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Comment by ravenstine | Hacker News Reader

On a side topic, why isn't there a sort of escrow for research groups where they can receive money and return results without knowing who is funding them? Or does such a thing exist? That might be a great way for a person to tell how much credibility a study has, besides the actual methodologies used.

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Big companies and industry groups wouldn't fund research unless they knew the outcome, or could influence the spin. If it didn't have a positive NPV, they wouldn't do it.

That's probably true for a lot of studies, but companies with legitimately useful products would still be interested in getting independent validation so they can advertise said study, right? We are jaded by Coca-Cola, but there are actually healthy things and useful medications in the world!

Of course, in reality, the escrow may not be enough to remove the bias, but it's an interesting thought.

What you said is something I had in mind. While nefarious corporations might not even bother, I don't doubt that there are plenty of businesses out there who can hypothesize a high likelihood that a study will work in their favor and, therefore, it might be worth facilitating the research in a way to try and limit their influence. Granted, this is assuming a best-case universe where enough people actually care whether a study was done this way or not. Then again, maybe it's one of those things that should be tried to see what happens.

For a pool to work, would they need to offer money funding generic research on a topic, or anonymously fund specific research? The former doesn't allow for much incentive to the corporations, and the latter seems easily gamed.

Great idea. The fund would list all the studies they need done, as well as the funding, and dole out the money for a small management fee.

They use part of this management fee to invest in their brand, so that studies that don't carry the "neutral-study-guarantee" sticker are treated less seriously than those that do.

I can't help worry it will run head first into Campbell's law.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell's_law

You mean like the government?

You pay in taxes, government dispenses research funds, you don't know where the money is from.

Sure, more government funding would be nice, but no, the idea described is not really like government science funding at all.

There's a key difference in the suggestion, compared to the government: there could be many such organizations, each having different priorities and values which would lead to them funding different things. People and corporations interested in making a difference would have a choice.

Perhaps cynnical of me but I would assume such an escrow would be eternally underfunded. The whole point of sponsored research is to be able to frame the question and by extension the research. It is probably how it should be but I doubt you'd have many companies buying into it.

Perhaps an independent foundation could work hard at fundraising to become such an escrow but they'd have a heck of a time raising capital to cover the research I imagine.

The idea is that they would trade "influence over the results" with "credibility of the results" -- the fact that a study was funded by the escrow/filter org means more than "Big Soda-funded study".

Theoretically, this would strongly select for products that are safe but for which no one else wants to fund research into the safety of.

Would 'big soda' know the study was going on? If they did would they provide um 'outside influance'?

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