CASA's Integrity Questionable

In academic circles, affiliation with Columbia University holds a large amount of clout. This is understandable, considering many of the world's leading academics teach, research, and publish from the small plot of land between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue. However, one less familiar Columbia-affiliated institution continues to publish sensationalistic research that receives much media attention, but this research is not subject to peer-review. The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University (CASA) has questionable academic integrity, but due in part to its affiliation with Columbia, CASA continues to receive considerable attention.

CASA releases four or five major publications a year, and the list of publications includes such titles as "Shoveling Up: The Impact of Substance Abuse on State Budgets," "Dangerous Liaisons: Substance Abuse and Sex," and the highly publicized 1994 article "Cigarettes, Alcohol, Marijuana: Gateways to Illicit Drug Use." These articles can all be downloaded directly from the CASA website for $15, $22, and $8, respectively.

Beyond the merrily sensationalistic titles of the articles, controversy lurks in CASA's very recent past. In the summer of 1994, a CASA study on binge drinking among college students received harsh criticism from Forbes Media Critic, a journal that has since folded. Then in October of 1997, The Chronicle of Higher Education featured an article calling CASA "an odd half-breed, trading on Columbia's prestige while remaining mostly independent ... it has 50 staff members, only one of whom ... has tenure on the Columbia faculty." The Chronicle's article also presented claims that CASA has been accused of "playing fast and loose with statistics, skirting the academic peer-review process in favor of grandstanding, and acting as unskeptical cheerleader for the war on drugs." In the article, CASA President Joseph Califano Jr. refutes these claims, but the theme of the article is clear: CASA's research and relationship with Columbia needs to be closely examined.

Founded by Califano in 1993, CASA raised more than $15 million in 1999 alone. CASA's Board of Directors boasts such members as President George Rupp, Nancy Reagan, and Columba Bush, Jeb Bush's wife. The center receives funding from such Columbia student activist favorites as Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation, Citigroup, Exxon Mobil, and KMart.

In the spring of 1998, the University Senate began a review of CASA in accordance with the University policy calling for review of affiliated institutions three to five years after they are founded, Charles Donelan, administrative assistant to the Senate, told the Spectator in fall of 1998. But even before the University President's office established an ad hoc committee to review CASA, in November (following the release of the article in The Chronicle), the Columbia University Chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (CU NORML) raised serious issues before the Senate concerning CASA's research and its potential impact on the reputation of Columbia University. The ad hoc committee released its findings that spring, nevertheless stating that CASA "is fulfilling its stated missions," in their 1997-98 report to the Senate.

In the fall of 1998, after the committee's report was released, Spectator articles indicated that certain prominent faculty Senators were dissatisfied with the report. Professor Robert Jervis said, "I found the [CASA review] insufficient to erase doubts brought on by critics. It did not meet the objections and did not rebut them." The Washingtonian also released a very negative article on CASA in its Oct. 1998 issue.

Columbia students took note of this, and in November of 1998, CU NORML wrote a letter to the University Senate in response to the findings of the Ad Hoc committee. CU NORML stated three primary concerns with CASA, alleging that CASA is actually a political advocacy organization fronting as a scientific research institute, that CASA's failure to participate in the academic peer-review process greatly reduced the credibility of CASA's reports, and that CASA uses its association with Columbia University to gain academic credibility and media attention. In February of 1999, Dr. Herbert Kleber, Executive Vice President and Medical Director of CASA, wrote a rebuttal letter addressing CU NORML's concerns while acknowledging that "the length of our monographs, usually well over 100 pages, does not readily lend itself to the format of an academic peer-reviewed journal. We have therefore chosen to issue these documents ourselves, with scientific oversight by our various Advisory Boards."

Dr. Kleber seemed to be trying to downplay the importance of peer-review, normally an integral part of publishing scholarly documents. Peer-review ensures that the reasoning and conclusions of a body of research meet standards of validity and reliability recognized within a given discipline. Reviewers are typically active in the discipline with some amount of technical expertise on the topic at hand. Peer-review determines what articles are published in all major scholarly journals and determines the content of the world's published research.

Although the controversy surrounding CASA stopped, for the most part, in the spring of 1999, the problem still has not been adequately addressed. CASA's publications continue to be internally released. The question remains: Do we want the name that graces our diplomas and resumes to also be associated with this questionable research institution?