Sir

Ian Taylor, in Correspondence (Nature 436, 626; 200510.1038/436626c), argues that a number of practices considered scientific misconduct in academia are acceptable to industry. In so doing, he may highlight the existing gulf between academia and industry, but in no way does he provide any support for the erosion of scientific principles, which should be defended to the utmost.

Applying the ideas of others may be commercially prudent, but it is not ‘science’. Building on current thought to produce new knowledge is science; simply applying it in a commercial setting is business. Similarly, it may be proper practice to withhold methodologies in an effort to protect proprietary information, but doing so reduces publications to the level of non-scientific anecdotal reports. If an experiment is published without full details of the methodologies, then not only is it impossible to reproduce the experiment, but the results, and indeed the methods, cannot be built upon by the wider scientific community.

Commercial and scientific interests may contribute one to the other, but their ends are different. I see no reason for academic research to adopt more commercial practices. Indeed, Taylor's examples lend support to the opposite view — as well as to a proper scepticism towards science conducted by commercial enterprises.