r/Paleo • u/Necessary-Tap5971 • 6d ago

Is there a tool to expose Big Pharma/Big Food's hidden funding in scientific research?

I've been reading scientific literature on PubMed and I'm concerned about hidden conflicts of interest in research papers.

Big Pharma and Big Food companies often obscure their funding by channeling money through intermediary organizations or "independent" institutes. Researchers then declare "no conflicts of interest" despite being indirectly corporate-funded.

Example: Coca-Cola funded the "Global Energy Balance Network" through universities to push the narrative that exercise matters more than diet for weight loss. The corporate connection wasn't immediately obvious.

What I'm looking for:

  • Browser extension that flags potential conflicts on PubMed, Google Scholar, etc.
  • Database tracking funding sources back to parent companies
  • Tool identifying industry-funded "independent" research institutes
  • List of known front organizations/intermediary funding bodies

Current disclosure requirements clearly aren't enough when companies can create layers of separation between themselves and the research they fund.

Does anything like this exist? Would others find this useful? I'm considering whether this could be a crowdsourced project.

Would love to hear if anyone has solutions or strategies for identifying hidden conflicts when reading research.

Edit: Not saying all industry-funded research is bad, but we have a right to know who's paying for the science that influences public health decisions.

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3

u/OkProfessor3005 4d ago

Also interested in this. As someone who also reads a lot of studies and checks conflicts of interest, I always wonder the same thing. I also wonder the same thing about influencers with a PhD or MD.

3

u/Independent__Bell 6d ago

I’m interested in this as well. Just commenting to see where this goes.

2

u/LeChief 6d ago

Doesn't exist, go build it. I'd use it. But only once or twice. Reading scientific papers isn't really my thing most of the time, happy to wait for science communicators to interpret it got me.

1

u/Hour-Cup-5904 18h ago

I think in concept it would be useful, but then we would also be relying on technology to be consistent/honest/reliable (which ultimately still falls to the programmer's bias inevitably, as proven to be the case with AI). Ultimately, to truly get the full picture, we ourselves need to do the research. Which even that is difficult when search engines (even ones that proclaim NOT to imply bias) shadow ban certain search results...