THE revelation that financier Jeffrey Epstein was funding high-profile scientific research even after he had been convicted of sex offences has rekindled a debate about who funds science. How do we decide what sorts of donation are ethical, and to what extent does it matter where research funds come from?
The scandal over Epstein’s science funding came to a head on 7 September, a month after Epstein died by suicide. It was then that Joichi Ito, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab, resigned. He from Epstein, both for the Media Lab, an interdisciplinary research group, and his own investment funds. Epstein had been convicted in 2008 of sexually abusing girls as young as 14.
Ito’s acceptance of Epstein’s money wasn’t a crime, but this is an ethical grey area. Articles in the media, and discussions between scientists at MIT, have suggested that by associating him with respected scientists.
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That view isn’t universal. In an essay last week, Lawrence Lessig at Harvard University argued that taking Epstein’s money , as long as the money was taken anonymously. Ito did indeed ensure that the money he accepted from Epstein was kept anonymous.
Such debates over Epstein’s funding of science have prompted the question: are there good enough systems to allow people to collectively decide which sources of research funding they are happy with?
This goes far beyond Epstein. The tobacco industry once funded a lot of health research with the purpose of improving its own reputation. Today, Facebook , despite being seen by some as a platform from which democracy can be manipulated. There are plenty of other examples of research institutions taking money from sources that some people think are improper (see “Money trouble”).
It is an apt time to ask these questions, because research institutions are facing a fragile funding environment. “Until the financial crisis, science had benefited from pretty steady annual growth rates. Now, government funding has started to decline or plateau,” says at University College London. Research institutions really need cash and so “they are more likely to get themselves in this kind of trouble”, says Stilgoe.
“$1.7m
Amount of money that Joichi Ito says he accepted from Jeffrey Epstein”
Government-backed organisations like the US , and the , offer guidelines on how to avoid conflicts of interest and conduct research responsibly. These touch on funding, often stipulating, for example, that funders shouldn’t be able to influence what results get reported. But funding decisions aren’t overseen by independent bodies. At universities, they are usually made by a funding office.
When science is primarily funded by the public, measures like this may be sufficient. But Stilgoe says that during the 20th century, sources of funding have diversified, with the military and others giving more money with strings attached. “Scientists have not been great at talking about the conflicts of interest that come with that,” he says.
There is no commonly adopted ethical framework to guide these decisions, although some have tried to create one. One attempt is the Missenden Code of Practice for Ethics and Accountability, developed by Rory Daly who is now at Lancaster University, UK.
The code says universities should create an ethics committee that includes representatives of students, staff and the local community, and that this should vet every source of funding.
John Wakeford at the Missenden Centre near High Wycombe, UK, worked with Daly on the code. He says the idea was well received by ethicists, but university funding offices didn’t widely adopt it. A 2011 seminar for university development officers to discuss funding ethics garnered interest from only two people, he says.
The inclusion of staff and students on such a panel could alleviate funding concerns before they turn into a fiasco, says Wakeford. Without this kind of transparency, universities can put their staff in unethical positions without their consent.
That was true for Ethan Zuckerman of the Media Lab. He was unaware that the lab had received funding from Epstein, and resigned in protest when he found out. In a , he wrote that his work focused on social justice and that it was “hard to do that work with a straight face” in a place that had worked with Epstein.
However, a Missenden-style committee wouldn’t necessarily have helped in the MIT case, because Ito concealed where the money came from. A committee can’t vet donations it doesn’t know about.
Does this mean that we need a regulatory body with sharp teeth to force all donations to science into the light of day?
We may not need to go that far. Kieron Flanagan at the University of Manchester, UK, says that autonomy is baked into the principles guiding universities and that this scandal may well prompt them to revisit their rules. “When a scandal comes along, as it does periodically, institutions respond to that in a scramble and maybe set their own principles for what funding they’ll accept,” he says.
It is also clear that not all scientific funding is suspect, says James Wilsdon at the University of Sheffield, UK. Public funding is well regulated. And many private donations are directed towards specific research or particular labs, which often makes the expectations clear.
The problem lies elsewhere, when money is donated to particular teams or institutions without a stipulated goal or aim. “Shovelling money into this grey space that exists above individuals and specific projects makes it possible not to see the fingerprint of that funding,” says Wilsdon.
“$10m
Amount donated to the University of California, Los Angeles, by someone indicted for fraud”
One reasonable way to encourage transparency around this type of funding, says Wilsdon, could be to legally require all donations to research institutions to be made public if they are over a certain amount. This approach already exists in politics, so we know it is workable.
One thing is sure: these questions aren’t going away. And it is probably going to be prestigious labs that face them most often. On the one hand, they are a magnet for rich individuals looking to make a statement. On the other, they already have enough money to carry out due diligence. “It should be easier for them to say no,” says Flanagan.
Money trouble
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab isn’t the only place to have accepted donations from sources that some consider inappropriate (see main story).
The London School of Economics came under fire in 2011 for accepting money from a foundation run by Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.
In the same year, the University of California, Los Angeles, accepted $10 million from Lowell Milken to set up a business law institute. He had been indicted for racketeering and fraud.
New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art has a wing named after the Sackler family, who own Purdue Pharma, which has been accused of stoking the opioid crisis in the US. The museum said in May that it would stop accepting donations from the family. Many other places have financial links to the family too, including an imaging laboratory at London’s Natural History Museum.
