The incentives of scientific experts: evidence from the history of public health

The author examines the dual roles of experts—on one hand, as scholars responsible to a community of their expert peers, and on the other hand, as interested advisors to policymakers—using evidence from a large corpus of 19th-century medical research on cholera. Experts with links to Britain’s overseas trade sector were more likely than experts without such connections to advance theories arguing against the theory of contagious disease spread (which had costly implications for British commerce). This difference is driven by the early part of the century, when a scientific consensus around how cholera spreads had not yet solidified. The author argues that conflicted experts are more likely to act on their bias in low-information environments, when revealing new information can have a larger impact on policy. As a consensus forms, the value of hiding unfavorable information decreases, and even conflicted experts will reveal what they know to gain scientific credit.