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Last month, the Center for American Progress released a new report, Big Oil Goes to College, documenting how, over the past decade, oil companies and other energy firms have underwritten more than $800 million in energy research at prominent U.S. universities, with few safeguards in place to protect academic autonomy, scientific objectivity, or scholarly independence.
In this 221-page investigation, author Jennifer Washburn explores how and why the energy industry is outsourcing more of its commercial research to U.S. universities and builds the case for strengthening contract standards and federal guidelines for all public-private research collaborations.
Washburn relied on independent legal experts to evaluate ten large-scale academic-industry alliance agreements, many lasting from five to ten years. This analysis uncovered substantial energy-industry influence at fifteen partnering universities:
“Evidence continues to mount that industry influence—from pharmaceuticals to agriculture to energy—is growing on campus,” says Washburn. “It is time for faculty and universities to insist on far stronger baseline contract standards to protect the universities’ core academic mission and their ability to perform high-quality, independent research that the public can trust.”
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