Unless you're eating a can of generic Potted Meat Food Product, in which case you just sort of mentally picture a petting zoo being lowered into a blender. Again, you read the ingredients. You check out the viewpoints of the sponsors and the people on screen and the owners of the networks. Unless you're watching Fox News, in which case you just sort of mentally picture Edward R. Murrow being lowered into a blender. You go over the data and make sure they support the conclusions, and if not, it helps to know who paid for the research.
Studies financed by cigarette companies often reveal that smoking has unexpected benefits.
Scientists who work for heavy polluters sometimes conclude that kids really aren't getting enough heavy metals in their diet. And when you read that a synthetic food additive is actually good for you, even though a guy down the hall ate it once and now he has a limp, a facial tic, and a giant third eye, you can figure that the research might just have been financed by the folks who make that additive. That doesn't mean that the research is fraudulent. But knowing who paid for the whole shebang often gives you a hint about who got the benefit of any ambiguity in the data. That's why leading experts in medicine, urban affairs, and environmental policy are advocating that scientific journals begin publishing funding information as a standard part of articles, along with financial disclosures in which writers state for the record any potential personal gain they stand to get from their findings.