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QUESTION-315: Does industrial selection, industry funding of researchers whose methods already favour its product, produce industry-favourable consensus in real research fields through those researchers' productivity and their training of newcomers, rather than through funded researchers changing their methods or results, and does an independent funder that discounts industry-funded work counteract it?

2 min read

Properties4
StatusOpen
Tagsphilosophy-of-science, epistemology, network-science
Linedistributed-agency
Cited as “bears on” 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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Why it is a question

THEORY-146 holds what Holman and Bruner’s bandit model shows: honest Bayesian researchers who differ in method, whose influence and training of newcomers follow productivity, drift toward a worse treatment when industry funds those whose methods already favour it, though funding changes no one’s beliefs. The paper’s evidence beyond the model is one historical case, the antiarrhythmic drug disaster, read from a secondary history. Whether real research fields reach industry-favourable consensus by this route, or mainly by funded researchers changing their methods or results, is open. It is one candidate answer to QUESTION-047’s question of which community-level mechanisms set what a community of sound inquirers comes to believe.

What would count as an answer

Evidence from real research fields rather than models. Studies that trace methods through funding and training lineages, showing that researchers’ methods were the same before and after industry funding, that funded researchers trained more of the next generation, and that a field’s share of industry-favourable methods grew by that route. Also comparisons of funders whose merit assessments do or do not count industry-funded work. The account is in trouble if industry-favourable consensus in such fields arises mainly through funded individuals changing their methods or results. More simulations of the same model family, and further case histories read through the model, cannot settle it.

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