Does anyone know of a historical example of a concerted effort to convince people in an academic discipline to pay attention to something, by funding a bunch of papers on or related to the topic?
Were they trying to get people to pay attention to something that was neglected before? I thought they were just trying to sow confusion around the smoking-illness connection, which was already being studied.
As part of their efforts to kick up dirt around the smoking-illness link, they did fund some research to try building up fringe hypotheses (as opposed to knocking down mainstream hypotheses). They gave Hans Eysenck money to research the link between personality traits and cancer (with smoking as a possible mediator).
Does anyone know of a historical example of a concerted effort to convince people in an academic discipline to pay attention to something, by funding a bunch of papers on or related to the topic?
If so, how well did it work?
I believe the tobacco companies tried this (and maybe they still do). How much difference it made I don’t know.
Were they trying to get people to pay attention to something that was neglected before? I thought they were just trying to sow confusion around the smoking-illness connection, which was already being studied.
As part of their efforts to kick up dirt around the smoking-illness link, they did fund some research to try building up fringe hypotheses (as opposed to knocking down mainstream hypotheses). They gave Hans Eysenck money to research the link between personality traits and cancer (with smoking as a possible mediator).