Revised – 9.7.2024
We live in a time in which false information (“alt facts”), disinformation, and information and ideas shaped by the author’s undisclosed capture by corporations, governments, and religions is almost the norm. It is important for you to know a bit about my entanglements and possible conflicts of interest.
Generally, if you follow the money, you can understand the major sources of possible conflicts of interest.
My three largest sources of income are Social Security, retirement funds, and management consulting. My management consulting is limited to one client. I am currently serving in a consulting role on the management team of NuLink Health, LLC. NLH provides software and services to the healthcare sector, predominantly remote patient monitoring. I own no individual stocks, and all retirement investments are held in broad-market index funds.
As a lifelong atheist, I consider myself only beholden to my family, neighbors, immediate community, and the facts that I can ascertain about any given matter.
My major local community engagement has been with the Hudson Area Library. I have been on the Board of Trustees for twelve years, interrupted by a required one year hiatus. I was the President of the Board for seven years and now find myself once again President. My term on the board ended in March 2023.
I also participate occasionally in other local discussions and activities about economic development and community programs in Hudson and Columbia County.
Here is a post from 2002 about this topic on my earlier CurrentMatters website:
Whose Opinion (Advice) Is This?
The Problem
At a time when we are quite aware of the need for and value of transparency in the reporting of the activities of corporations (thanks most recently to the Enron affair), we could quite usefully extend this transparency metaphor to other parts of day-to-day life. The print press, TV, radio, and internet are filled with opinions and advice from all sorts of people. Many of these pass for expert status just based on affiliation with universities, institutes, and think tanks.
Increasingly we must ask ourselves, “whose opinion is this?” Who is being served by the expertise?
Although many in the academic and chic cultural world (not to mention the various right-wing types in political and religious quarters) may think that relativism is the creation of post-WWII French philosophy, most of the rest of the world knows full well that “truth” is in fact relative, that is, relative to who is paying. No surprise, the “experts” know this too, and regularly seek to hide or obscure who is paying. Now, even the pinnacle of prestige in the medical world, The New England Journal of Medicine, has had to strengthen its guidelines that seek to separate research performed at arms length from the pharmaceutical/medical industrial complex from that more directly controlled.
A Step Towards a Solution
What can we do to provide a substantial increase in the transparency of our information sources while keeping things simple?
We should begin to demand that every expert, commentator, think tank institute, or university laboratory reveal the sources of 80% of the funds supporting its research/organizational activities. In the vast majority of case the list of sources will not exceed three or four. This protocol will provide a revealing base of background information without substantial burdens.
A Caveat
Although the protocol proposed here will increase the transparency of our sources of information, it will not relieve us of the work of making sense out of the data and theories presented in any given situation. Just because a given piece of research is funded by “bad people” does not mean that the data is not meaningful and the analysis correct.
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