[T]here is the claim, explicit in the [British Medical Journal] Lobby Watch article, that researchers funded by the UK government are objective in the debate over alcohol advertising policy because they are ‘independent’, whereas researchers funded by the alcohol industry are not. Second, there is the claim that it is ‘established’ that alcohol advertising ‘encourages young people to drink alcohol sooner and in greater quantities’.
The effect of these two claims is to suggest to the public and policymakers that, first, the debate over the effects of alcohol advertising is over and, second, only those people funded by the alcohol industry question this reality.
Is this true? The idea that people whose research is funded by the taxpayer are independent, and therefore objective in their findings and policy prescriptions, is naive at best, disingenuous at worst. Public Choice theory explains that the interests of those who claim to represent the public are themselves conflicted and self-serving, and certainly neither independent nor objective.
This is most assuredly correct, and has far reaching implications for a variety of important research areas including climate science. Thus the IPCC has no problem citing as authorities groups such as the World Wildlife Fund, but would never be caught dead citing work by Cato or AEI. This is an intellectually untenable position, as the Sp!iked piece makes clear:
To simply reduce research to a question of funding avoids the hard question of the quality of the research itself. Rather than evaluating each piece of research on its individual merits, evidence which doesn’t fit what the public health community wants to hear is simply dismissed or ignored on the grounds that it is done and funded by the wrong people.
Public policy should not be decided based largely upon the perceived moral qualities of this or that researcher. It should be based upon the quality of the work itself.
End of story.
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