GMW: Biotech Deal Still Clouds Tenure

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GMW: Biotech Deal Still Clouds Tenure

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Thu, 7 Jul 2005 09:45:19 +0100

 

 

 

 

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Biotech Deal Still Clouds Tenure

Michael Hiltzik

LA Times, July 7 2005

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-golden7jul07,1,318460.column?coll=la-headl\

ines-business

 

Anyone who has witnessed the aftermath of a fire knows that the more

acrid the smoke, the longer the stench persists. That could be bad news

for UC Berkeley, which was plainly hoping to dissipate a foul cloud last

May when it finally awarded tenure to Ignacio Chapela as an associate

professor of microbial ecology.

 

With the decision, Chancellor Robert Birgeneau reversed a 2003 ruling

by his predecessor, Robert Berdahl. But it's doubtful that his move will

entirely dispel the ill will that presumably led to Berdahl's decision

in the first place.

 

At the heart of the case was a five-year, $25-million agreement between

Berkeley's department of plant and microbial biology and the biotech

company Novartis. The agreement expired in 2003, but it still marks the

dangerous path that universities must tread as they turn to industry to

replace government funding, which has been drying up or arriving with

political strings attached.

 

The Novartis agreement, as a team from Michigan State University

observed in a report Berkeley commissioned, " highlighted the

crisis-ridden

state of contemporary public higher education in California - and the

country. "

 

For Chapela, the issue was more personal. " It was two years of very

interesting hell, " he says.

 

Chapela, 45, was on the tenure track in 1998 when the dean of

Berkeley's college of natural resources unveiled the Novartis deal. The

negotiations had been secret, and many in the academic community were

uneasy

about the result.

 

The contract differed from the usual academic arrangements, which

tended to involve a single faculty member or a small group accepting

limited

grants from commercial entities. This one covered nearly the entire

department of plant and microbial biology, leaving no one to objectively

oversee the arrangement. Novartis received preferential access to almost

all departmental research, including projects that it hadn't funded

itself.

 

As the college's faculty representative to the Berkeley administration,

Chapela was caught in the middle. He felt obliged to give his

colleagues a forum to discuss the agreement and air their concerns. He

also

harbored his own objections to the deal and voiced them freely.

 

Opposition to the contract terms spread across the university. Some

students and faculty feared the agreement might compromise the school's

objectivity about the ethics and appropriateness of certain

bioengineering research. Others, especially members of the department,

defended it

as a source of funding in straitened times. The administration dismissed

the objections and announced the deal at a 1998 news conference, during

which a vice chancellor got struck by a protester's pie.

 

Then things got really nasty.

 

In November 2001, Chapela and a student suggested in the journal Nature

that genetically modified corn had contaminated Mexican crops.

 

The paper caused a furor, for the biotech industry had assured the

public that its products could be kept out of the food chain. It also

attracted heavy criticism from industry and scientists who challenged

Chapela's methods and conclusions.

 

Chapela acknowledged flaws in the paper but stood by his conclusions.

His supporters noted that the harshest criticism came from current and

former Berkeley faculty who were beneficiaries of the Novartis contract.

 

The controversy soon bubbled over to Chapela's tenure case. Two

committees, including one drawn from Chapela's colleagues in the

department of

environmental science, policy and management, voted nearly unanimously

to grant tenure. Despite this, the most senior academic committee

reviewing tenure decisions turned Chapela down.

 

Chapela's supporters complained that the process had been infected by

conflicts of interest. They especially cited the inclusion on the final

committee of a faculty member who was intimately involved with the

Novartis contract. The Michigan State review agreed that the Novartis

case

had undermined the entire tenure review with potential conflicts of

interest.

 

Eventually, under a new chancellor and facing the threat of a lawsuit

from Chapela as well as expressions of support from students and

faculty, Berkeley reversed itself. Birgeneau appointed a new committee

and

accepted its recommendation that Chapela receive tenure.

 

The Novartis agreement, meanwhile, expired as something of a

disappointment. It had provided enough funding for the plant and

microbial

biology department to double the size of its graduate program; but the

controversy had driven away undergraduates, fewer of whom chose to

major in

the department. Michigan State found that the deal produced " few or no

benefits, in terms of patent rights or income, " for Berkeley or

Novartis.

 

" Berkeley was lucky, " says Lawrence Busch, a Michigan State professor

of sociology and the lead author of its study. " The long-term damage

from the agreement is minimal. But it poses very serious questions about

the proper way to go about a relationship with industry. People got very

concerned that the university was selling its soul to a company. "

 

Chapela, while relieved that his ordeal is over, is now concerned that

as a tenured insider he may be less inclined to question deals like the

Novartis contract. " I've been a steady questioner, " he told me. " But

being part of the fraternity does make you more careful about treading on

people's toes. "

 

Golden State appears every Monday and Thursday. You can reach Michael

Hiltzik at golden.state and read his previous columns at

latimes.com/hiltzik.

 

 

 

 

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