Deremensis comments on Open thread, 18-24 August 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Your latter reasons about the author and organization hiding information are great. I'm not trying to imply you don't have any basis upon which to be cautious. I was trying to say, though, that who funded a study or an organization does not make that organization's or study's findings wrong: often times, organizations like IFIC are not in a good position to turn any money down, as long as the money doesn't dictate their message. If you have good reason to think that the money is indeed dictating the message, then by all means, be skeptical.
I would note that there's very good reason for why the website might choose to keep the logos from being openly displayed: having the logos in a prominent position on the site would be very counter productive to the message of the site. If you are advocating healthy choices - and from reading the articles on the website, it does indeed seem like IFIC is advocating healthy food choices - pretty much the last thing you want to do is put the McDonalds or Pepsi logos on your front page, because it creates a confusing message. Companies like Pepsi and McDonalds still gain something from the exchange: they get to say in press releases and on their own websites that they fund health organizations, which is great PR for them, and it provides a foundation for those companies to claim that they do not encourage people to make unhealthy choices.
Unfortunately, with regards to scientific studies, the problem of funding is pretty widespread. I've had a pretty long term interest in ecology, and it's pretty well known that there's just about no way to do agricultural research without having some influence from Monsanto - and it's sometimes dangerous, career-wise, to publish results counter to Monsanto's party line.
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.