The Einstein examples may seem very abstract and distant from the common financial conflict of interest. Actually they are. Nevertheless, they are the sort (if not the magnitude) of conflicts that most researchers will encounter. Only a very few are positioned "to make financial hay" out of their research. The Einstein examples illustrate the epistemological idea that the advance of knowledge proceeds on a road paved not only with good intentions but politics, prejudice, paradigms, and all manner of presupposition.
A common financial conflict situation is where the source of funding, hence the ability to conduct the research, represents (and perhaps enforces) a point of view on the substance of the research. Tobacco research sponsored by tobacco companies is suspect because it is assumed that research results implicating tobacco in disease would be suppressed or misrepresented ... to avoid financial difficulties. Research on highways sponsored by cement or asphalt distributor is suspect for the same reason, but so is research conducted by the state highway construction bureaucracy. The difference is that the highway system is subject to many checks and balances, and a vigilant citizenry will not (long) tolerate maladminstration that is predicated on bad research. By comparison, private enterprise lives under a veil of proprietary secrecy.
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