• p3n
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    41 month ago

    There is no such thing as an impartial sponsor; some are more obviously biased than others, but the belief in a fictitious impartiality is part of the problem. It shouldn’t take a meta-study for people to see am obvious conflict of interest.

    I’m biased. You are biased. Everyone is biased.

    • @i_love_FFT@jlai.lu
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      81 month ago

      What if the sponsor is the blanket university funding for a professor’s research? It may have some bias, but there is no steak in the actual result.

      I expect to see “these results call for more research on the topic”, but that’s pretty much it.

      • @lmmarsano@lemmynsfw.com
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        41 month ago

        steak

        stake?

        Accepting funding from sponsors responsible for pollution & publishing environmental toxicology studies that disfavor those sponsors was pretty common at the university medical office where I worked.

      • p3n
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        11 month ago

        I guess I didn’t communicate my point effectively. I wasn’t trying to nitpick semantics. I was trying to say that people don’t think critically because they assume impartiality.

        If the first thing people did when they looked at a study was to ask what possible biases or conflicts of interest the sponsors have, then conducting a meta-study concluding that biased studies are biased wouldn’t be news to anyone.