Massive Faculty Donations and Institutional Conflicts of Interest

Most research universities have concrete policies for navigating the conflicts of interest of faculty members. Policies that might constrain university administrators acting on behalf of their schools, so-called institutional conflicts of interest, are absent or poorly developed at most places that could benefit from them. Researchers have argued for the illustration of institutional conflicts as a foundation for policy development. Here, we show the failure of research accountability when a faculty member made massive gifts to a leading American public research university, the University of Washington in Seattle, thereby creating allegiances that undermined commitments to academic values. Correspondence, some from thousands of pages acquired through the Washington State Public Records Act, show faculty colleagues, department chairs, deans, a provost, presidents, and the Board of Regents soliciting and accepting the donor's money but not sufficiently guarding the integrity of science when that was required. These records offer a rare look inside a university scientific misconduct investigation, a process typically shrouded in secrecy under the guise of confidentiality. They amount to a forensic analysis of what can go wrong with science at the nexus of a secret history of misconduct, spectacularly ambitious science, and large donations. The inabilities of federal and state authorities to reckon with institutional conflicts of interest are highlighted. The collective inaction can be understood within Lessig’s framework of institutional corruption. The failings described herein are metaphorical holes in the safety net intended to protect the integrity of American science, a shared practice that is under increasing strain. All public records are available from the authors upon request. Those cited here are included in an appendix posted by the journal.