Research “firewalls” – The King is Naked!
From Dariusz Leszczynski’s blog “Between a Rock and a Hard Place” March 3, 2014:
There is talk of “firewalls” between the industry funding research and the scientists executing this research. Are these firewalls providing a real independence of scientists from the funding industry or are they just for the sake of “keeping up appearances”? In practice, how reliable is the system of “firewalls”?
In my opinion, the currently used system of “firewalls” does not work. Industry sponsors and sponsored scientists are intelligent people. Industry sponsors do not need to say “things” aloud and scientists understand “things” that are not said. In the situation of research data being very ambivalent, the interpretation of the meaning of the results is crucial and should not be in any way influenced by “things” not said”
SNIP
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