When capitalism trumps science…this is Donald Morisky. He developed a useful tool called the Morisky Medication Adherence Scale, a questionnaire you can use to determine the likelihood someone will stick to a regimen of medication. It’s only 8 questions long, but I can see how it would be valuable.
Don’t belittle it because it’s only 8 questions, though. The hard part is validation — you’ve got to run it through a lot of trials and actually confirm its accuracy. So I expect that Morisky actually invested a lot of effort in the project.
There is some controversy over it, but that’s to be expected — it’s psychology, after all.
The tool initially involved four questions but in 2008 expanded to eight. But the paper describing the longer questionnaire was retracted in 2023 after one critic claimed the scale was no more accurate than flipping a coin.
The usual reward for this kind of research is that you publish it, you get respect and fame for it, and then researchers around the world cite your paper and you get even more well known. You get tenure. You get invited to talk at conferences about your scale. The usual.
Morisky took a different route. He published it, and then slapped a copyright on it, and allowed other researchers to use it IF they coughed up a hefty fee. The fee seems to be wildly plastic — some people get billed $500, others get a demand for $7500. Some get to use it for free.
Morisky has added a new wrinkle to his profit-making scheme: if he doesn’t get his money, he will demand that papers that used his scale be retracted.
By our count, there have been at least nine retractions for licensing issues related to the MMAS. But not all retractions of papers that use the scale explicitly cite a reason in the notice, so the number is likely higher.
Those might have been good papers, but that doesn’t factor at all into Morisky’s criterion: did they pay Morisky, or didn’t they? I call it corruption. The only responsible approach is to refuse to use the scale and to develop your own independent measures, but as I said above, that is hard work. In science, we’re supposed to be able to stand on the shoulders of those who came before us, but I guess you can’t if your predecessor was Donald Morisky.
What the.. ?! They can restrict scientific papers like that? Fucking hell.
Also, how does that pass peer review?
What about Morisky’s paper’s collaboraters and supervisors presuming they very likely would exist huh? Do they get a cut or a say or what?
Capitalism and Science are not compatible, full stop. The problem is, they are governed by completely different sets of moral rules. One is secretive and competitive, the other transparent and in principle co-operative.
That reminds me of Harvard prof William H Press et. al. who wanted money not just for their book Numerical Recipes (obviously quite reasonable) but for using the collection of (largely unvetted) codes, even if you typed them in. They had (maybe still do) a ridiculously limited personal license, something like: if you personally enter up to 10 routines from the book into a single computer, you may use them—but only on that one machine and only by you. Their useful routines (such as they were) were built on common basic routines which, while good practice, meant you couldn’t recopy 10 useful routines but only a couple.
Maybe it’s just me but I found their licensing to be “yech” for professional researchers.
They had abysmal coding practices. Their first edition was for FORTRAN, and when they released the C version they used pointer arithmetic so that in C they could still index arrays from 1..N rather than the standard 0..N-1.
And since I was a hater I also was irrationally annoyed that they were on the web early (92?), and had a cool web address of nr.com (which seems to have gone away).
Doesn’t the US have fair use laws? Copyright owners must allow use of their material for reviews and critiques, or some for forward mo ement.
DanDare, that’s covered in the OP; “Morisky took a different route. He published it, and then slapped a copyright on it, and allowed other researchers to use it IF they coughed up a hefty fee.”
Since ‘reviews and critiques’ is not the same as applying it clinically, your surprise is surprising.
Yeah John, I am not getting something. “Using” a science article is not copying it verbatim. Its building onward from it. I’ve missunderstood something here. I think maybe there is an assumption about something that I’m missing?
This is all too common in psychometric testing. Many of the well-known tests are copyrighted and payment for use is aggressively pursued. Your eyes might even water when you see <a href=’https://www.pearsonassessments.com/en-us/Store/Professional-Assessments/Cognition-%26-Neuro/Wechsler-Intelligence-Scale-for-Children-%7C-Fifth-Edition-/p/100000771?format=KITS”>prices like these for standard tests originally published in 1949 and last revised in 2014.
Morisky seems to have taken this to extremes.
(Note, it’s not just psychometrics. I’m still salty about the patent for discovering [not inventing!] the BRCA genes, which the patent owners demanded exorbitant fees to use, making many studies unaffordable and restricting breast cancer research.)
Sorry about borking the link. Try this.
Closer to home, the MMPI is copyrighted, and its use is licensed. I’m not sure what the issue is with Morisky…..
Yo, Heddle, long time no see! How’ve you been?
@Raging Bee #9 I’m doing well. I lurk here fairly regularly and have commented (non-confrontationally) a few times over the last couple of years. I’m considering retiring after this year and moving from Yorktown to the Seattle area where my second son is a network engineer. I hope all is good with you.
You’re in Yorktown. VA? Yeah, Seattle would be a good move from there. Never been there, hear it’s nice.
I’m unemployed, not a good time to be looking for a job, but doing okay otherwise.
Ah, mental nequer cube. We are talking about using the test, not citing the test. Duh.