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- Title
Industry-funded research and bias in food science.
- Authors
Rao, Anita
- Abstract
Is industry-funded scientific research likely to be biased towards finding positive results? Is industry more likely to work on topics with likely positive outcomes? Using publication-level data and focusing on food groups that are typically considered healthy, I evaluate each article's abstract using crowdsourcing tools. I find little evidence to support selection on topics with positive outcomes, but industry is less likely to work on topics classified as unrelated to health. Conditional on a topic, I find that industry-funded research is 3.2% more positive compared to non-industry funded research with grains that receive heavier funding responsible for most of the effect. Industry-funded research is also more likely to receive a mention in certain industry newsletters. Coupled with firm incentives to use science to further their marketing efforts, such increased trade press coverage might play a role in shaping consumers' opinions on what is healthy.
- Subjects
RESEARCH bias; FOOD science; FOOD research; CROWDSOURCING; NEWSLETTERS
- Publication
Quantitative Marketing & Economics, 2022, Vol 20, Issue 1, p39
- ISSN
1570-7156
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1007/s11129-021-09244-z