Industry can distort science simply by funding the researchers who suit it
Evidence
Holman and Bruner contend that industry can influence science without biasing scientists themselves by engaging in what they call “industrial selection.” Imagine a community of scientists working on a single problem where they are trying to decide which of two actions is preferable. (They work in the same Bala-Goyal modeling framework we have already described; once again, assume that action A is worse than action B.) One might expect these scientists, at least initially, to hold different beliefs and hypotheses, and even to perform different sorts of tests on the world. Suppose further that some scientists use methods and hold background beliefs that are more likely to erroneously favor action A over action B. — Cailin O’Connor and James Owen Weatherall, The Misinformation Age, 400
Categorization
- DEFINE: Introduces ‘industrial selection’ — industry changing which scientists thrive rather than what any one of them believes.
- XREF: connects to: Fully honest scientists can still be beaten by industrial selection — Cailin O’Connor and James Owen Weatherall, The Misinformation Age: How False…, 404; Industry cherry-picking is continuous with ordinary scientific publication bias — Cailin O’Connor and James Owen Weatherall, The Misinformation Age: How False…, 359; Industries used proxy institutes to secretly fund biased research (+12 more)
Broader Connections
- Industries used proxy institutes to secretly fund biased research
#exemplifies(0.95) - Industry secretly sponsored silicosis research through a proxy institute to launder credibility
#exemplifies(0.95) - Industry-funded television research suppressed unfavorable findings and used straw-man tests
#exemplifies(0.90) - Broadcast industry attacked researchers whose findings threatened advertising profits
#exemplifies(0.85) - Tobacco firms ridiculed science showing tobacco harms to discredit it
#exemplifies(0.85) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1685 - Corporations buy science to protect financial interests, distinct from ambient cultural bias
#expands(0.85) — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 152 - Industry-stacked committees produced deliberately obfuscatory scientific reports
#exemplifies(0.85) - Commercial conflicts of interest in science threaten public trust in research
#expands(0.80) — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 857 - Science is subordinated to industry within the social division of labor
#expands(0.80) - Capitalist production creates and funds even its own academic critics
#expands(0.80) — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader, 314 - Low-powered studies disproportionately feed industry propaganda
#expands(0.75) — Cailin O’Connor and James Owen Weatherall, The Misinformation Age, 386 - Research funding subordinates truth to the goal of performativity
#expands(0.75) — Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, 342