In peer-review, the original authors are redacted, so the peer-review committee's bias is reduced (not eliminated, of course).
When a scientist is funded by the petrol industry, but has a long history of showing sound scientific results, I'd give him my full attention. Perhaps my reading of his results would be biased negatively if I would know his research is funded by a certain industry.
When that doctor publishes an article on his new drugs, I question where it is published, whether there have been similar results by other researchers, whether similar approaches have seen widespread application, whether the author can connect the results logically with other research, whether there has been a good peer review and whether I can understand his results. These metrics give me confidence. The funding of the researcher might interest me, but another researcher with a perfect clean sheet might get his funding in a more black-market way. They say you should follow the money, but generally it is difficult, if not impossible, to find the trail.
This means I question almost everything I read and unfortunately have little certainties. Then again "Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself." -- Wittgenstein
When a scientist is funded by the petrol industry, but has a long history of showing sound scientific results, I'd give him my full attention. Perhaps my reading of his results would be biased negatively if I would know his research is funded by a certain industry.
When that doctor publishes an article on his new drugs, I question where it is published, whether there have been similar results by other researchers, whether similar approaches have seen widespread application, whether the author can connect the results logically with other research, whether there has been a good peer review and whether I can understand his results. These metrics give me confidence. The funding of the researcher might interest me, but another researcher with a perfect clean sheet might get his funding in a more black-market way. They say you should follow the money, but generally it is difficult, if not impossible, to find the trail.
This means I question almost everything I read and unfortunately have little certainties. Then again "Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself." -- Wittgenstein