Research Process Patenting

Hello to all,

I'm a bit concerned and I thought this as good a place as any to open
the conversation.

I'm getting a little concerned about patents that cover a process of
doing something. Recently, universities have been making advancements in
all kinds of things that can benefit medicine (growing many kinds of
drugs in mushrooms, for instance).

It dawned on me, what is to stop Redmond from patenting studying social
networks based on link relationships, or so many methods therein that
they can hold coin over anyone that makes products based on this
research? In other words, if you research, you pay Microsoft if you plan
to publish your work because your method was 'similar' to theirs.

Lets say I came up with a new way to map social networks quickly into
some kind of tree that shows how each member is likely to monetize
(would not be hard). Can someone please assure me that this could not be
patented if I did it?

Many universities are getting money to study complex networks. Is this a
non concern or should someone be making a stink now before it happens?

Kindly
--Tim