I think it is very important to find out two things
about any study----------
-
Who is responsible for the study…
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Who paid for the study…
This should no longer be private…even then people will cheat…is this cynical or realistic…
No, it’s not cynical, studies are made all the time only because it gives the financers intentions an air objectivity and authority.
But it won’t matter a lot, cause most people generally can’t be bothered to read more than the conclusion, or at best the summary of any study… if they read anything of it at all. And the sceptics will be sceptic about the studies regardless.
i guess you are right…people believewht they want to believe…and most people dont even get what is up…
The three word phrase ‘Tobacco Industry Research’ should set aside all qualms you may have about expecting such answers. Scare quotes should go around ‘research’ in that phrase.
However the few people who gave a shit would have a lot more ability to sway others if they could point out the financers of research. People are lazy, but often really quite cynical, even in good ways, when the information is right in front of them.
Those are normally included in studies.
Well, real studies.
X—who pays for a study is not that easy to find out…
and what is a real study…
Yeah it is. The funding source should be at the end of the study. If it isn’t, then it isn’t a real study.
can you give me a real example…
Go to Pubmed. Read any study on that database. At the end, you will see where the funding comes from and whether there are any potential conflicts of interest. You’ll find the same stuff in other fields (such as sociology) but I’m less familiar with where one would find those articles. Better still, you can check out the CV of the authors (the funding author, the last one should have their CV on-line).
the thread is really about who is paying for the study…how often do you look at this…how important is this…
it’s always extremely important to look for who funded any study and everyone should use that knowledge as a part of their critical thinking processes–especially when it comes to pharmacology. Will a study of painkillers, for example, funded by a manufacturer of painkillers, ever show any negative results for the painkiller manufacturer who’s funded the study?
Pharmacology is a highly competitive business. The question, to me, is does the FDA use the funded studies in its final approval of a new drug? I’d hope not; and yet, does it have its own money (tax money) to fund thorough research into a new drug?
I look at it all the time, it is very important. Duh. Saying it is hard to find out who is funding a study is like saying it is hard to use a search engine.
wait a minute X…it is not that easy…how about the soft money and the tendency to cover over some of the money…i am sure you know what i am talking about…
do you actually feel you are getting the honest info from disclosure statements…
What do you mean by “soft money” in this case? That happens in politics but it is very hard to do something like that in research. Show me a real study and I can tell you how it was funded pretty quickly.
Just a point - even if few read studies, journalists looking for something to fill space read them, or “article writers” read them and write articles about them that make it into the popular press, including major dailies, weeklies, monthlies and large “reputable” websites like MSN and Yahoo. These are often badly written by people who do not know much about the subject, and they are written hastily, and edited even more hastily, if at all. You can’t check the funding source of these studies, directly, because these articles don’t always give you enough information to go on - “Columbia Researchers Discover…” is sometimes all you get.
It’s a problem, but the OP is correct - none of them are worth a damn until you know who paid for them.
I agree that science journalism is often woefully inadequate, a problem I’ve touched on before. But it really isn’t too hard to follow up on these things in most cases.
Well, it may not be difficult by your scholarly standards, Xun. But most people would find it onerous.