If a professor takes money from a company and then argues in the media for a position the company favors, is he an independent expert -- or a paid shill?
It's not an academic question. Some companies have been paying professors to promote their points of view on TV shows, in newspaper and magazine articles and in letters to the editor. In many cases the arrangement between the professor and the company isn't disclosed.
In one such case, the U.S. steel company Nucor Corp. hired Peter Morici, a business professor at the University of Maryland, to argue in favor of steel tariffs put in place by the Bush administration. As a debate raged in 2003 about whether the steel tariffs should be kept in place, Mr. Morici, a former chief economist at the International Trade Commission, was quoted in scores of newspaper articles and wrote about two dozen letters to editors. He was most active in promoting his research showing that tariffs benefited the domestic steel industry and economy. In the vast majority of cases his role as a paid consultant to Nucor wasn't disclosed.
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