Agreed if it were just between those two parties, one wanted to sell me a questionable product, and the other wanted me to be informed about the questionable product.

Right now though it's Harvard and 163 other parties each hoping that their patented-sequence still-totally-unknown product will be the one the entire world rushes to purchase: https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/draft-landscape-of-c...

I know your Harvard example was hypothetical, but for what it's worth here's Harvard's actual COV*D trial: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04436276?term=NCT0443...

It's listed under Janssen, but you can read about the relationship here: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/04/harvards-coro...