In recent years the news media have been awash in stories about increasingly close ties between college campuses and multimillion-dollar corporations. Our nation s universities, the story goes, reap enormous windfalls patenting products of scientific research that have been primarily funded by taxpayers. Meanwhile, hoping for new streams of revenue fromtheir innovations, the same universities are allowing their research and their very principles to become compromised by quests for profit. But is that really the case? Is money really hopelessly corrupting science?
With "Science for Sale,"...

Each year, Congress appropriates billions of dollars for scientific research. In this book, veteran science reporter Daniel S. Greenberg takes us behind closed doors to show us who gets it, and why. What he reveals is startling: an overlooked world of false claims, pork, and cronyism, where science, money, and politics all manipulate one another.

Though high in national ranking, Kershaw University is a dysfunctional institution. Its geriatric president is afflicted by dementia. The faculty is embroiled in bitter vendettas. The students, when not partying or sleeping late, are in rebellion. And, under an Army contract in a secret lab on campus, Kershaw's star scientist is developing an anti-sleep drug to keep troops permanently awake. Hot on the trail, a dropout scientist working for an investment firm schemes to buy up the secret formula, with time out only for his hyper-busy love life.