Industrial Distraction

Freeborn, David Peter Wallis and O'Connor, Cailin (2024) Industrial Distraction. Philosophy of Science. ISSN 0031-8248 (Print), 1539-767X (Online) (In Press)

Abstract

There are myriad techniques industry actors use to shape the public understanding of science. While a naive view of this sort of influence might assume these techniques typically involve fraud and/or outright deception, the truth is more nuanced. The aim of this paper is to analyze one common technique where industry actors fund and share research that is accurate and (often) high quality, but nonetheless misleads the public on important matters of fact. The technique in question involves reshaping the causal understanding of some phenomenon with distracting information. We call this \emph{industrial distraction}. We use case studies and causal models to illustrate how industrial distraction works, and how it can negatively impact belief and decision making even for rational learners. As we argue, this analysis is relevant to discussions about science policy, and also to philosophical and social scientific debates about how to define and understand misleading content.

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