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Short abstract:

Knowledge systems that are epistemically corrupted by industries making harmful products are known as "product-defense sciences." This paper examines the epistemic practices behind Coca-Cola’s “soda-defense science,” using the findings to build a conceptual model of these knowledge systems.

Long abstract:

In the hands of industries making products that harm human health or the environment, the strategic corruption of knowledge is a powerful vehicle for product (and industry) defense. Bodies of knowledge created for this purpose are known as "product-defense sciences," and they have distinctive attributes stemming from that raison d’etre. This being a new object of STS study, our approach is necessarily inductive, involving gathering data and looking for patterns and generalities to use as building blocks in conceptual models. This paper examines this class of sciences as a problem of epistemic corruption. The focus is the case of soda-defense science (“soda science”), a body of knowledge created by Coca-Cola and its academic partners to protect sugary soda from the threat to profits brought by public health critiques of soda as a prime culprit in the obesity epidemic. Focusing on two key decades (1995-2015), it uncovers the epistemic practices of the two leading “soda scientists” to understand (1) how they quietly corrupted (mainstream) obesity science to serve industry ends, and (2) how they stabilized and advanced that knowledge by mobilizing ethics practices that concealed the corruption. As skilled quasi-corporate scientists, these researchers succeeded in creating a corrupted knowledge system that was remarkably long-lived. As a huge sector of our knowledge economy, product-defense sciences deserve greater attention. This inquiry is part of a larger project of building a conceptual model of product-defense science that will illuminate the nature, dynamics, and significance of epistemic corruption for industry benefit.