Hi, and welcome to the video on locating the funding
source of a scientific study.  Let's start by asking, who
pays for science?  Most scientific research is funded by government grants,
private companies doing research and development, and non-profit organizations.
As a society, we support science everyday through the taxes 
we pay,
the products and services we purchase from companies, and donations we
make to charities.  In a perfect world, 
scientific studies would be completely objective.  But, unfortunately, money
and funding introduces the possibility of bias.  For example,
a pharmaceutical company paying for a study of a new depression
medication, may influence the study's design, or interpretation
of the findings to subtly favor the drug they are trying to market. 
It's important to scrutinize the funding of studies to identify possible 
biases.  This leads us to the question, how do you find 
the funding source of the scientific article?  Sometimes the authors will be explicit
and identify the funding source in the text of the article.
Usually, they will list it near the top or bottom of the article.
There may even be an acknowledgment section that lists the funding.
Other times, it can take a little more digging.  And even then, you may not be able to 
find it.  My first example is from Advances in Nutrition. The 
article is about tea flavonoids and the impact on cardiovascular
health.  I found a section on the second page of this article that states
the funding is provided by a grant from Unilever to the Think Healthy
Group.  I can use Google to investigate these two entities further.
The article goes on to explicitly state, the funder had no role in 
the study selection, quality assessment, data analysis
or writing of the manuscript.  This statement adds an additional level of 
transparency to the study in terms of the funding source. 
And this leads me to believe the authors want to be intentional about any
possible questions of bias.  My next example is a study comparing three methods
of hand drying and their impact on virus dispersal.  It's from 
2016 and was published in the Journal of Microbiology,
And the researchers are from the Department of Biomedical Sciences at the 
University of Westminster in the U.K.  The results of the study found
that paper towels did a better job of reducing virus dispersal
than jet air dryers.  Further down the article, I find
this section, called Conflict of Interest.  It states the study is
independently funded from a University of Westminster research reserve account.
However, it goes on to note that one of the authors 
received an honoraria from the European Tissue 
Symposium.  I'll use Google to investigate this group more.  And here I
find, it's a conference for the European Tissue Paper
Association.  Does this mean the information is wrong?  Not necessarily.
However, it does lead to further questions.  Such as, 
Does the study seem fairly designed?  Are the results consistent 
with other independently funded studies?  And what do other scientists have to say 
about this research?  I'll investigate these questions further using Google
Scholar, a great tool for tracking the progress of scientific debate through the use 
of citations.  I'll search for the title of the article and look for the 
Cited By link.  In this case, my original article has been 
cited by 15 other publications since 2016.
I can click the Cited By link to get a list of those 15 publications.
It is the sixth entry in the list that catches my attention
because it is a review study, or a study that compares the methods
and results of different research articles reporting on the same topic.
This article concludes there is little agreement regarding the 
outcomes. And it has it's own statement declaring conflict of interest, 
to which the authors state, there is none.
A little scrutiny can go a long way towards identifying bias associated 
with the funding source.  Scholarly articles will often list their funding sources
somewhere within the article.  Either in an acknowledgements area
or conflict of interest section.  Identifying the funding 
source can lead to further questions about the design and conclusions of 
the study.  What do other scientists say about this research?
