Paying Professors: Inside Google’s Academic Influence Campaign
wsj.com
wsj.com
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.
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.
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.
Are you implying that government funds research when the topic isn't something they care about, or that Google only likes positive results?
Instead of accepting that anyone is an angel or devil, we should approach all results with a critical eye and push for reproducibility.
It's pretty simple. To equate the two, you'd have to say the USG only funds research that increases the size and scope of USG.
Well, I mean there is that whole thing about how federal funding cannot go to gun violence research. So there are absolutely types of research that the government not just passively, but actively attempts to prevent.
I'm not saying that Google is being a good guy here, but I also don't think you can so easily make the argument that the (US) government is any better.
I think that's a somewhat idealistic view. From my reading (which may be out of date, the book was published in 1999), even the basic research funding from governments often has a technological goal in mind, and many of the savvier grant applicants know what that goal is.
This isn't true at all for NSF and NIH grants, FWIW (and "I'm going to research the effect of eating lots of eggs on cholesterol" is not at all the level of specificity of proposals, which is part of this).
It's cause for criticism about how they approve grants (null results are science, too), but it's also partly a natural result of having limited money and many many requests for it.
Also, Google is largely funding CS research -- this isn't the kind of thing where there's a double blind study going on. It's usually work on a new algorithm or protocol or architecture or ... -- things that are constructive engineering tasks that can be replicated by others when the researchers' papers are published.
If you absolutely have to change the budget (does happen), you better have permission.
If you open a donut shop with it, you're probably commuting an act of fraud.
If they give someone money to support research without specific goals, playing nice is implied.
Unprofessional conduct (blowing money on donuts) is reasonably expected to not attract more funds.
But when does undesirable conduct come into play? Would they fund a guy who discovered that YouTube improves high school academic performance by 48%? Would they fund a guy who finds that YouTube slows child cognitive development?
You don't know, because the company's decision making is unknown. But a clever professor who needs grants could probably make a good guess. Even if Google (or any other company) doesn't act that way or has no desire to influence research, the perception of bias still exists, and that undermines science.
My local library is prohibited from accepting many kinds of gifts as a government entity. So the library board setup a "Friends of the Library" non-profit with its own board that can accept and distribute cash or other gifts, subject to reporting requirements. You need a similar concept where you give up control.
They key thing here is that perception is more important than reality. You need to work to build and maintain trust.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
I am less concerned about waterboarding in Guantanamo, which represents a miniscule proportion of the Federal budget, than social security which brings help to tens of millions. And anyway, Guantanamo is in Cuba (not even US soil) and those journalists ought not to have been talking to those prison guards.
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.
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?!
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.
some would argue that this is the most important research Google sponsors these days as protecting their monopoly will preserve/create more value than most any new fangled CS thing they can come up with.
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.
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.
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.
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?
After many years of stacking up those "almost perfect" bricks, the tower starts to lean to one side just a little.
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.
Yes, there's a lot of things going wrong in the world. Today we discuss Google, tomorrow Microsoft, etc. There's enough for everybody.
Long read but enjoyable and informative.
[1]: The Most Important Scientist You've Never Heard Of: http://mentalfloss.com/article/94569/clair-patterson-scienti...
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.
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.
How do you prevent journals from accepting? How do you force researchers to disclose?
(I am not a scientist and have never published a paper so I may be asking for things here that are unreasonable but they seem plausible and useful to me).
(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.
Why is this even news? Is there a single for-profit company that funds research contrary to the company's interests?
And by not much, if you consider the stakes low for sustaining a monopoly as long as possible.
Apparently, tomorrow the WSJ will be reporting that Google lobbies.
A more appropriate headline would be "Shocking news: Google is a for-profit business, and it acts like one!".
Move along folks, nothing to see here. I guess yesterday was a slow news day before all the Trump Jr. stuff came out.
You're trying very hard to make these things seem standard and not open to objection. They should be scrutinised.
I'm sure they should.
http://www.chronicle.com/article/Scholars-Cry-Foul-at-Their/...
Sarah T. Roberts said she doesn’t understand why she was on the list.
Sure, she told The Chronicle, she was a Google fellow in 2009, but that meant a $7,000 award to cover her expenses during a 10-week stint working in Washington, D.C., for the American Library Association.
Why that 2009 fellowship would be relevant to a 2015 paper on information privacy — in which Ms. Roberts, an assistant professor of information studies at the University of California at Los Angeles, was listed as the fourth author — is not clear to her. More important, she said, she didn’t receive any money from the technology giant in connection to that paper. And if the advocacy group’s concern was that she had benefited from Google in the past, that information is on her curriculum vitae.
"What else would they like me to do?" she asked. "I think it’s pretty irresponsible."
* Except for the professors, scientists, and researchers funded by those other guys, they're malicious, biased liars trying to destroy the world.
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.
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.
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.
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.
internet is dead. long live internet.