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Mind Your Business
Every study has somebody who paid for it. That does not make it wrong. It does mean the funding line belongs in the coverage, and it almost never is.
What we covered
- Where funding disclosures actually live in a paper, and why nobody quotes them
- The difference between a conflict of interest and a disqualification
- How a press release becomes six hundred identical articles in a day
- What to ask before you share a number you liked hearing
Chapters
- 0:00 Cold open
- 4:10 Who paid
- 18:55 The press release pipeline
- 33:20 Conflict is not disqualification
- 47:00 The questions we ask first
- 1:25:40 Close
Corrections
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Transcript
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DwightEvery study has somebody who paid for it.
SelenaThat does not make it wrong. It means the funding line belongs in the coverage.
DwightWho paid. It is the first question and it is almost never in the first paragraph.
SelenaThe disclosure is usually there. It is on page nineteen in six point type under the word Acknowledgements.
DwightWhich is not hiding it, exactly. But nobody is meant to read it either.
SelenaA press release goes out on a Tuesday and by Thursday there are six hundred articles saying the same sentence.
DwightBecause the release was written to be copied. It has the quote, the number and the headline already in it.
SelenaA conflict of interest is not a disqualification. It is a thing you weigh.
DwightFunded research is most of research. If a funder disqualified a study we would have almost nothing left.
SelenaSo here is what we ask first. Who paid, who chose the question, and who saw it before it ran.
DwightAnd whether anybody outside the funding ever checked it.
SelenaNext Monday, a number is an argument.
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