HN isn't a journal and so academic sources of evidence really are overkill. However, I'll throw you a bone. Go to your favorite major journal and start looking at the "conflicts of interest" and "grants" section.
Once you take money from someone (except for NIST, in my experience) you're basically beholden to try your hardest to get the results they're looking for. Some scientists are moral enough to still return bad results. A lot of scientists aren't. There's a lot of garbage out there, and the worse the journal, the more garbage it gets. Famously, Phillip Morris studies "passed" the scrutiny of several major journals. It's amazing what greasing a few palms will get you.
"HN isn't a journal and so academic sources of evidence really are overkill"
I disagee, you should backup your accusations or statements (unless widly accepted) with some reputable source. This person claimed that science was bought and paid for. Did they mean all of it? Or most? That's an insane accusation that requires evidence.
"Go to your favorite major journal and start looking at the "conflicts of interest" and "grants" section.
Once you take money from someone (except for NIST, in my experience) you're basically beholden to try your hardest to get the results they're looking for"
This doesn't mean people falsely data. You're simply providing motive.
Everyone wants money, you are using greed to then claim mass fraud in science
Is it really that insane of an accusation? This is how almost everything in the world works.
This isn’t only about greed either. People want their research published for reasons other than greed. For example, they want to move up in their career or achieve recognition.
After looking at a lot of medical studies related to COVID during the last couple years, I have seen first hand how biased and inaccurate many of them are. Some of these studies are even mentioned in major news outlet despite their obvious flaws when you actually begin to scrutinize them. Think big pharma providing research grants for studies that conclude their products are effective.
The OP never said that people falsify data as a result of receiving grants from interested parties. They often don’t have to. They can simply design the experiment in a way that doesn’t account for specific variables or behaviors then use the resulting data to reach a specific conclusion.
I remember seeing an article related to AI research on HN a little while ago that somewhat explained this problem. The grant money all goes to people researching deep neural networks which creates a reinforcing feedback loop. Since all the money goes to one branch of research, it creates very few opportunities to research competing ideas. I believe it was this one:
Most declare no conflicts of interest. One author of one paper seems to have started a company based on similar technology: potentially a bias, but also potentially putting one's money where their mouth is. One other author lists some consulting work for a few companies.
As for grants, I doubt people are bending their results to appease the NSF or NIH. There's certainly groupthink in what gets funded. We're still throwing money down the ABeta-for-Alzhemier's hole, for example. That eventually shapes what topics get published, but maybe not the specific results. The recent Abeta articles are pretty negative, for example.
