Corporations hid industry sponsorship behind proxy research institutes to avoid conflict-of-interest charges

Evidence

The head of the Mellon Institute for Industrial Research, a corporate-funded research group, suggested to industry leaders that they locate research on silicosis at the institute, using it as a proxy. That would enable individual corporations to sponsor research surreptitiously, thereby avoiding accusations of conflict of interest: … If this work were to be centralized in Mellon Institute, it … could be carried out in a most confidential manner as to who was supporting the research and no one would know what industries or individuals were contributing to the fund. This would enable the organization to get soundly established, so that if later on it was desired to come out in the open this could be arranged. (Weidlein, 1935) The use of respiratory masks as the first line of defense against silicosis has long been a contentious issue in the dusty trades. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1803

Categorization

• XREF: Provides a concrete structural mechanism for how harmful policy is justified, echoing tobacco-industry front-group tactics the vault knows. — connects to: Industry used proxy front groups to hide its harm-suppression efforts; Industries used proxy institutes to secretly fund biased research
• SEED: Essay angle: the Mellon Institute playbook as the template for modern dark-money research funding.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 1803