Agricultural biotechnology, corporate hegemony, and the industrial colonization of science

In 1942, Merton codified the normative structure of science as consisting of universalism, organized skepticism, disinterestedness, and communalism. Drawing on Etzkowitz's (1989, 1996, etc.) arguments that a normative transformation has been occurring in some fields, this study examines the impacts of the relatively recent and massive increase in research funding from the private sector on the pace, path, and products of scientific research in agricultural biotechnology.; Krimsky et al. (1991) and Blumenthal et al. (1986a; 1986b) have shown that academic-industrial ties are notably high in agricultural biotechnology, thereby making it an ideal case for examining the impacts of industrial involvement on the subject and practice of science. Data for this study is thus based on 24 intensive, semi-structured interviews with prominent scientists actively involved in the public and scientific debates surrounding the field. Informants were sought whose situated knowledge could best speak to the question of the impacts of industrial involvement on the scientific ethos. This purposive sample provides a spectrum of perspectives on industry's impact, and is representative of the realm of meanings surrounding agricultural biotechnology.; Findings demonstrate that all respondents, whether proponent or opponent of the current development of agricultural biotechnology, recognize that their field is in many ways driven by commercial concerns. Specific factors explored in detail include: (1) ambivalence regarding industrial capital and resources; (2) frustrations regarding the marketing and promotion of the products of agricultural biotechnology; (3) the degree to which profit and commercial concerns are driving the science; (4) problems associated with the proprietary nature of the science and technology; (5) structural mechanisms of de facto censorship; and (6) problems associated with the emerging “academic-industrial complex.”; This study verifies Etzkowitz's arguments that a normative transformation is occurring in science. Specifically, it seems clear that former boundaries between the two institutions are no longer being maintained, and disinterestedness and communalism are increasingly disappearing as elements of the scientific ethos. This is indicative of industrial colonization. Rather than a relationship of reciprocity and mutuality, the industrial definition of the situation is overwhelming the scientific. Other consequences for science include, but are not limited to: a loss of public legitimacy as an industrial program of research presents itself as a purely scientific endeavor; and stagnation at a relatively early level of biotechnological development due to the constraints of intellectual property. Recommendations are made for adaptations the university must make in order to sustain a vigorous program of research without sacrificing the scientific ethos to the demands of capital.