Money can’t buy you love. It’s assumed, though, that it can buy loyalty—at least brand loyalty. But a new study shows that people with true expertise in a subject have some immunity to the siren song of corporate sponsorship. The work appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. [Link to come.]
We worry about bias in all walks of life, from the lab to the legislature. Because “gifts” from special interest groups, whether pharma companies or political action committees, could sway the opinions of decision-makers.
To examine the relationship between gratuities and opinion, researchers asked 20 art experts and 20 non-experts to view a series of paintings. But first, subjects were shown the logo of a fictitious company that wou
