Paying Professors: Inside Google’s Academic Influence Campaign

https://www.wsj.com/articles/paying-professors-inside-googles-academic-influence-campaign-1499785286

by NN88 • 9 years ago

161 84 9 years ago

wsj.com

NN88• 9 years ago

Full Text:

http://archive.is/8pkAH

ocdtrekkie3• 9 years ago

Sadly, this has been a known fact for a long time, and it never gets a lot of attention. Joshua Wright, the former FTC Commissioner, was one of the professors previously paid to write 'academic studies' for Google.

surveilmebro• 9 years ago

To be fair, similar tactics are standard practice in many non-tech fields: pharmaceuticals, law, and agronomy to name a few. What's perhaps different here is that researchers may not be accustomed to disclosing financial support that is only weakly connected to the research in question.

ocdtrekkie3• 9 years ago

Sure. Nobody's saying that Google's invented a new strategy here. We've all known Phillip Morris, Monsanto, and the like to do this, but generally such companies have been derided for the behavior. People are generally hesitant to group Google in the same class of corporate actor.

bykovich2• 9 years ago

The notion that a given multinational billion-dollar syndicate is not going to engage in the behavior characteristic of multinational billion-dollar syndicates because it's run by nerds instead of suits seems, at the very least, suspect.

blub5• 9 years ago

It's difficult to understand the purpose of your comment except as a Google apology, which I'm sure they can do fine without, seeing that they're a huge corporation paying a lot of money to have the friendly ear of government representatives.

Yes, there's a lot of things going wrong in the world. Today we discuss Google, tomorrow Microsoft, etc. There's enough for everybody.

gnicholas3• 9 years ago

The money didn’t influence his work, Mr. Heald said, and Google issued no conditions: “They said, ‘If you take this $20,000 and open up a doughnut shop with it—we’ll never give you any more money—but that’s fine.’”

At a glance, this seems like the funds are no-strings-attached. But when you think for a minute, you realize it's the exact opposite.

Google is saying that if they don't like what you do with the money, they won't give you any more — but if they do like what you do with it then you might get more. This incentivizes the professor to use the money to do things that Google would like, which is the opposite of no-strings-attached.

There technically are no strings attached to this money, but the possibility of future payments (which ranged from $5k to $400k) is a pretty big enticement.

chplushsieh• 9 years ago

I agree with you.

But what Google does is as far as any sane donator/sponsor would go. We can't really expect them to keep sponsoring more doughnut shops after they find out their money is not being put into good use.

dilemma• 9 years ago

This is missing the point. The point is that there is no free lunch.

__bjoernd• 9 years ago

But that's how most research funding works. The same is true if you get a government research grant - do what you want, but if they don't like your results, they are unlikely to fund you another round.

gnicholas3• 9 years ago

I think this is less of a concern with government funding, since in many cases the government doesn't care what you find — they just want you to do reliable research to see what the answers to relevant questions are.

For example, if you say "I'm going to research the effect of eating lots of eggs on cholesterol", the government won't care what outcome you find/publish. They funded you because they want the truth to come out about the question you seek to answer. There are some topics where the government "has a dog in the fight" — but much of their research funding is for areas where they are truly agnostic.

Google, on the other hand, only funded research related to their business. So they had an agenda, and all the parties knew it.

I'm not saying they shouldn't have been able to fund this, or that this is any worse than other industry-funded research. Just that it seems some professors did not make the relevant disclosures, and there was a pretty strong incentive for professors not to bite the hand that feeds them.

rayiner• 9 years ago

That's not true. Grant funding is a heavily bureaucratic process, with committees scoring proposals on matrices. The bureaucrats don't really care about your previous results (they have no personal investment), and even if they did, they don't really have a mechanism to hold them against you.

Clanan• 9 years ago

That reflects the problems with research funding - they too incentivize "desired" results, rather than knowledge (good or bad).

rhodysurf• 9 years ago

This is exactly what S&T contracts from the DOD are like. Technically there are no deliverables, but if they dont like your work thy arent coming back to you.

dna_polymerase• 9 years ago

Of course it has a chilling effect on the researchers. If Google stops paying for your research you would have to find another source of money, that's not easy for everyone. So they will tend to write stuff in a Google-friendly fashion just to secure the money. That does not mean they will spin everything but it will surely influence the tone of their publications.

Godel_unicode2• 9 years ago

You're equating Google's feeling about unkind results with Google's feeling about wasting the money on a donut shop. Why is that?

darawk• 9 years ago

If they were worried about that they could just not take their money in the first place. I'm not sure why this is a problem.

BeetleB• 9 years ago

Of course it has a chilling effect on the researchers. If Google stops paying for your research you would have to find another source of money, that's not easy for everyone.

Except that this is very, very normal in almost all research that requires funding. Talk to faculty members in engineering departments, and they'll tell you they often spend most of their professional time grant writing.

Saying this has a chilling effect is like saying a store requiring money in exchange for goods has a chilling effect because it means the purchaser is constantly in need of earning money to eat.

Spooky235• 9 years ago

Given the rationalization the scientist makes, its probably wise to be skeptical of his judgements overall.

A direct quid pro quo / payment for services rendered is more honest than this model which is Google buying the professor vs. buying specific research. That's a serious ethical issue.

valas• 9 years ago

Google's response: https://www.blog.google/topics/public-policy/responding-camp...

carapace• 9 years ago

Thank you for posting the link! It has some choice information:

The irony of discussing disclosures and transparency with the “Campaign for Accountability” is that this group consistently refuses to name its corporate funders. And those backers won’t ‘fess up either. The one funder the world does know about is Oracle, which is running a well-documented lobbying campaign against us. In its own name and through proxies, Oracle has funded many hundreds of articles, research papers, symposia and reports.

sapote5• 9 years ago

This reflects a lack of understanding about academic research. All researchers look for future funding from the same sources, and the same effect occurs. Oddly, given the small size of Google grants (compared to other sources) and the fact that it's rare to get them one after another, they really are very close to no-strings-attached grants.

Also, Google grants, oddly, are actually less intellectually restrictive than NSF grants. Sure, neither type of grant places any restriction, but there is actually more of a chilling effect of the NSF process than the Google one. The process Google uses for giving out grants is if there is a senior engineer or two who like your proposal, you get some funds (I'm simplifying a bit, but it's actually not much more complex than that). The NSF, on the other hand, is much more likely to consider things that I think most folks would agree shouldn't be considered, such as the political views of senior government officials.

I don't deny that Google has engineers more interested in certain problems than others, but the work that gets funded results in open research papers, so people are free to look at the work even if they don't work at Google. And that's better than Google just hiring the researchers -- as they and many other companies do -- and keeping the work for themselves.

blub5• 9 years ago

This is not about Google engineers being interested in new tree algorithms, but about Google paying for research to deflect antitrust allegations. Which worked splendidly in the US, I might add, poof went the allegations.

aangjie• 9 years ago

I don't think the fact researchers look for future funding from sources doesn't affect this. This statement is the same as funding/donating to politicians' campaigns regularly, and withdrawing if they pass specific legislations.(in terms of the impact it has on the receiver.). That may or may not be intentional or is Google's blame.

frgtpsswrdlame• 9 years ago

A company using the skyhigh profits it makes from it's market dominance to fund academic research arguing that it doesn't abuse it's market dominance? Perfect.

If you're looking for arguments for antitrust in this area beyond consumer welfare you've found them. The concentrated wealth produced by big monopolistic firms has a gravity field of it's own, distorting public information and opinion.

mankash666• 9 years ago

Ridiculous! This is how ALL academic funding works. The headline might as well read NSF/NIH is paying professors for propagating "views". Given that Murdoch owns WSJ, fundamental science like evolution and global warming morph into "views", not facts/axioms.

jgalt2126• 9 years ago

You're ignore that NSF/NIH funded research is plainly visible as the source of the funding upon publication of the research.

nl• 9 years ago

Several papers argued that Google’s search engine should be allowed to link to books and other intellectual property that authors and publishers say should be paid for—a group that includes News Corp, which owns the Journal. News Corp formally complained to European regulators about Google’s handling of news articles in search results.

Yeah.

And all those graphs showing how big Google is have nothing to do with the story. News Corp wants an anti-trust investigation into Google in the US too.

ucaetano6• 9 years ago

Wait, a profit-driven company is spending money supporting research into areas related to the company's interests?

Why is this even news? Is there a single for-profit company that funds research contrary to the company's interests?

jgalt2126• 9 years ago

It's new because the source of the funds was often not disclosed. Other than that, and it's a big that, there is not much there.

And by not much, if you consider the stakes low for sustaining a monopoly as long as possible.

ucaetano6• 9 years ago

You mean the researchers often did not disclose the funding? Again, why is this even news?

Apparently, tomorrow the WSJ will be reporting that Google lobbies.

caseysoftware2• 9 years ago

Because some groups have a vested interest (no pun intended) in building and protecting the notion that professors, scientists, and researchers* are angels without financial conflicts, personal biases, or even emotions. If people realize that they're all humans with flaws just like the rest of us, people might stop and think instead of blindly accepting their conclusions as Truth.

* Except for the professors, scientists, and researchers funded by those other guys, they're malicious, biased liars trying to destroy the world.

ocdtrekkie3• 9 years ago

It is definitely hard to reconcile the "science is science" notion I hear on a lot of political topics here on HN (particularly on the left) with the general acceptance in this thread that it's okay that much of that much of academia is funded by biased sources.

blub5• 9 years ago

This kind of dismissal is at best unhelpful and at worst even suspicious. Why does it bother you that people discuss this topic? Science influences policy and influences our behaviour and well-being, of course we want to know when it's biased.

The fact that it's not "new" is irrelevant. A lot of bad things are happening and sometimes we forget about a particular bad thing. Some of us genuinely don't know.

amoorthy3• 9 years ago

Hi folks - below is an article I read recently which opened my eyes to the risks of corporate funded research. Companies have long funded research to back their interests that can have serious ramifications on public safety and use of public resources.

Long read but enjoyable and informative.

[1]: The Most Important Scientist You've Never Heard Of: http://mentalfloss.com/article/94569/clair-patterson-scienti...

ucaetano6• 9 years ago

Well, that is the alternative? Forbidding privately-funded research? Submitting it to gigantic bureaucratic committees?

The only proposal I back is forcing publicly-funded researchers to disclose all gifts and grants, similarly to public officials, but even that is a massive bureaucratic ordeal.

Research is not a regulated environment, and it should not be one.

amoorthy3• 9 years ago

I think the suggestion is simple: Disclose funding sources and % of funding total for any research. And if you don't disclose then no journal should accept your paper.

Funding source does not by itself invalidate findings and corporations absolutely should continue to fund research. But for readers of research this is critical information.

I may be naive but this does not seem like a big bureaucratic ask. And even if it were seems like good scientists would do it because they pride themselves on pursuing the truth with impeccable attention to detail.

thinkfurther• 9 years ago

Thank you for posting that. Looking for a source for one of the quotes, I found this: https://www.scribd.com/doc/139421699/oh-patterson

(here's the bit I was looking for)

Look, I’m stupid, all right? I’m not some brilliant person. I’m a little child. You know the emperor’s new clothes? I can see the naked emperor, just because I’m a little child-minded person. I’m not smart. I mean, good scientists are like that. They have the minds of children, to see through all this façade of all this other stuff that they know is stupid nonsense. They just don’t see it the way other people see it.

I for one indeed have never heard to of him before, and I'll have to learn more; and that on top of the article and the subject matter of it being vitally important! Thanks again.

mlinksva• 9 years ago

This must be Google's response https://www.blog.google/topics/public-policy/responding-camp...

euyyn2• 9 years ago

Oh, wow.

Gustomaximus• 9 years ago

History repeats. This was a tactic by Microsoft in the old MS vs. Mac days. They gave 'no strings' funding to top tier uni professors with the tacit expectation everything was to be PC based and to support MS in general.

sjg007• 9 years ago

This is nothing new. Happens with sugar lobby, happened with big tobacco and happens on climate change etc...

These are questions whose context depends on how you frame the debate. Those who frame it get to decide the playground. Helps too if you have the regulators in the same framework as well.

By framing one can argue that google is a monopoly vs it's a small player in global advertising etc... Vs Facebook etc.. same thing with net neutrality.

I think the Europeans are probably further ahead of the us on asking the right questions.

We seem to have fallen backwards where foreign power influence on our elections is reframed away.

flyovercow• 9 years ago

dont be evil. i remember that. i remember when the internet was a promise....a promise to level the playing field. to give ordinary people something they never had. access. a new space. a new frontier. where we would build a better world, better than the one we came from. without worries about corrupt power hierarchies, without endless greed, without pointless cruelty. we were there to make something. to build. to create. to make this new world beautiful, a better version of ourselves. how far we have fallen. how much we have forgotten, forgotten where we came from or why we trekked here. they reached us after all, never more than a deal away, their sickness contagious, we all caught it, we are all guilty of it now. no more new world. just new greed. new corruption. new power hierarchies.

internet is dead. long live internet.

TrickyRick• 9 years ago

Paywall...

sapote5• 9 years ago

I know that the story is nonsense -- I am part of a research group that's gotten such grants before. This is basically a story aiming to confuse those who don't understand how research works. Google is funding work that aligns with what they do, but the grants they give are no-strings-attached and are tiny. (Government grants are much bigger.)

Sure, Google only funds things that are related to what they care about, but of course that's the case. And these days the NSF is partnering with Intel, VMware, and others to give out grants on things that align with those companies.

The WSJ has been sniffing around for this for a long time, and actually was trying to get professors' private email claiming that their email should be in the public domain. (I don't know if they succeeded.) I actually see this as part of the larger trend of trying to discredit research.

Edited to add: the story focuses on policy and law research, which is easier to attack, and I don't have any interest in defending that. But I'm willing to bet that the amount of grant money Google gives out for that work is probably tiny compared to funding they give for CS research. And it's the latter I'm familiar with.

blub5• 9 years ago

Who funds a research should be written in bold on the first page together with their interest in the topic and any potential conflicts of interest.

The fact that the contributions were not disclosed is highly suspicious. Google is also not merely funding works that aligns with what they do, it's apparently "helped finance hundreds of research papers to DEFEND against regulatory challenges of its market dominance", which puts this in a completely different perspective. Care to comment on that?

I found another quote which is frankly mind-boggling (http://www.foxbusiness.com/features/2017/07/11/paying-profes...):

"""In some years, Google officials in Washington compiled wish lists of academic papers that included working titles, abstracts and budgets for each proposed paper -- then they searched for willing authors, according to a former employee and a former Google lobbyist.

Google promotes the research papers to government officials, and sometimes pays travel expenses for professors to meet with congressional aides and administration officials, according to the former lobbyist. The research has been used, for instance, to deflect antitrust accusations against Google by the Federal Trade Commission in 2012, according to a letter Google attorneys sent to the FTC chairman and viewed by the Journal."""

WTF? They're basically lobbying and paying professors to deflect antitrust accusations and there are people here DEFENDING them?!

sapote5• 9 years ago

I'm talking about CS research. I don't really consider law research and public policy research as real research -- that's lobbying and conflating the two is just for a headline.

Edited to add: the WSJ went on a fishing expedition -- while the story is on a few law grant tidbits that they could make into a headline, they actually were trying to get access to the private email of many CS professors. What probably happened is that they got some of that email (which I don't think they should have access to, but that's another story) and found there was nothing interesting to write about, so they found a few lobbying tidbits and painted it all with a broad brush.

pas• 9 years ago

Google allegedly requires disclosing its support, and it does transparency reports about who they fund/funded.

So, are they doing this or not?

If yes, good. Then this is just a NewsCorp hit piece. Again.

If not. Google is being shitty. Again.

Those travelling salesmans/professors should have to register as lobbyists.

zmb_• 9 years ago

I am not sure I understand the outrage. We are, I assume, talking about peer reviewed research papers here? Regardless of who has funded the research and for what motives, the work has passed the community's filter for quality, significance and correctness. You might raise questions about the effectiveness of that filter, but that is a separate issue.

In fact, it much worse to dismiss research just because of who funded it or what their assumed motives were -- which is a strong human instinct, and which seems to be implicitly behind this outrage.

tryitnow• 9 years ago

This is pretty standard practice for all companies, isn't it?

I mean would we be surprised if an oil company or tobacco company were doing this?

I think the problem here is Google's attempt to position themselves as being one of the "good" companies. They tried to have their cake and eat it too.

Frankly, I've been skeptical of Google for a few years now, not because I think they're inherently evil, but because any large, powerful institution is going to be blind to the ways its interest conflicts with the public's interest.

So in a way, I would defend Google here. They're simply doing what any organization does - defend its own interests. The problem is that the rest of us have not been sufficiently skeptical and critical of Google. We've been too wowed by Google's supposed technological wizardry.

jonathanyc• 9 years ago

Your comment has essentially zero content. If you have a genuine interest in making an argument rather than just an interest in making a post for people who agree with you before reading the article to upvote you, you should provide some actual points.

Google has an immense lobbying arm; the linked article discloses how Google funds a lot of public policy research that happens to agree with its positions. It's either disingenuous or naive to argue that professors won't be influenced to support Google's positions when it's unlikely Google will continue to fund researchers who start to disagree with them.

It would be rather frightening if we found out that tobacco companies had funded hundreds of studies into whether tobacco is healthy (oh, wait), regardless of whether or not the outcome were predetermined, just because any reasonable person can see that there will be a conflict of interest.

Why are we so willing to assume that one corporation whose only interest is profit is so different from another?

jondubois• 9 years ago

It doesn't matter if there are no strings attached. As a scientist (and particularly, as a human being), you would feel some degree of gratefulness for the grant that Google gave you - This is enough to bias the research at least a tiny little bit... If only a couple of extra friendly words in the conclusion or executive summary.

After many years of stacking up those "almost perfect" bricks, the tower starts to lean to one side just a little.

gcb02• 9 years ago

the point of view of a single person, even if insider, is not the same as a well researched work.

I could counter your anecdotal point of view with mine. around here, google hire professors without any ongoing research just to access potential future research from their students and have early access to grad students entering the market. the professors in question are full time employees that have their own office in the university campus.

gcb02• 9 years ago

mentioned that a few days ago in another discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14700610

Paying Professors: Inside Google’s Academic Influence Campaign

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