I’ve heard a lot about CocaCola, Marlboro and Oil companies “purchasing” or “commissioning” studies that only benefit them, and could barely pass as “true”.
How common is this and how does it work?
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It is relatively difficult to buy a credible study that’s actually false, because a credible study requires that you publish all the data, how you did the experiment, how you got the conclusion, and somebody else replicates it. If it’s false, you can’t actually do that so it’ll get caught eventually.
It’s relatively easy to publish a study that *looks true*, which isn’t the same thing. You can constrain the problem to a very narrow or unrealistic subset, or use unreasonable filters. You’ll get a technically correct conclusion that doesn’t really apply to the actual problem.
In both cases, this can be fodder for media reporting. The media will almost certainly not dive into the details and will just report the headline…this happens all the time and if you’re doing it to sway public opinion it can be really effective. The original “vaccines cause autism” study was an example of the former, the original cold fusion fiasco was an example of the latter.
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