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Ask HN: Under pressure from industry, how can academics protect themselves?

6 points by rscho ↗ HN
Our group (western Europe) has submitted a review on a device that generates a lot of money (i.e. US multibillion $ industry). Our results speak mildly against the use of said device, with low confidence in the evidence presented.

Since the inception of the study, our corresponding author has been queried multiple times by a VP of the relevant company through email, asking us to share our data (which we refused). Since submission, the VP is asking for a meeting in person and there are rumors of them not being happy about our results (which remain unpublished). We did not respond. In the meantime, the company also reached to our head of dept to express their worries about our work.

We are worried about potential retaliation on publication. Our boss (head of dpt, tenured prof, not an author) told us not to worry and discouraged us from seeking legal advice. Neither the study nor our group are financially supported.

We are affiliated to a teaching institution, but not to a university directly and do not hold academic/teaching positions. How can we protect ourselves? Are there organisms specializing in / providing (free?) researcher protection?

19 comments

[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 76.0 ms ] thread
cinntaile
It's not an answer to your question but what's the reason for not sharing the data?
rscho
This would've required us to state it in the manuscript and would've reflected badly on our research (readers would've been suspicious)
yuppie_scum
Why aren’t you sharing the data publicly? That would inspire confidence by readers.
rscho
Yes, indeed and we'll probably do that after publication. It probably also opens us to accusations of mishandled data / bad interpretation by the company, though?
Jugurtha
>It probably also opens us to accusations of mishandled data / bad interpretation by the company, though?

Isn't that how science works? I also don't think they're called accusations.

You work with data and you state something based on that data. Someone else may point out that some steps of the process are flawed, or the data is flawed. That's the very nature of this.

rscho
Depends on who makes the claim, I guess. We are absolutely not afraid of scientific reviews. We're afraid of potential legal reviews made in bad faith. A company doesn't have to win a legal case to win against researchers, they just have to make a fuss.
Jugurtha
I see. Is this common in your area of research?
rscho
It's not common, although a group was sued by a company this year. So we'd like to anticipate, just in case.
gameman144
Not just the company, but other researchers and peers as well. This seems kinda like the point of including it with the publication, doesn't it? What's the value of the study of it can't be evaluated or peer-reviewed with the data present?
rscho
In my field, most studies are peer-reviewed without review of the data itself. The study was conducted strictly according to best practices guidelines, so we are not afraid of peer review. We are afraid of the suits coming in and making a fuss because they're big and have big money while we're small and penniless.
jstx1
Can you be more clear about your position? Are doing research for a company?

The title suggest that you're academics but then you say that you aren't:

> how can academics protect themselves?

> do not hold academic/teaching positions.

Which one is it?

rscho
Yes, sorry I had to edit the title because it was too long, resulting in this confusion.

The authors are all staff at a teaching hospital, but do not hold teaching/academic positions and are not affiliated to the local university. Our boss is tenured, but is not an author and apparently doesn't care very much about this story.

codingdave
I am not an academic, so take my advice with a grain of salt, but I would simply reply that you cannot share data before publication, but they certainly can see the published data once it is public, and you could answer questions at that time.

Other than that, I don't see anything that implies retaliation. If I owned a product and people were potentially going to publish negative facts about it, I'd be asking for information, too. Not because I want a fight, but because it is simply good practice to understand people's concerns about your product, and have an opportunity to fix the problems.

rscho
> I would simply reply that you cannot share data before publication, but they certainly can see the published data once it is public

We did that. We only didn't respond to the request to meet in person. Sorry if I was unclear.

> I'd be asking for information, too. Not because I want a fight, but because it is simply good practice to understand people's concerns about your product, and have an opportunity to fix the problems.

Good point. Unfortunately, we don't really know _why_ the product doesn't work. We only know that statistically speaking, we have low quality evidence that the impact on tested outcomes is negative. So fixing things won't be easy at all.

softwarefounder
Also understand that if the company comes under heat, the VP has "protected" him/herself by trying to reconcile it.
aborsy
Protect from what? Do they pay you? Do they serve on academic committees?
rscho
They don't pay us. We are independent researchers affiliated to a teaching hospital. We never interacted with the company other than about our publication.
throwawaybutwhy
There's some weirdness going on. Please consider asking the mods to disassociate/delete this thread since you're tipping your hand too much and risking your own career and that of your colleagues ('low confidence in the evidence'). Based on your earlier submissions, there might be some superficial semblance of a conflict of interest (this is only my guesswork FWIW).

Your posts are definitely not anonymous.

rscho
Thank you for your input. To clarify, we don't accuse the company of anything. We just got caught with our pants down because we have no experience in communicating with the industry and currently have nobody to guide us since our boss is against taking legal advice. So currently, we're just seeking a way to anticipate bad stuff that we know sometimes happens and communicate effectively without making stupid blunders.

'low confidence in the evidence' is a formulation sanctioned by best practice guidelines and has the very precise meaning that our results might be false positives, not a subjective appreciation on our side. This formulation is in the manuscript as well.

Also, I know I am easily identifiable but I don't think we're treading on forbidden ground here. Especially since I never posted on the internet about our current research topic.