WRITING THE RESEARCH REPORT AND THE POLITICS OF SOCIAL RESEARCHTABLE 1 Fifteen Top Higher Education Recipients
of Congressional Earmarks in 2010HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTION TOTAL EARMARK- University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa $58,755,000
- Mississippi State University $47,919,000
- Texas A&M University $40,150,000
- University of North Dakota $39,660,000
- North Dakota State University $37,040,000
- University of Mississippi $33,655,000
- University of Hawaii $33,503,000
- University of Massachusetts at Boston $33,002,000
- Utah State University $27,190,000
- New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology $27,000,000
- Louisiana State University $26,650,000
- University of Southern Mississippi $22,590,000
- West Virginia University $21,920,000
- University of Louisville $20,150,000
- University of Kentucky $19,709,000
Source:“The Academic Pork Barrel, 2010” from Inside Higher Ed,April 29, 2010;
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/04/29/earmark (accessed May 16, 2010).
that the drugs are effective. This number is far lower
when the drug companies are not the funding
source. Some people believe that negative findings
about new products are suppressed when millions of
dollars for a company are involved. Researchers
may receive stock or financial incentives to show
positive findings or to delay the release of negative
findings. More than half of university researchers
who received money from drug or biotechnology
companies stated that private donors exerted influ-
ence on how they did their work.
Research on medicine or biotechnology is not
the only area where profits and disseminating re-
search findings conflict. In 1997, a Cornell Univer-
sity professor testified for 10 minutes at a town
meeting about the labor practices of the largest nurs-
ing home corporation in the United States, Beverly
Enterprises, which operates 700 nursing homes. The
professor’s testimony was backed up by years of re-
search and documented by congressional reports,
newspaper reports, court records, interviews, and
other scholars. In 1998, the company sued the pro-
fessor for $225,000 for defaming it and demanded
years of research documents and notes. This iscalled a Strategic Lawsuits against Public Par-
ticipation (SLAPP) suit; its purpose is to stop pub-
lic testimony.
The practice began in the 1970s when compa-
nies issued “strategic lawsuits” to silence the oppo-
sition on controversial issues.
The threat of a lawsuit by managers inter-
viewed in a study on corporate crime delayed pub-
lication and forced the researcher to change the
results. A threatened lawsuit by school officials
stopped publication of a study of a boarding school.
School officials wanted to change what they had
said in interviews and make other changes because
they disagreed with the researcher’s conclusions. In
another example, a questionable researcher who had
been charged with conflicts of interest threatened a
lawsuit to force changes in an article conducted by
a team of fellow researchers.^40SLAPP suit Type of lawsuit that wealthy, powerful
organizations use to intimidate researchers and stop
them from publicly expressing ideas or revealing in-
formation.