This admission is privately echoed by top players at magazines owned by major publishers, who sometimes cite more lax ad/edit divisions at European magazines as a catalyst. But a jacket showing up in a fashion layout doesn’t equal, say, a series of paid-for Cadillac references showing up in a short story that doesn’t have the words “special advertising section” topping it, nor a long account of a mountaineering expedition studded with mentions and visuals of the adventurers chowing down on Power Bars. —Jon Fine —Marketers Press for Product Placement in Magazine Text (Ad Age)
I blogged this as yet another example (see also “Faking It: Sex, Lies, and Women’s Magazines“) to show my students for why they should be extremely critical of anything that they read.
While humans are still going to be biased and imperfect no matter the venue, academic articles are supposed to be free from this kind of manipulation, thanks to the peer review process. Via M. L. O’Brien.