ChristianKl comments on Open thread, 18-24 August 2014 - Less Wrong
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Comments (79)
It doesn't make them wrong but it makes them more likely to be wrong. The effect is well established by scientific papers. There are many ways to bias a study that you can't trace by reading a paper.
It doesn't make sense to say look at the science, and ignore the science that clearly establishes that funding sources bias scientific papers.
You don't need to dictate a message to encourage an organisation to argue position that are in line with your interests if you are clear about your interest and give them money. Corruption works quite well without direct dictates.
If you look at the website it's interesting to see the hoops they put up to get people to see the funding sources. The first step is to find an click the about button. There you get the paragraph:
It misleading. It speaks about relationship with professional, when in fact the organisation has relationships with companies that pay the majority of it's budget.
If you want to know more, you can click "Partner and sponsors". That brings you to a black and white PDF page. There no reason avoid having normal html page that list the "Partner and sponsors" and uses the logos unless you want to design the website in a way that makes it harder for the user to find out the funding sources.
Another interesting part of the website is an article about beef. It reads like a beef commercial:
Of course McDonalds wants people to eat beef. In the mainstream nutrition community there a general belief that the average American eats too much red meat. Given that background saying "don't stress about the choices you make about beef consumption" is problematic.
Of course there are paleo people who think that eating red meat is quite alright, but it's still highly suspicious for the authors of the website manage to argue the position that it's funders would want it to argue. The paleo people wouldn't advocate milk as a good choice.