Dr. Roy Poses of Brown University
weighs in on the University of Minnesota's inadequate response to the Markingson case on Health Care Renewal. He concludes:
"Of course, since Mr Rotenberg is responsible for, among other things, reducing the university's legal liability, one could see how he might not want to delve further into this case. As we noted earlier, it is not clear that previous "exhaustive" investigations asked the questions that needed to be asked, or had access to all the relevant data. The issues are not whether their was criminal conduct, or even civil liability, but whether the university is presiding over good science and protection of research subjects.
So we should be worried, of course, that commercial firms sponsor research on human beings mainly to serve marketing objectives, and that university faculty and administrators go along, allowing their formerly prestigious universities' names to be added to the research in exchange for the money they so much want to keep themselves living in the style to which they are accustomed. We ought to be particularly worried when these universities seem to forget about their mission to find and disseminate new knowledge in favor of defending the work that continues to bring in the money."
