Today it seems that we not only get the news we want, but the science we want as well. I think many people have become suspicious of the science used to produce studies. I once went to a major university to discuss getting a life-cycle study on a generic building assembly. They sent me a proposal starting at $250,000. Having the university’s logo on the report would be great for exposure and credibility, but why was the price so high when they use students to do most of the work? More shocking was they virtually assured me the report would be what we needed before the study was even conducted. Yet, they did teach me how to raise sponsorship and funding.
Based on experience, I had come to believe that institutions of higher learning were more independent. But over time I found out that many of these reports were skewed. The United States has time and time again trusted these reports, yet now I question almost every one of them I read. Some are obvious marketing tools that make claims that no reasonable person would believe. Most of these become irrelevant and die a deserving death. Others have inherent flaws that the authors should have caught, or maybe they assumed no one would catch the dubious information.