#1144: Something smells rotten in the state of Pennsylvania
Earlier this year a cell phone report and precautionary advice issued by the Pittsburgh Cancer Institute gained international attention. Titled The case for Precaution in the Use of Cell Phones. Advice from the University or Pittsburgh Cancer Institute Based on Advice from an International Expert Panel. The report also listed ten precautions to reduce the health risks from cell phone use.
However when checking the Cancer Institute’s url link to the cell phone report the other night I found that it no longer worked and that the link instead reverted to the Institute’s home page. When you click on: http://environmentaloncology.org/files/file/Publications/UPCICellPhonesAppeal.pdf
it reverts to: http://www.upci.upmc.edu/ceo/index.cfm
And if you click on the Scientific Report link on the left side of the screen all that comes up is a notice: “A new Scientific Report is in progress”. So whatever happened to the previous one? I see no mention of it anywhere on the University’s website. It is highly unusual for such a high profile document to simply vanish without even an explanatory note. Perhaps inadvertently deleted or was it an inconvenient truth for someone?
In addition I have been told that the people responsible for the report are no longer with the cancer institute. Interesting……
The University of Pittsburgh’s Office of Technology Management mentions Entrepreneurial and Commercial Partnerships as an important feature of its research. However problems can arise when those partnerships cause conflicts of interests.
http://tech-link.tt.pitt.edu/sc.php?page_title=Working%20With%20Us
Sheldon Krimsky in “Science in the Private Interest” (2003) explored the ethical quandary when university research becomes deeply embedded with entrepreneurship and commercial interests – resulting in what Krimsky called an “inevitable tide of corporate and academic partnerships and the commercialism of knowledge”. Krimsky concluded: “As universities turn their scientific laboratories into commercial enterprise zones, and select faculties to realize these goals, fewer opportunities will exist in academia for public interest science -an inestimable loss to society.
So, has the University of Pittsburgh sacrificed public interest science and the American ideal of free speech at the behest of a corporate entity?
THE UNIVERSITY NEEDS TO EXPLAIN WHAT HAPPENED
Whatever the case may be, at the moment something smells very rotten in the state of Pennsylvania.
Fortunately the original report hasn’t been completely been sucked down an academic Black Hole as of yet. It can be accessed (at the moment) at: http://cell-phone-dangers.com/research/cellPhonePrecautionPittsburgh.html
Download a copy before the revisionists take that one off-line as well.
Don
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