University of Minnesota bioethicist tests limits of academic freedom while protesting human experimentation

First seen in the Wall Street Journal

A University of Minnesota bioethicist is waging a contentious – some say reckless – campaign over medical research conducted by the school’s psychiatry department in the wake of a controversial death in 2004 of a mentally ill patient, The Minneapolis Star-Tribune writes. In the process, Carl Elliott has alienated some colleagues in his own department and now does most of his work from coffee shops instead of his own office, but he seems more determined than ever to test the limits of academic freedom

Here is a snippet story from The Minneapolis Star-Tribune

In the past few years, he has waged a contentious — some would say reckless — campaign against the U’s psychiatry department, which he blames for the 2004 death of a mentally ill patient.

Elliott is convinced that the department’s research is putting patients in danger, and he has used every means at his disposal to spread that message: in national magazines, campus protests, lectures and his sometimes incendiary blog, Fear and Loathing in Bioethics. In one blog entry, he posted an image of Goldy Gopher in a photo montage of serial killers.

University officials have not been amused. They accuse Elliott of whipping up hysteria with “false and unfounded” allegations, and undermining research efforts in the process. And while the university hasn’t tried to fire him, it has reprimanded him for “unprofessional conduct,” a move that he’s now challenging under the tenure code.

By his own account, Elliott has alienated some of his closest colleagues. Within the U’s Center for Bioethics, where he has worked since 1997, he says the tension is so palpable that he dreads setting foot in his office. He does most of his work from coffee shops.

Yet at age 53, Elliott seems more determined than ever to test the limits of academic freedom. “The fact is, I’m totally ashamed of the way the University of Minnesota has behaved,” he said. He believes it’s his job, as a professor, to speak out. “We’re paid to call them as we see them, even if it happens to be uncomfortable for the people who are paying our salaries.”

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Elliott repeated what has become, for him, a familiar refrain: That Markingson, who had schizophrenia, was coerced into an industry-funded drug study over his mother’s objections. And that when he took his own life, the university refused to honestly examine how its own actions and conflicts of interest may have played a role.

“They don’t want to know about Dan Markingson. They don’t want to know whether there have been other Dan Markingsons,” he told the protesters. “What we have to do is make sure that they can’t keep looking away.”

Four protesters, in white lab coats, tried to carry the coffin into the regents’ meeting, but they were stopped at the door. Elliott later posted a photo on his blog with the headline: “Last time: A coffin. Next time, self-immolation?”