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A soda company sponsoring nutrition research. An oil conglomerate helping fund a climate-related research meeting. Does the public care who's paying for science?
In a word, yes. When industry funds science, credibility suffers. And this does not bode well for the types of public-private research partnerships that appear to be becoming more prevalent as government funding for research and development lags.
The recurring topic of conflict of interest has made headlines in recent weeks. The National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine has revised its conflict of interest guidelines following questions about whether members of a recent expert panel on GMOs had industry ties or other financial conflicts that were not disclosed in the panel's final report.
Our own recent research speaks to how hard it may be for the public to see research as useful when produced with an industry partner, even when that company is just one of several collaborators.
The study found that participants distrusted any research coming from companies, even when produced by a diverse array of companies or in partnership with the government or non-corporate parties. Is this a real threat to science, as government funding of research declines?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by kaszz on Monday May 08 2017, @09:28PM
When integrity suffers there's some leeway before the response unmercifully comes back. People with wisdom and integrity can see the writing in the feature and avoid bad choices for the the long term benefit. The MBA style of people usually leads down to fraud.
What's needed is people like Hyman G. Rickover (1900-1986) that Rear Admiral Earle Mills said this about him "not too easy to get along with" and "not too popular," but in his judgment Rickover was the man whom the Navy could depend on "no matter what opposition he might encounter, once he was convinced of the potentialities of the atomic submarine." And no nuclear reactor accidents up to at least 2003 perhaps proves what personal character that is required.
Same goes for science. Once you start doing the result massaging, it's all downhill..