Majia's Blog: "Sound Science" Tipped to Benefit Industry

Thursday, March 14, 2024

"Sound Science" Tipped to Benefit Industry

Science today parades as eternal Truth with its priests and disciples attacking all who challenge its mandates and statements of "fact." The premise that facts are never proven, only not dis-proven has been lost in the quasi-religion that now dominates our public policy.

Yet, decades of scholarship, whistle-blowing and news reporting have documented that science is not a homogeneous field with total consensus. Disagreement in science is what drives it forward.

In addition to the current erasure of disagreement in facts and scientific-informed policy, today scientific findings are regularly subject to distortion and fraud that benefit individual scientists, their institutions and profit-oriented corporations.

Reviewing my notes today, I found this article:

Liza Gross. Seeding Doubt: How Self-Appointed Guardians of “Sound Science” Tip the Scales Toward Industry https://theintercept.com/2016/11/15/how-self-appointed-guardians-of-sound-science-tip-the-scales-toward-industry/

[EXCERPTED] Since the mid-1990s, numerous studies have shown that industry-funded research tends to favor its sponsors’ products.

This effect has been documented in research financed by chemical, pharmaceutical, surgical, food, tobacco, and, we have learned most recently, sugar companies.

In the 1960s, the sugar industry secretly paid scientists to minimize the role sugar plays in causing heart disease and blame saturated fat instead, according to a study published in the September issue of JAMA Internal Medicine.

For decades, industry-funded research helped tobacco companies block regulations by undermining evidence that cigarettes kill. Precisely because of the very real risk of bias, prestigious scientific journals have long required researchers to disclose their sources of support. Journalists in pursuit of transparency have good reason to ask, “Who funded it?”

President Eisenhower's farewell address specifically pointed to the risks of "big science" and this warning is even more relevant today I believe than when made:

Eisenhower’s Farewell Address. Reading copy of the speech [DDE’s Papers as President, Speech Series, Box 38, Final TV Talk (1); NAID #594599]. Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, Museum and Presidential Home, Abilene Kansas. Accessed October 6, 2015. Available: http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/research/online_documents/farewell_address/Reading_Copy.pdf

https://majiasblog.blogspot.com/2019/05/how-label-of-propaganda-is-used-by-nyt.html

https://majiasblog.blogspot.com/2017/11/radiation-is-safe-meme.html

https://majiasblog.blogspot.com/2016/05/false-narratives-in-media-echo-chambers.html