"THOUGHT SCIENCE" AT EMORY UNIVERSITY; OR, KEEP YOUR BLOODY HANDS OFF MY "BUY BUTTON"

Joel Bleifess, the editor of In These Times, has a fascinating piece about research being conducted at Emory University. He reports that Clinton D. Kilts, vice chairman for research in the university's Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, markets his expertise in probing the human brain through the BrightHouse Institute for Thought Sciences. Bleifess may, of course, exaggerate the commercial and political ends to which this research could be put. Animal rights activists have long protested the abuse of animal subjects at Emory's Yerkes Science Center, but BrightHouse is quite clear about the direction in which this research moves. Yerkes may have been testing Bonzo, but BrightHouse aims to motivate you. Its clients have included Coca Cola, in whose stock the university is heavily invested. The potential of such research could be enormous; the pitfalls could be treacherous. How do you protect the freedom of research and inquiry, acknowledge the potential windfall of commercial and, even, political applications, and safeguard human freedom from academic Trojan horses? As Commercial Alert, a group which keeps an eye on marketing, and some psychologists recently wrote Emory University President James Wagner:"Universities exist to free the mind, and enlighten it. They do not exist to find new ways to subjugate the mind and manipulate it for commercial gain? ... Is Dr. Kilts now using his knowledge of addiction to sell products such as Coke? Is he working on mental mapping to induce product cravings through the use of product related scenes?"