Item

Turning science into junk

O'Brien, Rita L.
Date
2002
Type
Thesis
Fields of Research
Abstract
If the discrepancies that exist between the findings of several studies cannot be resolved, council officers must decide on how much weight should be given to conflicting results. Officers often work within fairly strict timeframes and may need to rely upon the abstracts and conclusions of studies when making resource management decisions. A lack of strength or apparent inconsistency, however, are not necessarily arguments against cause and effect as the methods and resulting data may be sufficiently valid to produce useful information. The objective of this report was firstly to review the literature documenting the tobacco industry's response to the growing body of evidence linking its product with lung cancer and secondly, to determine whether any parallels could be drawn between itself and the telecommunications industry. In addition, the report was to determine whether the source of the funding for research has any effect upon the strength, nature and clarity of its conclusions. The number of articles reviewed in this report was limited (N = 13). The findings suggest that the discrepancy between the strength, nature and clarity of an article's conclusion is attributable to the source of funding for the research. 78% of the articles concluded that using a cellular phone was not harmful. 60% of these were sponsored by the telecommunications industry, 30% failed to disclose the source of funding for their research, and 10% received public funding. The attitude of the telecommunications industry appears to be consistent with that which was displayed by the tobacco industry in its research into the health effects associated with tobacco use. This is consistent with several investigators who have found that research that acknowledges sponsorship from industry tends to draw pro-industry conclusions (Bames and Bero, 1998).
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