Further evidence (and it's replicable!) of the increasing corporatization of all facets of our lives.


To add to Dr. Sanford's list, southpaws are shut out of most brain studies. I understand why this is: they tend to skew the data. Nonetheless, we know comparatively little about the brains of left-handed people as a result. Given that three of the last four presidents have been left-handed, this might be interesting information to know!

It's more about government shirking its responsibility. With federal funding rates as low as they are, federal funding still makes up the lion's share of money spent on scientific research. The most recent figures I've seen show only 6% of university research funds coming from private industry (SEI 2012).

#1 really only applies to a small number of researchers who work in the field. Not sure her #2 point is a major problem either. The vast majority of researchers in biology know about sex differences and there are thousands of studies on this.

And nowhere is this conflict of interest from private corporate funding of research and development bigger than in the pharmaceutical industry. And after R & D, there are huge conflict of interest problems between big pharma and regulatory agencies like the FDA, with a revolving door between big pharma, agrobusiness and top regulatory posts being a huge and chronic problem. SCIENCE IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST should be THE top slogan when it comes to science, and taking it to a higher, more perfect level. But the ideal of perfect regulation in the public interest will NOT be achieved as long as the government and its regulatory agencies are subject to downsizing by right wing Republicans who want to drown the federal government in the bathtub. This only lessens the power and capability of our regulatory agencies to do their job, and makes them vulnerable to corruption. And of course, WE GOTTA GET BIG MONEY OUT OF POLITICS so our elected officials no longer feel an obligation to award regulatory positions to the cronies of their big corporate campaign donors.