The Knowledge Machine: How Irrationality Created Modern Science

by Michael Strevens

Researchers funded by Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and other soda manufacturers have been five times more likely than others to find that there is no connection between drinking sugar-sweetened soda and obesity. Those funded by cigarette companies have been seven times more likely than others to find that secondhand smoke has no deleterious effect on health. And whereas non-industry-funded investigators of the efficacy of new drugs may find that the drugs do what they are supposed to do in about 80 percent of studies, investigators funded by the drugs’ creators find a positive result almost 100 percent of the time. It looks as though something is guiding the science above and beyond cold, hard facts, something that closely shadows cold, hard cash.