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Commentary

Nature Nanotechnology 3, 60–62 (1 February 2008) | doi:10.1038/nnano.2008.11

Reclaiming academia from post-academia

Philip Moriarty

The increasing emphasis on commercialization and market forces in modern universities is fundamentally at odds with core academic principles. Publicly funded academics have an obligation to carry out science for the public good, and this responsibility is not compatible with the entrepreneurial ethos increasingly expected of university research by governments and funding agencies. Is nanoscience the “first full embodiment of post-academic science”? Have many of the traditional core values of publicly funded university science been eroded to the point where they are now “part of a scientific mythology”?