PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER Editorial: …But research money is hard to come by, and academics sometimes take funding from the very industries they are studying. Disclosing such funders becomes an academic responsibility.
That duty is at the center of an ethics investigation that Temple University is rightly conducting. It concerns two economics professors who took funding from the private prison industry for a project on the costs of privately run prisons.
Summaries of their work were published as commentaries in newspapers covering regions where private prisons are located. The professors’ research showed that private prisons cost less than publicly run facilities and perform at least as well. But some of the op-eds did not disclose their funding sources – information readers should have had to help them form their own opinions… (more)
Research money must come from somewhere. And even independently wealthy researchers are not immune from bias. Are we to assume, for instance, that government funded research is pure and corporate or foundation funded research is not pure?
Regardless of funding sources the only way to assure transparency is to publish all aspects of the research thus allowing other researchers the opportunity to repeat the results of the research and to challenge or support the conclusions.
Now, what do we do about media bias, which everyday wields far more influence than some academic research paper. Perhaps reporters should state their affiliations and voting patterns so readers could judge their bias?