Before weighing a recommendation, find out what the person making it gains if you say yes (commission, funding, votes, attention, status), and adjust how much independent confirmation you require accordingly.

How to do it

1. 1Ask directly how the adviser is paid: salary, fee from you, commission from the product provider, referral bonus, affiliate link, or equity in what they recommend.
2. 2For research and expert claims, look for the funding statement and the author disclosures, then check whether independently funded work reaches the same conclusion.
3. 3For media and online content, ask what the business model rewards. Content paid by attention is selected for arousal, not for being representative.
4. 4Ask the mirror question: what would this person be saying if the opposite were true? If the answer is "the same thing", their statement carries little information.
5. 5Scale the verification, not the dismissal: the stronger the incentive, the more you need a second source that does not share it.
6. 6Apply it to yourself. List what you gain from believing the claim (comfort, vindication, belonging) and treat that as an incentive too.

When to use it

• •Financial, insurance, real-estate, and medical-device advice from someone paid on the sale.
• •Product reviews, rankings, and "best of" lists that contain affiliate links or sponsored placements.
• •Studies, white papers, and expert testimony commissioned by a party to the dispute.
• •Advocacy from any organization, of any political colour, whose fundraising depends on the threat it is describing.

Counters

Evidence and how strong it is

The association between funding and conclusions is well documented. Lexchin et al. (2003) found in a systematic review that industry-sponsored drug studies were about four times as likely to reach conclusions favourable to the sponsor, a pattern confirmed for drugs and devices in a Cochrane review (Lundh et al. 2017). Oreskes & Conway (2010) trace how a small group of funded experts manufactured doubt about tobacco, acid rain, and climate. Friestad & Wright (1994) describe the general mechanism: recognizing a persuasion motive changes how a message is processed. Evidence strength: strong (systematic reviews) that financial interest predicts conclusions; mixed on disclosure as a remedy. Cain, Loewenstein & Moore (2005) found that disclosing a conflict of interest led advisers to give more biased advice while advisees discounted it too little, so knowing the incentive helps only if you act on it by getting an unconflicted second opinion.

1. Lexchin, J., Bero, L. A., Djulbegovic, B., & Clark, O. (2003). Pharmaceutical Industry Sponsorship and Research Outcome and Quality: Systematic Review. BMJ, 326(7400), 1167-1170
   Systematic review finding industry-funded studies substantially more likely to report outcomes favouring the sponsor.
2. Lundh, A., Lexchin, J., Mintzes, B., Schroll, J. B., & Bero, L. (2017). Industry Sponsorship and Research Outcome. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, (2), MR000033
   Cochrane review confirming that sponsorship of drug and device studies is associated with more favourable results and conclusions.
3. Cain, D. M., Loewenstein, G., & Moore, D. A. (2005). The Dirt on Coming Clean: Perverse Effects of Disclosing Conflicts of Interest. The Journal of Legal Studies, 34(1), 1-25
   Experiments showing that disclosure alone can worsen advice and is under-corrected for by recipients.
4. Friestad, M., & Wright, P. (1994). The Persuasion Knowledge Model: How People Cope with Persuasion Attempts. Journal of Consumer Research, 21(1), 1-31
   The model of how recognizing a persuader's motive changes the way a message is evaluated.
5. Oreskes, N., & Conway, E. M. (2010). Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming. Bloomsbury Press
   Historical documentation of funded expert campaigns designed to create the appearance of scientific controversy.