These Foolish Things: “Scientific” research (1995)

The Scavenger column from the April 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

The basic contradictions in capitalism cause widespread death, destruction, pollution, poverty and waste. But this is to take the world view. Most of us experience day-to-day capitalism as a series of small stupidities, irritations and frustrations. Here are a few. If you encounter any worth a wry smile, please send them to The Scavenger who will publish the best.

“Scientific” research

Increasingly, large companies are shedding their own research departments and “buying in” research from specialists. The obvious advantage of this is that work does not have to be found for idle researchers.

But, more importantly, the external professionals can be assumed to be impartial in their findings. On the other hand, any findings they produce which are not to the liking of the commissioning firm can be referred back for “further confirmation”.

Gray Robertson, President of Healthy Buildings International, USA, a research company, did not wait for this. He personally altered the figures his researchers had established for cigarette smoke levels in buildings. He crossed out the figures and wrote in numbers half as high. This made it possible for the American Tobacco Company to deny knowledge of the addictive and damaging qualities of their products.

The annual budget for the US intelligence empire is S29 billion.

Transporting live cattle

The Transport Minister, Stephen Norris, has opposed the pressure for the government to spend large amounts of money on public transport systems to cut vehicle exhaust pollution. He said that the private car was: “extraordinarily convenient. You have you own company, your own temperature control, your own music and you don’t have to put up with dreadful human beings sitting alongside you.”

Know your place

This month, at the beginning of the new tax year, the government is abolishing the 120-year-old rate levied on field sports—or, more precisely, on the land used for shooting and fishing.

This should raise the market value of thousands of acres of wild, uncultivatable land in Scotland where the price has been depressed in the last few years. Estate agents calculate the value of such land by averaging the number of grouse shot, deer killed or salmon caught. The current value of a brace of grouse in this calculation is about £2,500, a stag at about £18,000 and a salmon in rich rivers at anything up to £10,000.

This is the main reason why Kristiansen (the Lego manufacturer) recently paid around £3 million for the Strathconon estate. The 20,000-acre Tulchan estate in Morayshire fetched £12 million and the rich 32,000-acre Yorkshire estate of Gunnerside was bought by Robert Miller, the American, for approximately £10 million. If you want to enjoy the same sort of freedom to slaughter wildlife, the 6,000-acre Lyon estate in Perthshire is on the market at £2.5 million. A bargain, by the look of it, because it has its own hydroelectric plant.

To be fair, not all such landowners buy the land for blood sports. For some, the objective is simply guaranteed privacy. They want to leave behind the places—and the people—that their wealth comes from. They want that essential quality of private property—to keep everyone else out

“The salary of the chief executive of the large corporation is not a market award for achievement. It is frequently in the nature of a warm personal gesture by the individual to himself ” John Kenneth Galbraith. .

The Scavenger