[R-G] The corporate takeover of ‘reason’ and ‘science

[Anthony Fenton]

The corporate takeover of ‘reason’ and ‘science’
http://www.spinwatch.org/content/view/5130/8/
David Miller, 8 August 2008

ImageThose who say that they favour science and rationality can end up  
supporting the opposite.  Science and rationality retain a very  
significant force in public debate and is thus worth exploiting by  
vested interests.  The strategic use of science is a well used part of  
the armoury of the public relations industry.  Indeed it is true to  
say that the founding of the PR and lobbying industries were based on  
attempts to pervert rationality and science in the interests of vested  
interests.  The very earliest PR practitioners such as Freud’s nephew  
Edward Bernays, were adept at this.  Bernays use of psychology was  
famously put to use in promoting cigarette smoking among women by  
styling them ‘torches of freedom’ and associating them with women’s  
equality and liberation.

Bernays was amongst the first to make a profession out of what he  
called the ‘conscious’ and intelligent manipulation’ of the beliefs  
and behaviour of the public. Those who ‘manipulate this unseen  
mechanism’ of society were, he wrote, an ‘invisible government which  
is the true ruling power of our country.’ 1

Today the PR industry is still based on the same philosophy.  The  
promotion of ‘science-i-ness’ is an ever present talisman.  It has two  
cardinal principles. The first - seen increasingly following the  
neoliberal turn of the late 1970s – is that where science or truth  
will undermine corporate interests, the science or truth must be  
changed.  The second principle is to disguise the source of  
information where useful. When a message is likely to be disbelieved  
or treated with scepticism when said openly by a corporation or  
politician, the words must be put in the mouth of someone more  
believable and apparently disinterested.  This is the famous third  
party technique and has led to a whole swathe of scientists taking  
corporate money to promote corporate friendly science.

Because science is still such a resource it is imperative for powerful  
interests to try and co-opt, undermine, distort, influence or buy  
‘science’.  This is now so widespread that the issue is openly debated  
in the scientific journals and there is a small but growing number of  
studies examining  the question of the potential bias introduced by  
corporate funding.2   From the 50 year battle to protect the tobacco  
industry to today’s strategic use of science in climate change denial,  
and to muddy the waters as obesity and binge drinking become crisis  
issues, scientists have been recruited as a resource. For example they  
receive research grants, are paid as consultants or have their names  
added to academic journal articles ghost written by PR operatives.   
Some scientists are even kept on retainers by corporations or lobby  
groups and can be wheeled out to order.

The third party technique fits nicely into the co-option strategy.   
Scientists whose research budgets are nicely swelled by corporate  
money can often be surprisingly willing recruits to speak on behalf of  
industry. A study of toxic industrial contaminants in farmed Salmon  
published in Science in 2004, was greeted with a chorus of  
condemnation in the press.  Many of the voices were described as  
academic scientists.  In fact almost all had financial links to the  
industry undisclosed in the press.  The study itself was well grounded. 
3   Nonetheless the industry campaign to remove the stain of poisoned  
Salmon from the public mind was largely successful.

In the US and UK the creation of ‘front groups’ is common.  These are  
organisations usually including a science-like term in their title  
such as ‘foundation’  ‘institute’ or ‘research’. In the UK the food  
industry has been able to sabotage healthy eating initiatives since  
the 1970s by – among other things - funding the apparently independent  
British Nutrition Foundation which is able to place representatives on  
a myriad of government committees.4 The International Life Science  
Institute sounds a bit scientific.  In fact it is a food industry  
lobby group funded by hundreds of the biggest food, pharma and  
chemical companies and was for years more or less directed by the Coca  
Cola company.  It was able to infiltrate the WHO process on dietary  
sugars by covertly funding some of the scientists involved.5 In  
January 2006 the WHO decided that ILSI ‘can no longer take part in WHO  
activities setting microbiological or chemical standards for food and  
water’, as a result of complaints about its lobbying tactics.6

The PR industry is at the forefront of creating and managing front  
groups today.  The Scientific Alliance turned out to be run from the  
offices of Foresight Communications a PR firm in central London and to  
be funded by Scottish quarry owner Robert Durward.  The Social Issues  
Research Centre 'fosters the image of an ultraconcerned public  
spirited group' and of 'a heavy-weight research body'.7 It is also run  
by a PR/marketing company from the same address.  That company - MCM  
Research - used to announce on its website its approach to open and  
truthful communications: ‘Do your PR initiatives sometimes look too  
much like PR initiatives? MCM conducts social/psychological research  
on the positive aspects of your business... The results do not read  
like PR literature’.8

Of course the corporations can do little else than lie and attempt to  
co-opt science.  They require to extract maximum surplus from both  
labour and natural resources to be part of the global market.  Their  
problem is that these qualities of corporate operations are not very  
attractive to the overwhelming majority of the population of the  
globe.  As a result corporations and their PR agents must try to  
undermine or co-opt science. The only defence is transparency,  
enhanced ethics standards and public funding of research.

NOTES

1.  Edward Bernays, Propaganda, 1928, New York: Horace Liverwright.


2.  Kassirer, J.P. On the take: How medicine's complicity with big  
business can endanger your health. Oxford, UK: Oxford University  
Press: 2005.; Lesser et al. ‘Relationship between funding  source and  
conclusion among nutrition-related scientific articles’. PLoS Medicine  
2007.; Jorgensen AW, Hilden J, Gotzsche PC. Cochrane reviews compared  
with industry supported meta-analyses and other meta-analyses of the  
same drugs: systematic review. BMJ 2006;333:782-5.;Veronica Yank,  
Drummond Rennie, Lisa A Bero, Financial ties and concordance between  
results and conclusions in meta-analyses: retrospective cohort study  
BMJ 2007;335:1202-1205 (8 December), doi:10.1136/bmj.39376.447211.BE  
(published 16 November 2007); Jim Giles, Industry money skews drug  
overviews Nature 437, 458-459 (22 September 2005); DeAngelis, C.  
Comment on “Conflict of interest in medical research: facts and  
friction” in meeting proceedings, call to action: Managing financial  
relationships between academia and industry in biomedical research  
2007; 15-16.;Peppercorn, J, Blood, E., Winer, E, Partridge, A.  
Association between pharmaceutical involvement and outcomes in breast  
cancer clinical trials. Presented at the Annual Meeting of the  
American Society of Clinical Oncology 2005.

3.  David Miller ‘Spinning Farmed Salmon (part 2 of 3)’, Spinwatch, 28  
May 2008 http://www.spinwatch.org/content/view/4953/8/

4.  Geoffrey Cannon The Politics of Food Century Hutchinson, London,  
UK, 1987. John Yudkin, Pure, White and Deadly, Penguin, 1988.

5. Sarah Boseley 'WHO "infiltrated by food industry"' The Guardian  
Thursday January 9, 2003
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2003/jan/09/foodanddrink; Sarah Boseley  
'Sugar industry threatens to scupper WHO' The Guardian Monday April  
21, 2003 http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2003/apr/21/usnews.food;  
Sarah Boseley 'WHO 'buried' report to please food industry' The  
Guardian Wednesday November 3, 2004
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2004/nov/03/media.advertising

6.  John Heilperin, ‘WHO to Rely Less on U.S. Research’, Associated  
Press, January 27, 2006.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2006/01/27/national/w150409S47.DTL

7. Annabel Ferriman ‘An end to health scares?’ BMJ 1999;319:716- ( 11  
September ) http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/319/7211/716

8. Ibid.

A shorter version of this article was published in the New Scientist  
(subscription required) on 23 July 2008.