Scientific research being funded by the right organization can impact the outcome of the research. Personally, I find that government funded scientific research is generally more reliable compared to research held by commercial organizations. There are a few reasons for this, one being, governments tend to comply with rules and regulations because their main goal is to serve society unlike giant corporations whose main goal is to capitalize. In this essay why I am more towards government funded research will be discussed.
To begin with, commercial organizations are generally after one’s money. Because of this, they are more willing to get their hands dirty in order to hinder and or alter the results of the so called “scientific research” that they fund. One prime example for this would be the “healthy food” industry. Many people believe that just because the product has the word “diet” in it, it means the food is healthy, at times, it can be far from it. Diet-Coke in fact is considered worse for your health than regular coke because of all the alternative chemical sweeteners and additives. Because ‘Coca-Cola’ is a huge corporation, they have the financial capabilities to support scientific studies in order to promote their own products, even if that means funding biased scientific data.
On the other hand, government funded research can be more reliable in some cases. Government organizations tend to follow strict rules and regulations therefore leading to a more authentic scientific data. An exceptional example for this would be the FDA’s standards for food. The FDA is a compulsory regulation that food producers must oblige to and meet the standards of. However, there are fields of study that the government might just find unnecessary or deem them obsolete. In these cases having government funding may not be sufficient enough to conduct proper and professional research.
In conclusion, when it comes to side picking, I tend to shift towards the government, because of the fact that they can be more regulation compliant. In addition, corporations tend to go after capitalization.