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LIT-744: Experimentation by Industrial Selection

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StatusActive — read 2026-10-05 (NOTE-574): in full, from the publisher's PDF in ANU Open Research, the co-author's institutional repository, marked open access. Worth reading for a mechanism by which an outside funder biases a scientific community without corrupting anyone: given methodological diversity, a merit-based system and turnover, funding researchers whose methods already favour a product makes them more productive and more likely to train newcomers. An independent funder helps only if it discounts industry-funded work; funding on merit alone makes things worse. Limits: one historical case and a 20-agent simulation at a few parameter settings; run counts and network are not reported, and robustness to network structure rests on a footnote.
Tagsphilosophy-of-science, epistemology, network-science
Cited as “paper” byNOTE-574 — Experimentation by Industrial Selection
Cited as “source” byTHEORY-1174 — Industry can bias a scientific community toward a worse treatment without corrupting any individual, by selectively funding researchers whose methods already favour its product, provided researchers differ in method and both influence and the training of newcomers follow productivity; an independent funder that discounts industry-funded work counteracts this, and one that funds on productivity alone makes it worse, THEORY-146 — In Holman and Bruner's bandit model of honest Bayesian researchers whose beliefs funding cannot touch, who differ in method and whose influence and training of newcomers follow productivity, industry funding of those whose methods already favour its drug lowers, in the runs their figures report, the share of the community on the better treatment, and has no effect without methodological diversity; at the one setting reported, an independent funder that counts industry-funded trials toward its merit threshold lowers that share further, and one that excludes them raises it

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Bennett Holman & Justin Bruner (2017), Philosophy of Science 84(5):1008–1019 — DOI-10.1086/694037

Key takeaways

  • The thesis (p. 1008). “Given methodological diversity and a merit-based system, industry funding can bias a community without corrupting any particular individual.”
  • The case (pp. 1010–1012). In the antiarrhythmic drug disaster, industry funded researchers who already measured efficacy by arrhythmia suppression, a quick surrogate endpoint, and cancelled Winkle’s contracts when he found deadly side effects. Morganroth and others “were not hacks”: their views were the same before and after funding. Their productivity made them influential, and their method became the community’s default.
  • The model (pp. 1012–1015). Zollman’s bandit model of network inquiry with three changes: agents differ in productivity, in methodological bias (their measured success rates are drawn around the true ones with variance σ²), and they leave and are replaced, newcomers inheriting a method in proportion to its holder’s productivity (a Moran process). Industry adds F trials a round to anyone whose method overstates the drug by more than T.
  • Results. More methodological diversity alone lowers the chance of converging on the better action. Industry funding lowers it further, and more so as F grows; without diversity, industrial selection “does not occur” (p. 1015).
  • Countermeasures (pp. 1016–1018). An independent funder that funds on productivity makes things worse, since industry-funded researchers qualify twice. One that ignores industry-funded trials when assessing merit improves the community. Integrity safeguards, even perfectly followed, do not address the effect.

Standing in the record

Filed on 2026-10-05 at the owner’s request, as a supplement to the essay on organizational will. It is the read substitute for the authors’ 2015 paper (LIT-751), whose repository copy is embargoed. It builds on the network-epistemology models the record holds: Zollman’s (LIT-724, LIT-735) and Rosenstock et al.’s (LIT-733). The account is THEORY-146.

It bears on the essay’s §8.2. A community can meet norms of open criticism, with dissenters at the conferences and regulators overseeing, and still be steered, because what is selected is methods, not opinions.

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