Scholars’ Conflicts of Interest Matter
Disclosed conflicts reduce readers’ trust in economics papers by an average of 30 percent.
- By
- November 20, 2025
- CBR - Economics
Public trust in academic research has fallen in recent years. About three-quarters of Americans expressed confidence that scientists act in the public’s best interests, according to a survey that the Pew Research Center conducted in October 2024. That was a slight improvement over 2023 but still 10 percentage points below prepandemic levels.
When rebuilding confidence in research, it’s worth considering the conflicts of interest that academics disclose, suggests work by a team of researchers that includes Chicago Booth’s Luigi Zingales. They find that, on average, stating a conflict of interest decreases trust in a paper’s findings by 30 percent.
Academic papers often come with fine print detailing the authors’ conflicts of interest. Using a broad definition, the researchers calculate that 65 percent of papers published in the American Economic Review over a one-year period spanning 2022 and 2023 cited some form of conflict.
These competing incentives can take many forms: Researchers may get payments or grants from, or own stock in, organizations affected by the study. Findings can influence a researcher’s career, perhaps landing them a plum job or board position. In other cases, an entity with a vested interest in the study’s outcome may control access to the underlying data. A researcher’s political beliefs or academic reputation may also correspond to certain results and clash with others.
The research team—whose own disclosure statement includes a grant from a think tank, a fellowship, advisory work, and compensation for speeches—explored the effects of disclosures by surveying economists and a representative sample of about 1,500 Americans. They provided each group with nine hypothetical scenarios summarizing findings from academic papers. Each time, they asked respondents to rate how much they believed the results, using a five-point scale ranging from “not at all” to “completely.” They then shared a potential conflict of interest that had been disclosed and asked participants to report how that information affected their confidence in the results.
When ordinary Americans learned about a conflict, their trust in the findings fell by about a third. Professionals were slightly less perturbed: Rank-and-file economists reported a 29 percent drop in trust, while leaders in the field said their trust fell by 25 percent. Top economists may be more aware of how common such conflicts are or may believe meaningful biases are avoidable, speculate Zingales and his collaborators. Still, they point out, it’s notable that trust suffered even among people who are familiar with how research works.
Conflicts of interest erode trust in research
When it came to the type of conflict, disclosures related to career advancement, such as being nominated to a corporate board, had a large effect, reducing trust by an average of 36 percent across all groups. When an organization with a stake in the results supplied data for the study, trust decreased by 20–52 percent, depending on how much control researchers had over the data.
Monetary conflicts curbed trust by an average of 27 percent; while higher payments caused trust to fall further, the differences were small. For example, accepting a $10,000 consulting fee reduced trust by 37 percent, while a $1 million fee reduced it by 44 percent. Ideological conflicts—such as when a researcher produced a finding in line with their political party’s stance—caused a 17 percent drop in trust, on average. Finally, academic conflicts didn’t register with ordinary Americans at all, and for economists, they didn’t matter much: Their trust in a paper’s findings climbed by 4 percent when it contradicted their academic interests and fell by 5 percent when it aligned.
The study team points out that conflicts of interest can distort results even when researchers are not intentionally dishonest or corrupt. Past research by Zingales has demonstrated that motivations can subtly shape how scholars analyze their findings, which often involves a measure of subjectivity.
Even if no actual bias or malfeasance occurs, readers’ feelings about conflicts of interest still matter, the researchers write, arguing that valuable results could be discounted because of a general perception that makes all findings feel less convincing. The researchers argue that the status quo fuels public distrust of science and incentivizes scholars to avoid topics that could upset potential funders or data owners.
Frequently, those seeking to enhance the credibility of academics call for stepping up enforcement of conflict disclosures. Given their findings, the authors argue that while greater transparency would be helpful, this alone is not enough to correct the problem.
One solution they propose: Academic journals should require that scholars’ agreements with data providers be made public and reject papers that give data owners a right to review beyond ensuring confidentiality. Another: Academics should give less weight to conflict-affected papers when including them in literature reviews and promotion decisions, and legal professionals should do the same in legal proceedings. Doing so, while accounting for the type and extent of conflict, is key to rebuilding public trust in academic research, they conclude.
- John Barrios, Filippo Lancieri, Joshua Levy, Shashank Singh, Tommaso Valletti, and Luigi Zingales, “The Conflict-of-Interest Discount in the Marketplace of Ideas,” Working paper, October 2024.
- Luigi Zingales, “Preventing Economists’ Capture,” in Preventing Regulatory Capture: Special Interest Influence and How to Limit It, eds. Daniel Carpenter and Davis Moss, Cambridge: Tobin Project, 2013.
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