Corporate-funded specialization disguises toxicity and blocks environmental research

Evidence

Like Said, Carson voiced a profound suspicion of the certified expert whom she saw as implicated in the economics of professional capitulation in ways that jeopardized society’s capacity to sustain uncompromised research. Carson had almost nothing to say directly about empire, class, and race, yet her work speaks powerfully to the environmentalism of the poor because she was passionately concerned with the complicity of the military-industrial complex in disguising toxicity, both physically and rhetorically. Her approach, moreover, helped hasten the shift from a conservationist ideology to the more socioenvironmental outlook that has proven so enabling for environmental justice movements. Above all, Carson was a renegade synthesizer: her gestures toward the big picture challenged institutionalized definitions of what constituted originality. In exposing the dubious funding of partitioned knowledge—and its baleful public health implications—she recast herself as an insurrectionary generalist. — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 10

Categorization

• XREF: The indictment of corporate-funded expertise that feigns objectivity parallels Hall’s and the Frankfurt School’s critiques of funded, partitioned knowledge — and bears directly on Soundscape’s funding-silenced noise research. — connects to: Corporate pressure removed environmentalist editorial-page editors — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 440; Industry can distort science simply by funding the researchers who suit it — Cailin O’Connor and James Owen Weatherall, The Misinformation Age: How False…, 400; Corporations funded research designed to produce reassuring conclusions — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 1784 (+10 more)

Broader Connections

• Industry can distort science simply by funding the researchers who suit it #corroborates (0.95) — Cailin O’Connor and James Owen Weatherall, The Misinformation Age, 400
• Corporations funded research designed to produce reassuring conclusions #corroborates (0.90) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1784
• Corporations buy science to protect financial interests, distinct from ambient cultural bias #corroborates (0.90) — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 152
• The chemical industry reframed carcinogen debates around human benefits #expands (0.85) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1779
• Industry-funded researchers publicly challenge disfavored scientific evidence #expands (0.80) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 132
• Commercial conflicts of interest in science threaten public trust in research #expands (0.80) — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 857
• Fatalism about workplace pseudoscience blocks regulatory change. #exemplifies (0.75) — Holm Gero Hümmler, Ulrike Schiesser, Fact and Prejudice, 594
• Worthy-purpose framing legitimizes environmentally harmful practices #expands (0.75) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2630
• Tobacco firms funded quality research to distract from smoking’s causal role #exemplifies (0.75) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 631
• Short-term profit incentives override distant and slowly accumulating environmental harms #complicates (0.70)
• Immediate rewards override distant slowly accumulating environmental harms #complicates (0.70) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2546
• Demanding more research can delay regulation despite abundant evidence #expands (0.70)