6 ms·

I work for a biotech company that publishes peer-reviewed science. We use scientific publishing for marketing purposes, to influence the regulatory environment

I work for a biotech company that publishes peer-reviewed science. We use scientific publishing for marketing purposes, to influence the regulatory environment in our favor, and to look better than our competitors. Some of it is done to a very high standard. But in general, doing science with such predefined strategic objectives results in a corpus of scientific output that is hard to interpret. Essentially this sort of stuff pollutes the scientific literature and we should be ashamed that as a society we can't even let the technical content of the scientific literature be free from corporate interests.

skookumchuck 8y ago
> free from corporate interests That won't help. All research is subject to the bias of the researchers. For example, many researchers have been caught fabricating results so they'll get famous. And just because someone is being funded by the government hardly means the government doesn't have a biased interest in the result. Everyone running the government has an agenda that isn't exactly altruistic.
- hnnh44 8y ago
  This is funny. Just a while back there was an article posted about how studies SHOULD start out with defined objectives. The argument was that academics are so desperate to publish positive results that they'll draw any positive conclusion, even if it wasn't what the study started out trying to accomplish.
  - tome 8y ago
    Indeed. What you are describing is p-hacking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_dredging https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_dredging
    - hnnh44 8y ago
      Thank you! I didn't know there was a term for it.
circlefavshape 8y ago
Are you directly involved in this? If so - how do you justify it to yourself? (if not then ignore the question - I'm just curious about the mindset of people who do ethically-questionable work)
semi-extrinsic 8y ago
I think in the current research climate, you can replace "biotech company" with "university department" and most of your statements still hold true. Many purely academic studies are done with predefined strategic objectives of advancing one's own prestige, only publishing positive results that fit "your narrative", and indeed polluting the literature with results that are at best incremental improvements, at worst regressions made up to look like improvements.
godelmachine 8y ago
Second that

skookumchuck 8y ago

> free from corporate interests That won't help. All research is subject to the bias of the researchers. For example, many researchers have been caught fabricating results so they'll get famous. And just because someone is being funded by the government hardly means the government doesn't have a biased interest in the result. Everyone running the government has an agenda that isn't exactly altruistic.

hnnh44 8y ago
This is funny. Just a while back there was an article posted about how studies SHOULD start out with defined objectives. The argument was that academics are so desperate to publish positive results that they'll draw any positive conclusion, even if it wasn't what the study started out trying to accomplish.
- tome 8y ago
  Indeed. What you are describing is p-hacking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_dredging https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_dredging
  - hnnh44 8y ago
    Thank you! I didn't know there was a term for it.

circlefavshape 8y ago

Are you directly involved in this? If so - how do you justify it to yourself? (if not then ignore the question - I'm just curious about the mindset of people who do ethically-questionable work)

semi-extrinsic 8y ago

I think in the current research climate, you can replace "biotech company" with "university department" and most of your statements still hold true. Many purely academic studies are done with predefined strategic objectives of advancing one's own prestige, only publishing positive results that fit "your narrative", and indeed polluting the literature with results that are at best incremental improvements, at worst regressions made up to look like improvements.

godelmachine 8y ago

Second that