Negative Commercial Influences on Scientific Research

Nowadays, it's a trend that almost everything is related to the commerce, and so do the scientific research, because the society would like to value the research results. To some extend, scientific research is not only a pure research in the labs or universities, but also a business sometimes. As a result, the commercial influences on the scientific research are so obvious that change the ways that researchers do or the universities behave.

Among these effects, negative commercial influences have become more and more clearly.

On the one hand, because of the profits, some researchers begin to focus more on the researching speed rather than the quality. In order to succeed quickly, some researchers hope to get a good experiment results as soon as possible. In this case, they may fail easily or receive worse consequences. On the other hand, it has led to some wrong purposes to sell out science to commerce. A new report from the organization Scientists for Global Responsibility looks at the bad impact on five commercial areas which includes pharmaceuticals, tobacco, oil and gas, defence and biotech.

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[1]

From the perspective of the defence, in the theory, it's normal and reasonable for a country to develop the scientific researches on the countries' defense. But in fact, with the overwhelming attentions on new military technology and the huge financial support, the research has changed the original pure goals into developing military hardware, even resulting in the competitions among different countries. When it comes to biotech, before the emergence of biotech, business and science operated in largely separate spheres.

[2] Whereas, there is also a marriage between the commercial support and scientific researches at present. And sometimes, this kind of "marriage" may cause big faults that can do harm to human being's health because of some misleading messages in the biotech area.

Admittedly, the cooperation between the commerce and the scientific research has bring some positive effects. First of all, with more financial investments, researchers can have enough money to purchase some advanced equipments so that they can do the experiments they're willing to trying. Second, the cooperation can help scientists put their researching results in the labs into the real world. If the invents display on the table in the labs or museum, they're just the dead thing. But if the invents can be used in the daily life or put into the customers' market, they may bring something new to make the lives more convenient. However, because of the commercial influences, science has lost the freedom and the time to carry out research as thoroughly and as painstakingly as it should.[3]

Generally speaking, commerce has brought both the positive and negative effects on the scientific researches. Even though the cooperation activate research or facilitate people's life, the negative influences have caused more and more parent shortcomings. So reform is needed to improve the cooperation.

References

[1]Adapted from Parkinson,S,&Langley,C.(2009).Stop selling out science to commerce.New Scientist,204(2733),32-33. [2]John slaght, ISLC, University of Reading, UK, based primarily on Ho&Saunders(2001) and Pisano(2006). [3]John slaght, ISLC, University of Reading, UK, based primarily on Ho&Saunders(2001) and Pisano(2006).