The ethics of pharmaceutical research funding: a social organization approach

This paper advances a social organization approach to examining unethical behavior. While unethical behaviors may stem in part from failures in individual morality or psychological blind spots, they are both generated and performed through social interactions among individuals and groups. To illustrate the value of a social organization approach, a case study of a medical school professor's first experience with pharmaceutical-company-sponsored research is provided in order to examine how funding arrangements can constrain research integrity. The case illustrates three significant ways that institutional corruption can occur in the research process. First, conflicts of norms between pharmaceutical companies, universities, and affiliated teaching hospitals can result in compromises and self-censorship. Second, normal behavior is shaped through routine interactions. Unethical behaviors can be (or can become) normal behaviors when they are produced and reproduced through a network of social interactions. Third, funding arrangements can create networks of dependency that structurally distort the independence of the academic researcher in favor of the funder's interests. More broadly, the case study demonstrates how the social organization approach deepens our understanding of the practice of ethics.