Experts for Hire

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"If a professor takes money from a company and then argues in the media for a position the company favors, is he an independent expert - or a paid shill?" asks Michael Schroeder. He cites examples such as Peter Morici, a business professor at the University of Maryland, who was paid by the the U.S. steel company Nucor Corp. to argue in favor of steel tariffs put in place by the Bush administration. "While it's difficult to ascertain how widespread the practice is, several Washington-based public-relations executives privately acknowledge that they routinely pay academics to speak on behalf of companies or issues, usually hiring experts who already espouse a certain viewpoint," writes Schroeder. "A particularly popular tool is for PR firms to ghost-write opinion pieces to run on newspaper editorial pages and then solicit experts to lend their name to the articles."