Our New York partner, Shireen Barday, spoke to Gordon Katic on Cited’s podcast, The Rationality Wars, which tells stories about the political and intellectual battles to define rationality and irrationality.
This mini-series, entitled The (ir)Rational Alaskans, focuses on the Exxon Valdez oil spill and examines how, after a jury of ordinary Alaskans found that Exxon had to be punished, the company fought back against their punishment (which was US$5 billion in damages) by, in part, supporting research that suggested jurors are irrational and lack the experience, expertise and attention spans to do what’s asked of them in punitive damages cases.
In the final episode, Shireen comments on the findings of research that she undertook while studying at Stanford on the number of academic research papers that were published at the time on punitive damages, and what percentage of that research was funded by corporations versus universities. Her findings showed that a large portion of the research was, in fact, funded by Exxon and that this corporate funded research was 25 times more influential than non-corporate funded research.
To listen to the podcast, click here.
The (ir)Rational Alaskans is a partnership with Canada’s National Observer. You can also read about this story in Jacobin Magazine.