 swhx7Premium
join:2006-07-23
Elbonia | reply to xerxes3642
Re: I met a lawyer This is actually very common and notorious.
When private parties (corporations, or foundations that rely on corporate grants, etc.) fund research, they often retain a right to prohibit publication of results. And predictably, results that are unfavorable to the sponsors don't get published.
(This also happens in other areas, for example in Microsoft-funded comparisons with Linux, but obviously is of most concern in regard to human health.)
It has become such a scandal that there was even a bill in Congress a few years ago to require disclosure of all studies of health effects (it may have been limited to drug research). I don't know what happened with it.
This problem is part of the larger "cult of no evidence". If you are told that there is "no evidence" that something is harmful, it may seem convincing if you imagine that scientific research is impartially aimed at protecting the public. In reality, a large proportion of all research is funded by profit-oriented companies, and consequently no study aimed at finding harm from corporate products or services will ever be done unless it is required by law (and even then it may be repeated and the results not published until they look favorable).
Thus, the assurances about "no evidence" of harm are worthless until the conflicts of interest are removed from the research sector. |
