this post was submitted on 25 May 2024
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The part which annoys me is about intentions.
Sure, lobby groups do pay off some people with a PhD to lie for them (Patrick Moore), that's not up for debate.
But to imply that this is the norm is just ignorant of how research is conducted.
Most scientists are either employed by a company, working towards a very specific, non contentious goal (like developing cold fusion), or are involved in research at a university, paid for in grants by their government to research whatever has been approved as worthy of investigation.
Nobody is pressuring these researchers to find evidence to support any particular agenda, the chips land where they fall. There's no fat cat smoking a cigar telling the climate science team at their local university that they need to find more evidence to crash the petrol stocks so they can sell more solar panels.
Nobody? There are quite a few counter examples. Cigarette and fossil fuel companies have done this quite a lot.
Isn't the sugar industry responsible for everyone thinking fat is the main cause of heart attacks instead of sugar?
There is no need to actually bribe researchers. IT is much more effective to find some that happen to already be in your favor and boost their signal.
Say that out of 100 scientists of the relevant field, 90 think your product is toxic, two think your product is perfectly safe, and the remaining eight think that the evidence is not strong and/or significant enough to determine the product's danger. Because as much as we've wished science to be clear-cut and deterministic, and as much as the scientific method tries to root it out, human's opinions and prejudices will always have some effect. Maybe after many decades science will reach a (near) 100% consensus - but your product is still new, so disagreement can still be found.
You can try to bribe these 98 scientists to say that your product is safe, but that's a risky move because even if a handful of them has some conscious they can go public with it and you'll have to deal with bad PR. So instead, you reach out to the two scientists that already think that it is safe. You fund their research, so that they can publish more papers. You send them to conferences all around the world, so that they can talk to other scientists and to journalists and spread their opinion on your product. You get your marketing/PR/social media teams to increase the reach of their publications.
These two scientists are not being "pressured" - they can still honestly claim that their belief in your product is not a result of the money you spend on them, and that will be true. The thing that is a result of the money you spend on them is their impact. These 90 scientists that warn against your product can't conduct as many researches, because they need to find funding for these researches themselves. They can't go to as many conferences, because they don't have anyone working their connections to get them invited (and to pay for their flight tickets). They don't have professional promoters advertising their findings.
So even though only two scientists support you while 90 oppose you, these two scientists have - thanks to your money - more impact on the public opinion than these 90.
All without any scientist having to utter a single lie.