The issue Spencer brings up is a problem whether the funding is private or public. Just as businesses fund studies that support their goals, government agencies fund studies that justify the need for their services and expansion of their powers and budgets. In fact, there's a whole field of study variously called "public choice economics" and "the new institutional economics" that study these and related issues.
On a related note, there is certainly a lot of self-selection bias in what fields of study people choose to enter. For just one example, it isn't too difficult to believe that of the pool of people talented and interested in statistics, those who choose to enter public health or epidemiology might be more likely to want research that justifies expansion of public health and environmental agencies' regulatory powers and this might affect the research questions they ask, the ways they design and select their statistical models, and what results they choose to include and exclude from publications. AFAIK, there is substantial evidence that researchers, espeically in non-experimental studies, tend to get results they "expect" or "hope" to find, even if they feel no conscious bias. This is likely one of the reasons observational studies are so frequently overturned by randomized controlled trials. RCT's provide less room for confirmation bias to rear its ugly head. Joel -----Original Message----- From: r-help-boun...@r-project.org [mailto:r-help-boun...@r-project.org] On Behalf Of Spencer Graves Sent: Thursday, January 06, 2011 9:13 PM To: Carl Witthoft Cc: r-help@r-project.org Subject: Re: [R] Waaaayy off topic...Statistical methods, pub bias, scientific validity > A more insidious problem, that may not affect the work of Jonah Lehrer, >is political corruption in the way research is funded, with less public and more private funding of research (http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/ev.php-URL_ID=21052&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&U RL_SECTION=201.html). ...as private funding replaces tax money for basic science, we must expect an increase in research results that match the needs of the funding agency while degrading the quality of published research. This produces more research that can not be replicated -- effects that get smaller upon replication. (My wife and I routinely avoid certain therapies recommended by physicians, because the physicians get much of their information on recent drugs from the pharmaceuticals, who have a vested interest in presenting their products in the most positive light.) Spencer On 1/6/2011 2:39 PM, Carl Witthoft wrote: > The next week's New Yorker has some decent rebuttal letters. The case > is hardly as clear-cut as the author would like to believe. > > Carl > > ______________________________________________ > R-help@r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide > http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. > ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
