Gordon Wittick
From Cyberlaw
On Class #3
I got the sense when we took a break in the middle of class #3 that there was a great deal of skepticism towards the idea proposed by the visiting professor of the centralized, rigidly formal and de-incentivized government agency for approving new treatments. I, for one, found it odd that the speaker, who had laid out all the abuses of power of the USDA and other government agencies who are easily swayed by the meat and dairy lobbyists of this country at the expense of our nation's health.
It seems to me that centralizing research would only make it that much easier for lobbyists or anyone else to corrupt many more scientists at bargain prices. Even though scientists are not directly funded by pharmaceutical companies, it might become obvious that those scientists who approve new treatments generally receive promotions more than those scientists who reject treatments. At the extreme, I foresee the agency discovering that butter can be used to treat many common ailments.
I remember earlier in the guy's talk he mentioned how Harvard scientists aren't corruptible because our school has very rigid rules against scientists receiving funding from corporations.
Therefore, I propose a better solution would be a small centralized board creating and maintaining a rigid set of rules for many universities and institutions to follow. These rules would require various protections against corruption.
- nesson here: must the alternative to point control the incorruptability of which you rightly doubt be another point control, small and centralized? could we imagine a more distributed ring of trust in a university-grounded peer review process?
