Before you trust the study, find out who paid for it

Quick answer: Open the paper, not the news story about it. Search the page for "funding," "supported by," and "competing interests." Then look up the funder. Funding doesn't make a study wrong. It tells you where to look harder.

Start with the paper, not the headline

News stories about studies usually skip the money. Reporters are on deadline, and the funding statement is one sentence in small type after the conclusions. So the first move is to get to the source.

Most stories link to the study or name the journal. If yours doesn't, search the exact title in Google Scholar or PubMed. If all you can find is a press release, notice that. A press release is the researchers' own marketing, and it was written to be quoted.

Once you've got the paper, hit Ctrl+F (Command+F on a Mac) and try these words one at a time:

• funding
• supported by
• competing interests
• conflicts of interest
• disclosure
• acknowledgments

Journals put it in different places. Sometimes it's a box on the first page. Sometimes it's the last paragraph before the references. Sometimes it takes three searches.

Read the sentence like a contract

"This study was funded by the Acme Foundation" is a start. The better sentences tell you more.

Look for "The funder had no role in study design, data collection, analysis, or the decision to publish." That's a good sign, but it's a claim by the authors, and you can't verify it from your couch.

Look for "Dr. Smith has received consulting fees from..." That's a personal tie, separate from the study's own funding. Authors can be paid by a company that didn't fund the research.

Check the author affiliations on page one. If every author works for the company that makes the product, the study isn't hiding anything. It's just not independent.

And if there's no statement at all, treat that as information too. Reputable journals require one.

Follow the money one step back

Foundations and institutes often have neutral-sounding names. A funder's name tells you nothing until you look it up.

Four places do most of the work:

• ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer has the IRS Form 990 for most U.S. nonprofits. It shows revenue, big expenses, and the mission as the group itself describes it. Private foundations file a version that lists the grants they make, so you can see who they back.
• ClinicalTrials.gov lists the sponsor of a drug or device trial. It also shows what the researchers said, in advance, they'd measure.
• The federal Open Payments database shows payments from drug and device makers to U.S. doctors. Search an author's name.
• NIH RePORTER and USAspending.gov show what the government paid for.

That last one matters. Government money isn't automatically clean. An agency that funds research on a problem has an interest in the problem looking big enough to deserve the budget. A federally funded study deserves the same two minutes as a corporate one.

Why this isn't paranoia

Two cases show how it goes wrong.

In 1954, tobacco companies put out a full-page ad called "A Frank Statement to Cigarette Smokers" and created the Tobacco Industry Research Committee. The committee funded research and publicized doubt about the link between smoking and cancer for decades.

In 2016, researchers writing in JAMA Internal Medicine described documents showing that a sugar industry trade group had paid Harvard scientists in the 1960s. Those scientists went on to publish a review in the New England Journal of Medicine that pointed away from sugar and toward fat as the heart-disease culprit. The paper didn't disclose the payment. Disclosure rules were looser then, but the effect on the public's understanding of nutrition lasted a long time.

The pattern shows up on the research side too. A Cochrane review in 2017 found that industry-sponsored studies were more likely to report favorable results and conclusions than studies with other funding. That's a tendency across many studies, not a rule for any single one.

The same caution applies to policy research. Think tanks on the left and on the right depend on donors, and donors tend to fund people who already agree with them. A report on school choice from one side or a report on the minimum wage from the other gets the same treatment from you. Who paid, and what would they like the answer to be?

The swap test

Do this one on yourself.

Take the study you want to be true. Now imagine the same study, same methods, same numbers, but funded by the group you distrust most. Would you read it differently?

If so, you've found your bias. If you'd wave off the second version but cheer the first, you're not checking a study. You're picking a team.

This runs in every direction. A finding that happens to flatter your politics, your diet, or your side of an argument deserves a longer look than one that annoys you.

What funding can and can't tell you

Don't overcorrect. Dismissing a study because of its funder is a shortcut, and a lazy one. Plenty of industry-funded work holds up. Plenty of independent work is sloppy. The funder is a reason to examine the design more closely. It isn't a verdict.

So once you know who paid, ask what they could have shaped:

• The question. Did the study ask something the funder wanted answered, and skip the question that would have been awkward?
• The comparison. Was the new product tested against a fair alternative, or against a weak one or a low dose?
• The outcome. Did the paper report what it said it would measure? On ClinicalTrials.gov, compare the registered outcomes with the published ones. If the study measured ten things and the paper highlights two, ask why.
• The data. Can anybody else see it?

The 2005 expression of concern the New England Journal of Medicine attached to a 2000 painkiller trial on Vioxx was about this kind of gap, how some of the data was reported. Funding doesn't produce a bad result by itself. It shapes the choices that do.

A two-minute routine

1. Get the paper, not the story.
2. Search for "funding" and "competing interests."
3. Note the funder, the authors' affiliations, and any personal payments.
4. Look up an unfamiliar funder on Nonprofit Explorer.
5. Run the swap test on yourself.
6. Check whether what was measured matches what was promised.

If you want the habit behind this, the four questions an editor asks before a story runs covers what to ask about the reporting itself. And if you've got a teenager who's about to cite a study in an argument, teach your kid to check it before they believe it gives you a way to start the conversation without a lecture.

The funding line is small, and almost nobody reads it. That's the best reason to be the person who does.