A young researcher lost his post for exposing a donor-funded drug’s toxicity

Evidence

One incident during my term of office has, more than anything else, reinforced my belief in the importance of tenure. It had to do with a young medical researcher in the last year of his probationary period, who had discovered toxic qualities of a drug distributed by a company which was supporting his university with generous research grants. Should he publish the report of his findings? Would he risk nonrenewal of his appointment if his publication angered the donor and the chairman of the department? As it was, or as I was told, the young man decided to publish and he lost his post … Just think how easy it would have been for this scientist to postpone publication by just one year; and what consequences for the health, perhaps the lives, of many could have been entailed by postponement of such publications by as little as a month. — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 125

Categorization

• CANDY: A vivid, concrete anecdote: a junior researcher lost his job for publishing that an industry donor’s drug was toxic — a shareable story about why tenure matters.