Willful ignorance tanks

There was a time when I took the term "think tank" at face value. A place for learned people to think about weighty matters and do serious, honest research. I imagined a think tank to be a happy, ivory tower where all our problems were being solved. And being an engineer, I imagined the tank to be in the shape of a cylindrical pressure vessel.

But it turns out that the driving force behind think tanks isn't the search for truth -- it's money. And most of the money comes from wealthy, conservative business interests. Here is what the business interests do. They identify an issue that could impact their profits, and they go to one of these think tanks and give them money and ask if they can do a study that will support the side of the issue that will increase their profits. With the conclusion determined beforehand, the think tank produces a "study" that they publicize and use to influence public opinion and public policy.

Mind you, some of their positions may actually be correct. But the work is tainted by conflicts of interest. So it's hard to trust any of it as being honest and unbiased.

Some examples of right-wing think tanks are the Heritage Foundation, AEI, Cato Institute, RAND, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Hoover Institution, and the Family Research Council. FAIR does an annual study where they count the number of think tank citations in the media. They found that in 2003, only two of the top twelve groups could be classified as left of center.

Chicago is a left-of-center city, but even here a right-wing think tank called the Heartland Institute has found a home for itself. That's a topic for another day...