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Cameron Marlowe offers a good caveat to the blog research report released today from an outfit called comScore today. Saying, "It this is a marketing survey, and as such should be carefully scrutinized before drawing any conclusions," he decribes some of the for-profit marketing company's methodological weaknesses.

When I used to write for computer industry magazines, I frequently relied on research reports from private research groups like IDC and Gartner to get a sense of the computer market. I was pretty aware that these surveys didn't necessarily contain false data, but the research companies were out to make computer companies happy. These companies make money by either selling research reports to corporate managers who want to understand trends in the market or doing company-sponsored research. A good chunk of the private analysts were former computer industry journalists, and the analyst work seemed to operate as a "shadow academy," giving respected opinions that often influenced the direction of business. The company I worked for launched few ill-fated media properties based on the predictions of these analyst firms. I haven't heard of comScore before, but it seems to be trying to gain a reputation in this business-analysis world.

In a soon-to-expire column, Paul Krugman describes how private-sector think tanks have emerged as a force that can counter claims academics have made in good faith with research that intentionally pushes a neo-liberal or conservative agenda. While I don't think that analyst firms like IDC are quite as cynical as many think tanks, I do wonder if think tanks evolved out of these private research firms as much as they did out of the academy.

If someone hasn't already done it, it would be interesting to do a history of private research firms to see the economic and cultural forces that led to their emergence. David Noble's America By Design is a pretty interesting history of private companies cultivated United States universities as vocational schools for white-collar engineers and as independent research firms to advance their business interests. If corporate America has done so much to shape universities, why would research firms emerge?