The Fantasyland of Conflict of Interest
Bryan Caplan,
Bet On It,
Sept 30, 2024
There's a number of things to address in this article but probably the most base is the equivalence it draws between being influenced by financial interests to make a certain assertion and being influenced by political leanings or networks of friends. These are of course not at all equivalent - I tell people, for example, that my political leanings follow from my research; they are not the source of it. For example, as people discover every time there's a natural disaster of any sort, socialism emerges pretty quickly as the best and only way to cope with it. I wouldn't expect to receive funding based on my views. I don't write on affirmative action, but if I did I would be saying something like "admission rates should reflect wider demographics", which reflects a basis in race only if racism in admissions already exists. If a person forms their own opinions based on ideology or race or on who is paying them, they might expect this to generalize, but my experience is that it does not.
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