The petroleum industry was hatched in a very modern symbiosis of
business acumen and scientific ingenuity. In the 1850s, George
Bissell, a Dartmouth College graduate in his early thirties who had
enjoyed a checkered career as a reporter, Greek professor, school
principal, and lawyer, had the inspired intuition that the rock oil
plentiful in western Pennsylvania was more likely than coal oil to
yield a first-rate illuminant. To test this novel proposition, he
organized the Pennsylvania Rock-Oil Company, leasing land along
Oil Creek, a tributary of the Allegheny River, and sending a
specimen of local oil to be analyzed by one of the most renowned
chemists of the day, Professor Benjamin Silliman, Jr. of Yale. In his
landmark 1855 report, Silliman vindicated Bissel's hunch that this
oil could be distilled to produce a fine illuminant, plus a host of
other useful products. Now the Pennsylvania Rock-Oil Company
faced a single, seemingly insurmountable obstacle: how to find
sizable quantities of petroleum to turn Professor Silliman's findings
into spendable cash. (Chernow 1998, p. 74)

This chapter examines some of the ethical dilemmas and issues arising
from relationships between higher learning institutions and private in-
dustry, including conflicts of interest, research bias, suppression of re-
search, secrecy, and the threat to academic values, such as openness, ob-
jectivity, freedom of inquiry, and the pursuit of knowledge for its own
sake. The chapter also provides an overview of the historical, social, and
economic aspects of the academic–industry interface and addresses some
policies for ensuring that this relationship benefits researchers, universi-
ties, industry, and society.

Although the times have changed and much more money is at stake, nine-
teenth-century scientist-entrepreneurs such as Bissell and Silliman have much
in common with their contemporary counterparts, such as Craig Venter, the
head of Celera Genomics Corporation. The ingredients are the same: a well-
known scientist from a well-known institution invents a product or develops
a process that can be used by large number of people and hopes to make a lot
of money from it. In Venter's case, he became frustrated with academic science
and launched his own company and research program. Venter's key innovation
was the “shotgun” approach to genome sequencing, which stands in sharp
contrast to the traditional, and slower, “clone by clone” method. Venter has

-163-