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Comment by elil17 | Hacker News Reader

I'm not saying your wrong, but I think you should take a step back and consider how this sounds to someone who doesn't share your opinion.

You're pretty much saying that, as long as you ignore the studies which you consider to be illegitimate, then the outcome of the science is clear.

The fact of the matter is that research showing that eating meat has a negative impact on health also suffers from conflicts of interest. Now, those conflicts of interest come from many researchers compassion for animals - and there's a big moral difference between that and conflicts of interest which come from the greed of the meat industry. But from a scientific perspective, it's not legitimate to simply dismiss one side and accept the other.

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This feels like more of the "BOTH SIDES!" dilemma that's plagued politics and journalism for the past decade. Frankly, I don't understand how one distinguishes this from good ol' fashioned nihilism. If we're treating potential "compassion for animals" as a conflict of interest, there's not a study in history that could be completely free of conflict of interest.

Not everything has to be a both sides equivocation . Degree and severity matter. "Compassion for animals" and "receiving funding from a party with a vested interest in the outcome" are not equivalent conflicts of interest.

I think they're very different conflicts of interest from an ethical perspective. It is morally reprehensible to try to skew scientific results for greed. It is (in my view) not so morally reprehensible to try to skew scientific results because you want to stop animals from getting hurt.

But from the scientific perspective, there is a specific factual question: what are the effects of meat consumption on human health? Nutrition research is super finicky. Even absent any conflict of interest, it's unclear that nutrition results are trustworthy. So I don't think it's fair to throw out every study which says meat is healthy and just focus on the studies that say meat is unhealthy.

Fair enough. And I agree. It's not ok to toss out any study that says meat is healthy. But it _is_ fair to be deeply suspicious if it was funded by a financially interested party. And, for what it's worth, this should apply to avocado studies funded by Avocados From Mexico, orange juice studies funded by Tropicana, banana studies by Chiquita, etc.

Come on, they are both equally morally reprehensible as they erode trust in science and lead us towards darkness. Ends doesn't justify the means, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. This is basic level stuff.

If they deliberately skewed their results to fit their narrative, yes: that's obviously reprehensible.

That's not what we're talking about, however. We're talking about what level of suspicion is appropriate in various scenarios. It's unlikely we can _know_ if results were purposefully sabotaged or not. We have to make some best guess. Interested parties funding studies is deeply suspicious, and should be treated with a hefty dose of skepticism. Hand waving that "maybe the researchers were motivated by empathy?!" is not at all equivalent. That is a incredibly low bar that, itself, undermines trust in science, as one could trivially make up similar excuses to distrust virtually any study ever conducted. Oh, researchers found declining sources of fresh water year over year? Biased. They probably just like cheap drinking water. Better ignore it. An Aquafina-backed study shows the opposite. That study is biased, too. But they're both equally morally reprehensible.

I don't like either but they will never be equal in my mind.

Person A sees someone torturing a dog and kills them out of indignation.

Person B is a hitman-for-hire who doesn't know who he's killed or why.

Are person A and B really morally equivalent?

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