Financial interest clearly is very likely to result in bias. In fact its one of the clearest signs of bias, at least prior to people actually making statements about a subject. But the issue isn't the financial interest, its the bias, other people without financial interests are just as biased as anyone with such interest can be.
And biased doesn't mean wrong. Logic is valid or invalid on its own merits. Take the same argument and have someone without bias or with a different bias make it, and it doesn't become any more or less valid.
Facts are also true or false, independent of the person claiming them.
The point where bias comes in to question is when you are looking for an argument from authority, or for someone to decide between different arguments and impose a solution. In either of those cases, bias (financially based or otherwise) is something you want to reduce as much as possible. You can never totally eliminate it, but I wouldn't rely on someone who was clearly biased (for whatever reason) as an authority that I would go to seeking answers, and you would not want a clearly biased judge deciding your case. The point about arguments from authority is that they don't rely on logic that has its own independent validity, they rely on the authorities own assertion.
Lets take Paul Krugman for an example. He is a skilled and recognized expert on economics. But he is very biased in a number of ways (most esp. against Bush, but also against other people or ideas, for example he doesn't like Obama). I don't care much for arguments from authority in general, but even if I did I would not look to him as an authority for statements about the economic policy ideas of Bush or Obama. His bias is two strong, he can't claim to be an impartial judge.
OTOH, while I don't seek out his writings, I do examine his arguments when I come across them, and from time to time they are good arguments.
Just because he doesn't have a financial interest behind all of his biases, doesn't mean he isn't very biased.
Just because he's biased doesn't make him automatically wrong, or mean that his arguments should be totally discounted. |
