Laurie David, Global warming crusader, is very right to challenge professors that take corporate contributions. Her Huffington Post post entitled A Conflict of Interest in the Halls of Academia suggests that taking money from companies that benefit from weaker environmental regulations may bias the science. Good point, and worth follow up.
But she fails to point out a similar problem, but also one that should be of great concern to the clear minded. This is the fact that grant funding from the US Government may also have political strings attached. They are not as direct but funding does relate to the emphasis, direction, and scale of research.
It’s obvious (and appropriate) that big money grants for research on potentially catastrophic things is far more likely to go through, than, say, a grant to fund research into the basket weaving habits of pliocene hominids.
This is hugely important because bias can easily creep into this equation in the form of exaggerating the peril of the topic under scrutiny – not so much in the peer reviewed studies which are subjected to close methodological scrutiny – but in the quotes of scientists and the lack of concern by scientists when the popular press spouts alarmist nonsense about their research often interpreting anecdotal observations associated with the science or reviews of the science by non-scientists as part of the research.
I’m actually looking for a way to test this hypothesis scientifically. Something along the lines of “scientists describe their own research topics as more life threatening than their own research suggests.”
Common sense suggests it is going on around us all the time, especially now with the dramatic difference between the actual science aboout Global Warming that suggests it’s a bad thing but unlikely to be catastrophic versus the popular alarmist concerns that suggest the tipping point is here and planetary peril is paramount.
If planetary health is at the top of your agenda the answer to the clear minded is obvious:
* Invest our tax money and time heavily in current catastrophic things like Malaria, AIDs, and Poverty. This type of work clearly has the highest ROI by any reasonable human measure.
* Decrease massive military spending in favor of infrastructure spending here and in developing nations and invest heavily in marketing the USA as helping and not crusading.
* Invest in Global warming remediation schemes that have a high ROI but don’t buy into all the catastrophe mongering going on. It’s deflecting attention from actual catastrophic conditions we affluent type first world people tend to simply … ignore.
Joe Duck 