Scientific Consensus and Corporate Influence

http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/scientific-consensus-and-corporate-influence/#more-8617

"A new study published in PNAS explores the messaging of organizations commenting on climate change and their relationship to corporate funding. The sole author, Justin Farrell, finds that those organizations who received corporate funding were likely to network their messaging together, and to engage in a campaign of casting doubt on the scientific consensus. There was no such network among those organizations not receiving corporate funding.

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Those who are at odds with a particular scientific consensus will often argue that the scientific consensus can be comfortably ignored. Reasons given are often: the scientific consensus has been wrong in the past, the current consensus is the result of external or internal ideological, political, or financial influence, or there isn’t really a scientific consensus.

Ironically, these campaigns of denial demonstrate that it is not easy to manipulate the scientific consensus.

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Despite their motivation, influence, and resources they were unable to affect the scientific consensus on climate change. They could not manufacture a consensus. All they could do is sow doubt in the real scientific consensus, and even then only among those ideologically aligned, not with the public at large, and not within scientific circles.

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A good piece that covers the notion that even big money has a hard time changing the reality of the scientific consensus on a variety of issues.