Google Pays Academics for Publishing Favorable Articles About Google

Madison Malone Kircher, writing for New York Magazine:

Over the last ten years, Google (er, um, Alphabet) has paid thousands of dollars to people in the academic community working on research that directly involves the company’s business, The Wall Street Journal reported earlier Tuesday. Dollar amounts ranged from $5,000 to $400,000, and Google’s financial contributions to the research were often not disclosed in the finished products, the Journal also reported. A former Google employee said the company had assembled a list of research papers, complete with “working titles, abstracts and budgets,” Google wanted to see produced and then used that list to find academics willing to work with them on those projects. Around 100 such papers have been funded by Google since 2009.

I love this bit from the Journal story:

University of Illinois law professor Paul Heald pitched an idea on copyrights he thought would be useful to Google, and he received $18,830 to fund the work. The paper, published in 2012, didn’t mention his sponsor. “Oh, wow. No, I didn’t. That’s really bad,” he said in an interview. “That’s purely oversight.”

“Oh, wow”. He’s shocked — shocked — that he himself didn’t disclose this. The Journal even got him to pose for a photograph — he’s got exactly the deer-in-the-headlights “Why did I agree to this interview?” look on his face that you’d expect.

Don’t be ethical.

★ Wednesday, 12 July 2017