Conflict of interest in research on anthropogenic noise and marine mammals: Does funding bias conclusions?

The U.S. Navy, whose sonars kill marine mammals, provides approximately 50% of the funds for marine mammal research worldwide. We examined six reviews of research on the effects of anthropogenic sound on marine mammals, as well as the primary papers cited in the reviews. These reviews cite references showing noise has no effect on marine mammals at an increasing frequency as their funding moves from a conservation organization to independent to partial U.S. military sources. Primary papers are 2.3 times more likely to be cited in the reviews as concluding no effect of noise if the research was militarily-funded than if not. Thus, conflict of interest may have led to a misrepresentation of the effects of noise on marine mammals in both the primary and secondary literature, and thus misinform public policy decisions.