Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between higher education and Sesame Street, and today is one of those days.
A few days ago I had occasion to quote the Cookie Monster’s well-known song:
One of these things is not like the others,
One of these things just doesn’t belong,
Can you tell which thing is not like the others
By the time I finish my song?
Today’s news from higher academia raises the question of whether all the following things are alike:
• Both Inside Higher Ed and the Chronicle of Higher Education report that PLoS Medicine, an open access medical journal, will no longer publish papers where, according to an editorial, “support, in whole or in part, for the study or the researchers comes from a tobacco company.”
• Merced Bans Chancellor-Mocking Art From Exhibit
• NCAA removes controversial ad from website
The promotion for the group, Focus on the Family, features a smiling father holding his young son, next to the words “Celebrate Family. Celebrate Life.” Beneath the photo appears the message: “All I want for my son is for him to grow up knowing how to do the right thing.”
This ad, which appeared on Monday, was perceived “as being against gay rights and diversity,” and by Tuesday it was gone.
I can’t be sure — one can never be sure about these things — but my guess is that the fierce objection to this ad was fueled more by hate of the sponsor than offense at its content.
Similarly, the PLoS Medicine’s decision to exclude research where the research itself or its authors had been supported “in whole or in part” by the tobacco industry was based on the editors’ objections to the sponsors, not the research. As its editorial stated,
the business of tobacco involves selling a product for which there is no possible health benefit. Tobacco interests in research cannot have a health aim — if they did, tobacco companies would be better off shutting down business — and therefore health research sponsored by tobacco companies is essentially advertising. Publication is part of tobacco company marketing, and we believe it would be irresponsible to act as part of the machinery that enhances the reputation of an industry producing health-harming products.
Their objection, in short, was to the purported “aim” and effect of the sponsor-tainted research, not to the research itself. Presumably all the articles that continue to appear in PLoS Medicine will have been carefully vetted to make sure that the authors’ associations and aims, as well as those of all the entities that provided support, meet the moral and political standards of the editors.
“Our new policy may be criticized as moralistic, unscientific, and against transparency,” the editors write.
Well, yes, but if universities should not provide a forum for students to mock the chancellor, if those who believe in “diversity” and gay rights should not have to endure an ad urging young men “to do right” because they object to the sponsor, why should research journals publish research (no matter its quality or content) because of the presumed motives of some of the sponsors and tainted associations of the authors?
ADDENDUM
I am reminded of a true story. An old and good friend of mine worked for a while with a public interest group after he graduated from law school (both he and the group will remain nameless here). At one point he was assigned to review a new industry-sponsored research report on, I believe, the effects of a regulation requiring automobile seat belts. He found the report biased but with a few interesting, and he thought valid, findings.
He presented his report to the group spokesman, and was taken aback when the spokesman proceeded to tell a journalist who sought the groups response that, in effect, everything in the report was a lie. The spokesman, seeing the shocked look on my then-young friend’s face, said, “If you give them an inch, they’ll take a mile.”
