Socialized (junk) science: a reprise
Returning to an oft-posted theme -- that health and nutrition activists' efforts to demonize all science not funded by (friendly) government bureaucrats leads to politically-correct junk science -- I thought readers might find of interest an op ed piece from earlier this week in the Financial Post , part of the National Post, one of Canda's largest papers.
Author Dr. Beth Whelan, president of NYC-based American Council for Science and Health, decries "the witch hunt against corporate funding of research...." pointing out several recent example of how Health Canada has embraced junk science in order to address alleged health threats. She explains that the
latest unscientific legislation (was) made possible in part by a dangerous prevailing assumption: namely, that anti-corporate claims are by definition "good science" while claims made in defence of industry or new technology - by anyone with the slightest ties to industry - are by definition "suspect science."
She continues:
Ironically, consumers end up paying higher prices as a result of such ostensibly consumer-protecting measures (as products need to be replaced or reformulated) or even end up using less-safe replacement products, such as old-fashioned glass bottles.
Because the insidious de-legitimizing has progressed so far, she laments:
CSPI and others, ignoring decades of productive collaboration between industry and science, can now delegitimize any scientist or scientific conclusion with which they disagree by showing that the scientist or research in question is tied to corporate money.
Our beef is the other side of this coin, namely that the converse of uncritically rejecting any privately-funded research as biased is the uncritical acceptance of publicly-funded research as immune from bias since its sponsors are public agencies. We've seen too many examples of government cooking the books and funding scientists who refuse to divulge their data for independent expert verification.
Economists well understand the perverse incentives that apply when government insists on owning the means of production. Will the public -- and public health practioners themselves -- recognize the perverse incentives inherent in the uncritical acceptance of junk science based on the supposedly-untainted funding from public agencies?
