# Randomised study of the effects of sense of entitlement and conflict of interest contrarianism on researcher decision-making to work with the alcohol industry

## TL;DR

This study explores how psychological factors like sense of entitlement and contrarian views on conflicts of interest influence researchers' openness to working with the alcohol industry.

## Contribution

The study introduces a novel experimental method to examine how psychological constructs affect researcher decision-making regarding industry funding.

## Key findings

- Reminding researchers of their CoI-C made them more receptive to industry funding with 94.8% probability.
- Biomedical researchers were more open to working with industry than psychosocial researchers.
- Quantitative experimental methods can effectively study researcher decision-making related to industry funding.

## Abstract

It is well established that the tobacco industry used research funding as a deliberate tactic to subvert science. There has been little wider attention to how researchers think about accepting industry funding. We developed, then tested, hypotheses about two psychological constructs, namely, entitlement and conflict of interest contrarianism (CoI-C) among alcohol researchers who had previously received industry funding.

A mixed-methods pilot study involved construct and instrument development, followed by an online survey and nested 3-arm randomised trial. We randomly allocated alcohol industry funding recipients to one of three conditions. In two experimental conditions we asked participants questions to remind them (and thus increase the salience) of their sense of entitlement or CoI-C. We compared these groups with a control group who did not receive any reminder. The outcome was a composite measure of openness to working with the alcohol industry.

133 researchers were randomised of whom 79 completed the experiment. The posterior distribution over effect estimates revealed that there was a 94.8% probability that reminding researchers of their CoI-C led them to self-report being more receptive to industry funding, whereas the probability was 68.1% that reminding them of their sense of entitlement did so. Biomedical researchers reported being more open to working with industry than did psychosocial researchers.

Holding contrarian views on conflict of interest could make researchers more open to working with industry. This study shows how it is possible to study researcher decision-making using quantitative experimental methods.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12889-024-18961-5.