I do agree with you that client quality and incentives are a serious potential problem here, especially when we consider potential funders other than Open Phil. A potential solution here is for the rest of the EA movement to make it clear that “you are more likely to get future work if you write truthful things, even if they are critical of your direct client/more negative than your client wants or is incentivizing you to write/believe,” but maybe this message/nuance is hard to convey and/or may not initially seem believable to people more used to other field norms.
I do agree with you that client quality and incentives are a serious potential problem here, especially when we consider potential funders other than Open Phil. A potential solution here is for the rest of the EA movement to make it clear that “you are more likely to get future work if you write truthful things, even if they are critical of your direct client/more negative than your client wants or is incentivizing you to write/believe,” but maybe this message/nuance is hard to convey and/or may not initially seem believable to people more used to other field norms.