Openness Shock: Are We Mice or Are We Academics?

"A link to an article stood out among the Berlin9 tweets rush yesterday during the Harold Varmus presentation. Varmus, a director of the US National Cancer Institute, pointed to a piece by Murray et al. from 2008, Of Mice and Academics: Examining the Effect of Openness on Innovation. Although the article dates back to 2008, the cost of intellectual property and the limits that IP rights may place on the diversity research, remain neglected. The idea of Murray et al. was that “within academia, restrictions on scientific openness, such as those created by formal intellectual property, may limit the diversity and experimentation of basic research itself.” How the openness presents a shock in a world where researchers have control rights on their research activities and what has this all to do with mice, is explained in a following experiment...."