Weill Cornell Medical College, 407 E. 61st, RR-212, New York, NY, 10065, USA.
Hist Philos Life Sci. 2019 Sep 4;41(3):34. doi: 10.1007/s40656-019-0274-x.
The growing commercialization of scientific research has raised important concerns about industry bias. According to some evidence, so-called industry bias can affect the integrity of the science as well as the direction of the research agenda. I argue that conceptualizing industry's influence in scientific research in terms of bias is unhelpful. Insofar as industry sponsorship negatively affects the integrity of the research, it does so through biasing mechanisms that can affect any research independently of the source of funding. Talk about industry bias thus offers no insight into the particular epistemic shortcomings at stake. If the concern is with the negative effects that industry funding can have on the research agenda, conceptualizing this influence as bias obscures the ways in which such impact is problematic and limits our ability to offer solutions that can successfully address the concerns raised by the growing role of private funding in science.
科学研究的商业化日益引发人们对行业偏见的担忧。有证据表明，所谓的行业偏见可能会影响科学的完整性和研究议程的方向。我认为，将行业对科学研究的影响概念化为偏见是无益的。就行业赞助会通过影响机制对研究的完整性产生负面影响而言，这种影响机制可以影响任何独立于资金来源的研究。因此，谈论行业偏见并不能洞察到所涉及的特定认识论上的缺陷。如果人们关注的是行业资金对研究议程可能产生的负面影响，那么将这种影响概念化为偏见会掩盖这种影响产生问题的方式，并限制我们提供成功解决私人资金在科学中作用日益增长所引发问题的解决方案的能力。
