Here’s How Google’s Money Really Influences Research

[Commentary] The think-tank world has come to be dominated by a distinctly modern kind of doublethink, which combines a rational understanding that corporations spend money to influence public policy with an instinctual belief that some of the institutions that benefit from it–often those that employ the thinker or his friends–function with complete independence. The New America Foundation runs several programs, including the Open Technology Institute , which researches issues that affect Google directly. The scholars who work on those projects don’t think of themselves as Google shills, and it’s hard to believe that they significantly changed their opinions in order to secure think-tank gigs. But it’s also hard to believe that their research isn’t affected by the funding that allows them to do the work they do.

Which leads us to the other big problem in the think-tank world–how the presence of so much corporate money distorts what work gets funded in the first place.

[Robert Levine is an author and journalist who writes about the media and technology businesses]