While chatting with some friends tonight, the topic of government studies of artificial sweeteners came up (”Well, of course it did,” you’re saying to yourself). A friend who works at the EPA mentioned some agency folks who had just finished a study apparently racking up more evidence that aspartame (in the form of diet soda in this study, it seems) does such things as cause cancer in lab rats and fails to actually help the rats lose weight as compared to a control group that was drinking regular soda (personally, all the rats I know are more health-conscious than that and tend to avoid soda altogether–something about phosphoric acid).
I asked my friend if he had seen many government-funded studies that came up with good news in their results. You see, it occurs to me that there is a disturbing incentive at work here that makes all government-funded science suspect by default. The money comes either from elected officials directly or from government bureaucracies whose existence and budgets depend on the elected officials.
Now, we know that elected officials (with a very, very few exceptions) depend for their jobs and fame on scaring voters about particular issues and then riding in like the cavalry to solve the terrible problems with new legislation. Are these politicians likely to send money toward scientists whose research finds that, say, aspartame is perfectly safe? Certainly not. Do the scientists know this? Of course. Are there ethical scientists who get the government funding and then proceed to brazenly stick it to their masters by following the science and coming out with results that are not scary? I’m sure there are. But I’ll bet not many of them get repeat business from Uncle Sam (and if they work directly for a government agency, they may not keep their job much longer).
Of course, there’s also a dynamic involved that doesn’t necessarily involve scaring voters into accepting new legislation. Politicians will often also fund research that is popular among the masses, regardless of its actual value. For instance, you see politicians today jumping on whatever the latest ‘green’ technology is that is trendy among the environmental groups (ever notice how easy it is for people to push something when they can use government to force everyone else to help them pay for it?).
I’ve personally seen a lot of government physics research (including some I worked on myself in my pre-libertarian days) that seemed to be driven by socially popular environmental agendas (not to mention plenty of space craft research driven by military-related fear mongering).
Basically, what it comes down to is that research that is likely to lead to an expansion of government power or increased fame and personal power for politicians is much more likely to be funded by your tax dollars than research that isn’t.
Or even more briefly: Government funding of scientific research tends to bias the results in favor of expanded government.
Maybe something to keep in mind when weighing the results of government research.
Am I right? Am I wrong? Have I misread the incentives? Weigh in with your comments, and let me know what you think!
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