[WikiEN-l] Re: Neutrality and the "majority" view

[Sheldon Rampton]

Geoff Burlin wrote:

>Frankly, I feel that the argument that corporations or businesses buy
>experts to support their POV all of the time has gotten worn to being
>threadbare. No inteligent professional is going to sell her/his credibility
>for a paycheck; what they are going to do is find an employer whose POV
>most matches their own. Much in the fashion no one who has doubts about the
>infallibility of the Pope will become a Jesuit. To ignore this is to
>promote an _ad hominem_ attack in disguise.

It's true that funding doesn't usually _create_ bias, as Geoff says. 
Mostly what it does is _select_ and _amplify_ bias. However, that's 
bad enough. A good example is the case of fen-phen, the diet drug 
that was taken off the market after it was linked to heart valve 
damage and other serious health problems in people who took it. 
Wyeth-Ayerst marketed fen-phen through a company called Excerpta 
Medica, which got paid $20,000 for each "scientific paper" that it 
placed in medical journals promoting the drug. Excerpta then hired 
ghostwriters to write the papers, and after they were written paid 
respected university professors $1,000 to "edit" the articles prior 
to publication. When the articles appeared in medical journals, the 
name-brand professors were the ones listed as the authors of the 
studies, and the ghostwriters' names didn't appear. After 
Wyeth-Ayerst got sued by people whose health had been destroyed by 
the drug, some of the name-brand professors got called as witnesses, 
and in court they said that they didn't even know Wyeth-Ayerst was 
paying for the studies; they thought they were simply being hired to 
do some light editing on the side for Excerpta. They didn't see 
themselves as "selling their credibility for a paycheck," but they 
obviously didn't give much scrutiny to the articles either, yet they 
didn't mind having their names appear as lead authors.

For even more egregious examples where "intelligent professionals" 
clearly _did_ sell their credibility for a paycheck, look at the 
tobacco industry's activities, which are extensive and notorious. In 
one of my books, I wrote about the case of Gary Huber, who "built a 
career for himself as one of the contrarian scientists who regularly 
disputed the growing body of scientific evidence about tobacco's 
deadly effects. Over the years, he received more than $7 million in 
tobacco industry research funding, and although his reputation as a 
'tobacco whore' cost him the nrespect of friends and colleagues, in 
industry circles he was something of a star, hobnobbing with top 
executives, fishing with senior attorneys and participating in legal 
strategy sessions."

After my co-author and I submitted that passage to our editor, he 
objected that we shouldn't be calling the guy a "tobacco whore" and 
advised us to find a more polite phrase. We responded by sending him 
documents in which Huber himself talks about his work for the 
industry. A few years ago he had a change of heart and now testifies 
as an expert witness _against_ the industry in tobacco liability 
lawsuits. When asked the reasons for his change of heart, he pointed 
to two events: the death of his own father from tobacco-related 
cancer, and the advice of his daughter to dissociate himself from the 
tobacco industry. Her exact words were, "Dad, you've got to be 
careful. These guys are pimping you."

We pointed out to our editor that if the guy's own daughter thought 
he was being "pimped" by the tobacco industry, we were certainly 
justified in saying he had a reputation as a tobacco "whore." The 
editor agreed, and the passage was published as we originally wrote 
it.

I think the point Geoff is trying to make is that someone's source of 
research funding isn't in and of itself proof that their research is 
invalid. If that's his point, I agree with it. However, there is 
plenty of evidence showing that research funding correlates 
positively with bias, and for that reason funding should always be 
publicly disclosed.
-- 
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|  Sheldon Rampton
|  Editor, PR Watch (www.prwatch.org)
|  Author of books including:
|     Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
|     Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
|     Mad Cow USA
|     Trust Us, We're Experts
|     Weapons of Mass Deception
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