and Energy Project, or GCEP. At the time, Exxon Mobil was pushing the U.S. government to reject any mandatory curbs on greenhouse gases; it also continued to question whether human use of fossil fuels causes global warming, despite an overwhelming scientific consensus to the contrary. Instead, it called for more research.
Shortly after the deal was signed, Exxon ran advertisements on the Op-Ed page of the New York Times celebrating its research alliance with the “best minds” at Stanford. One ad suggested that the scientific debate about global warming is ongoing: “Although climate has varied throughout Earth’s history from natural causes, today there is a lively debate about . . . the climate’s response to the presence of more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.”
Remarkably, this ad was signed by Lynn Orr, the professor heading up GCEP, and it carried the official Stanford University seal.
One Comment
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Mark Wendman said:
My take is that some of the accusations are really so misplaced, even if Exxon does leverage the Stanford name, Stanford’s GCEP is a fantastic program funding all kinds of novel innovations that have no other source of funding. (and I am saying this even as I am Carnegie Mellon alumni)
Some of the Stanford efforts in clean tech energy are quite novel and the GCEP is providing very beneficial academic project “risk capital”.
If something good comes of the scientists and engineers device innovation efforts, there is little any of the benefactors can do to stymie the possible commercialization of CleanTech energy developments that were funded initially at GCEP.
Some wise fellow will take useful device work products - like a substantial useful innovation in some kind of solar cell and take it to market.
So while it is easy to complain, it is harder to observe the potential upside, noting that Exxon will have little say in what transpires if someone figures out how to plaster the world with something that obsoletes OIL/ gas. More POWER to the innovators.
She needs to get a real job, even if some of the points regarding some bad examples in medical development were correct, it is largely the case that the more cooperation between industry and academia, the better for all - even society.
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