(Manipulation; 10-03; p.4)

The expert’s report

The fine art of manipulation is encountered by the citoyen in form of the expert’s report. Not only by rhetoric, but also by institutional arrangements independence as well as relevance should be suggested. Accordingly, political sales-men like citing reports of scientific institutes.

On the one hand, such thinking probably takes in that such references make prone to the false reasoning, the arguments mentioned were logically consequent and of practical use because they are uttered by a certain institution or person.

On the other hand, usually it will not be said whether or not the independence of institutes can be seen e.g. in their funding.
Since there are just a handful of institutes in Germany, it is relatively easy to figure out, which one "stands close" to a party.
It is, however, a different matter e.g. for the USA: on first sight the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) as well as the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) are independently funded. A closer look reveals that the IPS is mainly funded by government’s or other organisations’ money for specified projects. The AEI, however, firstly has a much higher budget, secondly lists among its financiers such illustrious names like Dow and Exxon and thirdly has members with a clear proximity to the current US-government like R Perle.

Having said this, it is not an automatism that reports of such institutes are written or used in manipulative intention. But they are produced in relative closeness to their matter of analysis – which is not an unconditional mark of high quality.

(end of article)