How ethical or unethical are the industries skeptics are supposedly in the pocket of?

Steven Novella just wrote an interesting blogpost, which I recommend you read:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Steven Novella When we get past the hype and propaganda, what we find, in my opinion, is an industry [big agricultural companies] that is behaving fairly typically (and actually there is much less to complain about then with many other industries, such as the pharmaceutical industry, cosmetic industry, oil industry, tobacco industry, etc.). This is where I feel the fair criticism lies – the big seed companies have overhyped their own products and encouraged overreliance on their GMOs as a single solution to farming’s complex issues. In this way they have been counterproductive.

Skeptics is quite often accused of being in the pockets of big pharma, when we are not part of the anti-capitalist conspiracy promoting man-made global warming. I've not seen skeptics being accused of being in the pocket of the other industries he mentions.



But of course, being opposed to alternative medicine and denial of medical facts (like the antivaxxers) doesn't mean that one worships at the altar of the pharmaceutical industry.



So compared to other industries, exactly how ethical or unethical do pharmaceutical or big agricultural corporations behave, in general?



I'd say that for starters, unlike say the tobacco industry or the alternative medicine industry, they actually produce stuff that is good. These industries are not based on deceit and parasitism, though no doubt individual actors in these industries do such things.

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