Cory Doctorow is an author and journalist who advocates changing copyright laws, using Creative Commons licensing and "digital rights". In an article in the UK newspaper Guardian, he discussed the question of public access to research studies done by pharmaceutical companies [read article, or download his podcast & listen to it].
Doctorow explains that freely available research data is economically desirable:
The public good of freely accessible, unencumbered research generates more economic value for the public than the quick-hit sugar-rush you get from charging the public on the way in and again on the way out. This has held true in many sectors, though the canonical example is the massive public return from the US Geological Survey's freely usable maps...
He explains that the more wide-spread argument is that this research should be publicly accessible if the government helped pay for the research. Doctorow mentions Ben Goldacre's book "Bad Pharma".
Goldacre documents the problem of "missing data" in pharmaceutical research (he says about half of the clinical trials undertaken by the pharmaceutical industry are never published). The unpublished trials are, of course, the trials that show the pharma companies' new products in unflattering lights – trials that suggest that their drugs don't work very well, or don't work at all, or are actively harmful.
So, public access should not depend on government funding of the research:
The reason pharma companies should be required to publish their results isn't that they've received a public subsidy for the research. Rather, it is because they are asking for a governmental certification saying that their products are fit for consumption, and they are asking for regulatory space to allow doctors to write prescriptions for those products. We need them to disclose their research – even if doing so undermines their profits – because without that research, we can't know if their products are fit for use.
This is similar to the argument for using free/open source software in industrial and health applications, such as the OpenEyes system developed by Moorfields eye hospital and other institutions around the world, following the collapse of the NHS's electronic health record project. They didn't plump for an open system instead of a proprietary one for ideological reasons, but rather for eminently practical ones. No hospital trust would ever allow a firm of engineers to build a new wing for a hospital using secret proprietary means to calculate their load-stresses. They wouldn't accept a new wing where the as-built drawings were a secret, where the location of the ducts and trunks was known only to the contractor. It's certainly true that engineering firms and architects could make more if their methods were proprietary, but we demand openness because we need to be able to maintain hospitals regardless of the fortunes of any engineering firm, and because we need the reassurance you get from being able to double-check the load calculations on your own.
Clearly, the logic doesn't apply only to pharmaceutical companies and research, but in any case where human safety and welfare is a concern.
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So, there's certain kinds of research and background information that has compelling reasons for public access free of charge. Let's go back to the question of government funded research.
The Scientific American website recently republished a Nature magazine article about the Obama Administration's Advanced-Manufacturing Innovation Institutes. The federal government is planning to invest significant amounts of money into efforts to develop particular technologies which are believed can revitalize US manufacturing industries. Public colleges will also play a part in the project. And private companies will be involved.
We've already heard the argument that if the government subsidizes research, the research information should be available to the public. As a financial partner in the venture, the federal government should require an agreement project partners can share the information with whomever they choose - and the federal government can share it with the public at large. It might be said the citizens are the owners of the government, so the government is just sharing the information iwth its owners. As Doctorow explained, that is actually good for the economy. But is that all the public should get out of its investment?
Perhaps, the first question should be: Will the results of the research be patented? If so, why should only one of the partners (a company) have patent rights? If the government has patent rights, it need not pay whatever exorbitant price is demanded by a company - when the government helped develop the technology.
The other partners will be allowed to use the research to make and sell products - and gain monetary benefit from doing so. Why should it be different for one of the partners for no other reason than it is the government? (And, surely, if you had several private companies in a joint venture to develop new products and one of the companies was going to be forbidden to make money producing those items, that company would require some other financial reward for its participation.)
There are a number of ways this could be applied. The governments that contribute to the research could let private companies do the manufacturing and selling - then collect a portion of the profits [above what a company would pay in taxes in any case]. A variant of that might be that when the government bought the new technology products from private companies, the companies would be legally required to sell them at a non-profit or low-profit price. The government could be a business partner in a joint venture that does the manufacturing and selling. Or the government could operate its own facilities.
The one thing that doesn't seem to make sense is the government being a partner that isn't allowed to get monetary benefits from the results while other partners do. Why would you have the government pay half the cost of building a road if the company that was paying the other half was going to make it a toll road and none of the tolls were going to go to the government? The company certainly wouldn't accept it if the roles were reversed.
If the government wants to start a technology project and wants some private investors to take part, it can always sell bonds and run the show itself. The government doesn't have to be treated like a second-class citizen for lack of alternatives. (Even if it were insisted the government isn't permitted to do the manufacturing itself, it could hold the patent and have government contractors do the manufacturing at prices determined by competitive bidding for the contract.) When private business isn't already doing a particular kind of research or making a particular technology available, why shouldn't government take on the project?
We know that new technology tends to be more expensive. Companies estimate at what point it will be profitable to produce the first items of a new technology and at what point it will be profitable to increase the number of items produced. Until a certain profit potential is reached, private companies won't make a new technology, regardless of the non-monetary benefits the product might provide for society. If the government is a partner in the development of a new technology that would benefit society (perhaps help prevent a catastrophe from climate change), why should the government wait for it to be sufficiently profitable for businesses to manufacture the technology? Waiting might make it too late.
None of the above says that private businesses which chose to be financial partners in research should be prevented from making and selling (safe) products based on what is learned. So why should we impose that prohibition on the other financial partner? Neither the Constitution nor anything else makes it illegal for government to do research, fund research, subsidize businesses, etc. We're only told it may not benefit from those investments the way companies do.