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> One thing is clear: the food industry keeps funding research today — with dire consequences. This article makes it sound like the _majority_ of research fund

> One thing is clear: the food industry keeps funding research today — with dire consequences. This article makes it sound like the _majority_ of research funding is coming from industry, very little from government. Maybe this exacerbates focus on needing to "succeed" in research, in order to keep justifying funding from profit motivated sources. It seems like everyone is so focused on producing "successful" research, that we just try to fit experiments into to a positive light, and toss out data that just didn't really "work". Meanwhile, there's probably a lot of data that just goes unpublished and never shared, and thus, we remain largely ignorant of what's actually being discovered. Part of me still feels like it's more of a just broader cultural problem, and simply shifting who's funding things isn't going to help. Not sure if there's any effort to simply provide a way of sharing experimental data, i.e., something like "open source licensing" for experimental data, etc, where sharing means you don't get screwed by someone else.

erichocean 8y ago
> This article makes it sound like the _majority_ of research funding is coming from industry, very little from government. Your implication that, were the research funded by government (or some other non-profit entity), it would somehow be "better" is false. The source of the funding in all cases influences the allowed results, and determines the likelihood of future follow-on funding. If anything, government (at least in the US) is responsible for some truly harmful dietary advice, and funds researchers who support its policy positions.
- mr_tristan 8y ago
  That was the article's implication, which I'm not totally convinced of either. My sense is that the main problem is still the focus on "positive" research results, and a complete lack of sharing of anything that wasn't successful. "That research doesn't hold up in this case" isn't really a statement anyone seems to publish much. _Maybe_ that's exacerbated by private funding, though I think it's just generally a cultural problem within the scientific community. Perhaps a public source of funding would enable the opening up and sharing of "negative" research results, of which I think there is considerably more data for. But, given that universities haven't really done that at all to my knowledge, I'm skeptical of that as well. The last paragraphs of this article are what struck me as "anti private funding".

erichocean 8y ago

> This article makes it sound like the _majority_ of research funding is coming from industry, very little from government. Your implication that, were the research funded by government (or some other non-profit entity), it would somehow be "better" is false. The source of the funding in all cases influences the allowed results, and determines the likelihood of future follow-on funding. If anything, government (at least in the US) is responsible for some truly harmful dietary advice, and funds researchers who support its policy positions.

mr_tristan 8y ago
That was the article's implication, which I'm not totally convinced of either. My sense is that the main problem is still the focus on "positive" research results, and a complete lack of sharing of anything that wasn't successful. "That research doesn't hold up in this case" isn't really a statement anyone seems to publish much. _Maybe_ that's exacerbated by private funding, though I think it's just generally a cultural problem within the scientific community. Perhaps a public source of funding would enable the opening up and sharing of "negative" research results, of which I think there is considerably more data for. But, given that universities haven't really done that at all to my knowledge, I'm skeptical of that as well. The last paragraphs of this article are what struck me as "anti private funding".