I disagree with your Editorial supporting ties between drug companies and academia (Nature 463, 999–1000; 2010) — particularly the appointments of a top Eli Lilly executive as executive dean for research at Harvard Medical School and Genentech's head of product development as chancellor of the University of California at San Francisco.

As a former researcher (PhD in physics from the University of California, Berkeley), I don't consider it is enough that links between industry and academia should be transparent. They need to be kept at a level where the ones with the money can't control those who take the money. It is the public that pays for most research, and we don't want the industry tail to wag the research dog.

Having academic researchers collaborate with a drug company to help turn research into a drug is one thing. But giving former drug-company executives authority over research is quite different.

It is debatable what these executives bring to academia. Everyone in science knows that, when technical information is being discussed, it is the graduate students and postdocs who are in the room, not the professors, let alone the deans or the administrators.