An illustration of the policy impact of sponsored research is the case of University of Florida criminology professor Charles Thomas who for 20 years was the relentless advocate of prison privatisation. He turned out to have been on the payroll of private corrections companies all along, and was also as a significant shareholder in those companies. Academic disciplines that should in theory be concerned about the relations between universities and the marketplace pay scant attention to these issues. Departments of education are busy exploring the latest educational fads. The social sciences are mostly preoccupied with quantification and abstraction.
Business schools are cheerleaders for whatever generates profits.
The NEJM is hugely influential, and it had taken a strong stand on medical ethics and established stringent ethical guidelines for its contributors. It was only after the Los Angeles Times report that the soul-searching began and an internal inquiry was held. Then it emerged that reviewers of new drugs had disclosed financial ties to the NEJM editors. It has been suggested that it was simply not possible to find reviewers without ties to pharmaceutical companies. The world of science is now going through what business schools did in the 1980s.