Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-31T23:32:43.207Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Commercial Interests and the Erosion of Trust in Science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Manuela Fernández Pinto
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The article examines the idea that commercialized science is a central factor in the erosion of trust in science. I claim that commercial interests have a negative impact on the trustworthiness of science by leading the public to mistakenly trust or distrust scientific results. I identify two mechanisms. First, commercial interests can directly encourage the production of consensus or dissent that is industry friendly but not epistemically reliable. Second, commercial interests support a narrow understanding of trustworthiness that allows the industry to claim that their research is reliable when it is not. A more fine-grained analysis is needed.

Type
Values, Policy, and Social Epistemology
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 87 , Issue 5: PSA 2018 - Proceedings of the 2018 biennial meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association. Part II Symposia Papers , December 2020 , pp. 1003 - 1013
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

†

The author would like to thank Sharon Crasnow, Kristen Intemann, and Inmaculada de Melo-Martín for organizing the PSA symposium Bridging the Gap between Science and the Public, as well as the organizers and participants of the 2018 PSA meeting in Seattle, especially Naomi Scheman, whose comments importantly contributed to the improvement of the article. Special thanks also to Sharon Crasnow and Hugh Lacey for their comments on previous drafts.

References

Auerbach, Judith, and Figert, Anne. 1995. “Women’s Health Research: Public Policy and Sociology.” Journal of Health and Social Behavior (Suppl.): 115–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bekelman, Justin, Li, Yan, and Gross, Cary. 2003. “Scope and Impact of Financial Conflicts of Interest in Biomedical Research.” JAMA 289:454–65.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Biddle, Justin. 2011. “Bringing the Marketplace into Science: On the Neoliberal Defense of the Commercialization of Scientific Research.” In Science in the Context of Application, ed. Carrier, M. and Nordmann, A., 245–69. Dordrecht: Springer.Google Scholar
Branson, Richard, Davis, Kenneth, and Butler, Karyn. 2007. “African Americans’ Participation in Clinical Research: Importance, Barriers, and Solutions.” American Journal of Surgery 193:32–39.10.1016/j.amjsurg.2005.11.007CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Carrier, Martin. 2011. “Knowledge, Politics, and Commerce: Science under the Pressure of Practice.” In Science in the Context of Application, ed. Carrier, M. and Nordmann, A., 11–30. Dordrecht: Springer.10.1007/978-90-481-9051-5_2CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dancy, Barbara, et al. 2004. “Community-Based Research: Barriers to Recruitment of African Americans.” Nursing Outlook 52 (2): 234–40.10.1016/j.outlook.2004.04.012CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
de Melo-Martín, Inmaculada, and Intemann, Kristen. 2009. “How Do Disclosure Policies Fail? Let Us Count the Ways.” Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology Journal 23 (6): 1638–42.Google ScholarPubMed
de Melo-Martín, Inmaculada, and Intemann, Kristen. 2018. The Fight against Doubt: How to Bridge the Gap between Scientists and the Public. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/oso/9780190869229.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elliott, Kevin. 2008. “Scientific Judgment and the Limits of Conflict-of-Interest Policies.” Accountability in Research 15 (1): 1–29.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Every-Palmer, Susanna, and Howick, Jeremy. 2014. “How Evidence-Based Medicine Is Failing due to Biased Trials and Selective Publication.” Journal of Evaluation of Clinical Practice 20:908–14.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fernández Pinto, Manuela. 2015. “Commercialization and the Limits of Well-Ordered Science.” Perspectives on Science 23 (2): 173–91.Google Scholar
Fernández Pinto, Manuela. 2017. “To Know or Better Not To: Agnotology and the Social Construction of Ignorance in Commercially Driven Research.” Science and Technology Studies 30 (2): 53–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fernández Pinto, Manuela. 2018. “Democratizing Strategies for Industry-Funded Medical Research: A Cautionary Tale.” Philosophy of Science 85 (5): 882–94.10.1086/699720CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fernández Pinto, Manuela. 2019. “Doubly Disadvantaged: On Recruitment of Diverse Subjects for Clinical Trials in Latin America.” Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology and Society 2 (1): 391–407.Google Scholar
Fournier, Jay, et al. 2010. “Antidepressant Drug Effects and Depression Severity: A Patient-Level Meta-analysis.” JAMA 303 (1): 47–53.10.1001/jama.2009.1943CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gauchat, Gordon. 2012. “Politicization of Science in the Public Sphere: A Study of Public Trust in the United States, 1974 to 2010.” American Sociological Review 77 (2): 167–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldacre, Ben. 2012. Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients. New York: Faber & Faber.Google Scholar
Higgins, Julian, et al. 2011. “The Cochrane Collaboration’s Tool for Assessing Risk of Bias in Randomised Trials.” British Medical Journal 343: d5928.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ioannidis, John. 2008. “Effectiveness of Antidepressants: An Evidence Myth Constructed from a Thousand Randomized Trials?” Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine 3 (14): 1–9.10.1186/1747-5341-3-14CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Irzik, Gürol. 2010. “Why Should Philosophers of Science Pay Attention to the Commercialization of Academic Science?” In Epsa Epistemology and Methodology of Science, ed. Dorato, M. and Suàrez, M., 129–38. Dordrecht: Springer.Google Scholar
Jukola, Saana. 2016. “The Commercialization of Research and the Quest for the Objectivity of Science.” Foundations of Science 21 (1): 89–103.10.1007/s10699-014-9377-8CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kirsch, Irving, et al. 2008. “Initial Severity and Antidepressant Benefits: A Meta-analysis of Data Submitted to the Food and Drug Administration.” PLoS Medicine 5 (2): e45.10.1371/journal.pmed.0050045CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lau, Joseph, et al. 2006. “The Case of the Misleading Funnel Plot.” British Medical Journal 333:597–600.10.1136/bmj.333.7568.597CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lexchin, Joel, Bero, Lisa A., Djulbegovic, Benjamin, and Clark, Otavio. 2003. “Pharmaceutical Industry Sponsorship and Research Outcome and Quality: Systematic Review.” British Medical Journal 326 (7400): 1167–70.10.1136/bmj.326.7400.1167CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Liu, Katherine A., and DiPietro Mager, Natalie A.. 2016. “Women’s Involvement in Clinical Trials: Historical Perspective and Future Implications.” Pharmacy Practice 14 (1): 708. https://doi.org/10.18549/PharmPract.2016.01.708.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lundh, Andreas, Lexchin, Joel, Mintzes, Barbara, Schroll, Jeppe B., and Bero, Lisa. 2017. “Industry Sponsorship and Research Outcome.” Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, no. 2, art. MR000033. https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.MR000033.pub3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Master, Zubin, and Resnik, David. 2013. “Hype and Public Trust in Science.” Science and Engineering Ethics 19:321–35.10.1007/s11948-011-9327-6CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Michaels, David. 2008. Doubt Is Their Product: How Industry’s Assault on Science Threatens Your Health. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Mirowski, Philip. 2013. Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste: How Neoliberalism Survived the Financial Meltdown. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Oreskes, Naomi, and Conway, Erik M.. 2010. Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming. New York: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Proctor, Robert. 2012. Golden Holocaust: Origins of the Cigarette Catastrophe and the Case for Abolition. Berkeley: University of California Press.10.1525/9780520950436CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Resnik, David B. 2011. “Scientific Research and the Public Trust.” Science and Engineering Ethics 17:399–409.10.1007/s11948-010-9210-xCrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Resnik, David B.. 2015. “Institutional Conflicts of Interest in Academic Research.” Science and Engineering Ethics 25 (6): 1661–69.Google ScholarPubMed
Scheman, Naomi. 2015. “Epistemology Resuscitated: Objectivity as Trustworthiness.” In Shifting Ground: Knowledge and Reality, Transgression and Trustworthiness. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Sismondo, Sergio. 2008. “Pharmaceutical Company Funding and Its Consequences: A Qualitative Systematic Review.” Contemporary Clinical Trials 29 (2): 109–13.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sismondo, Sergio. 2009. “Ghost in the Machine: Publication Planning in the Medical Sciences.” Social Studies of Science 39 (2): 171–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomas, Stephen, and Quinn, Sandra C.. 1991. “The Tuskegee Syphilis Study, 1932 to 1972: Implications for HIV Education and AIDS Risk Education Programs in the Black Community.” American Journal of Public Health 81 (11): 1498–505.10.2105/AJPH.81.11.1498CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Turner, Erik, Matthews, Annette M., Linardatos, Eftihia, Tell, Robert A., and Rosenthal, Robert. 2008. “Selective Publication of Antidepressant Trials and Its Influence on Apparent Efficacy.” New England Journal of Medicine 358 (3): 252–60.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed