And although it’s important to acknowledge specific COI, like industry-sponsored research, that isn’t the whole story. In truth, we all share a universal COI, which is that our career advancement - the next degree, job, grant, promotion, etc. - depends on producing “good” results.

Yeah - that’s really my point. COI discussions tend to focus on private funding, but I think from the standpoint of undue external pressure to produce results, public funding isn’t all that different.

than it is already.

It’s also worth noting that public funding can present its own issues. When it’s very competitive to get and keep public funding, that also creates pressure on researchers to produce impressive results. With paylines at the NIH potentially dropping to ~5% in the coming years, this will be even worse

If your concern is with private funding of science in general, I suppose there’s room for debate. But as federal funds for science are cut in the US, private funding will be increasingly important. For me, now that Trump has cut all federal funding to Harvard, private funding is keeping us afloat.

I’m not sure I understand what you’re seeking here either. If the issue is transparency, each of the PI’s above has been open about their collaborations with industry - enough so that they’re easily recognizable from the logos you display and your joke works.