If Alice funded you and Alice had a pet cause of X, I would find that information useful in evaluating your writeup of X.
However I wonder if this is due to the phrasing of “pet cause”. If you get funding from the Gates Foundation and you recommend a global health intervention, I really don’t think you need to put disclosures about that.
Which unfortunately leaves me without a principled distinction. In this case, with knowledge of the actors involved, I doubt it would affect your funding if you had/hadn’t recommended these non-profits, so I don’t feel like I would have needed the disclosure. But, yeah, unprincipled.
I think there should generally be disclosure statements, especially when it comes to unbiased charity evaluation.
Even when it comes to uncontroversial causes such as global health, disclosure statements have their place:
For instance, the Gates foundation has funded research showing that additional spending in low-income countries from 2015-2030 will avert a death for $4,000-11,000 and that more aid should be spent on this cause. Yet, because the aid pie is somewhat fixed and global health might not be the most effective use of funds, the Gates foundation trying to advocate for and leverage funds for global health might have net negative side effects.
Within causes, disclosure statements might not be as important.
In this case here with psychedelics, there is legitimate worry about (real or perceived) conflicts of interest, especially because some prioritization is highlighted (“psilocybin for depression, is similarly as impactful as our recommendations in other areas”) and given that the Good Ventures funding for these two non-profits that are singled out was very recent (one a year ago).
I think there should generally be disclosure statements, especially when it comes to unbiased charity evaluation.
In science, it is now standard practise to disclose any funding (see for instance PLoS ONE’s funding disclosure policies).
Even when it comes to uncontroversial causes such as global health, disclosure statements have their place:
For instance, the Gates foundation has funded research showing that additional spending in low-income countries from 2015-2030 will avert a death for $4,000-11,000 and that more aid should be spent on this cause. Yet, because the aid pie is somewhat fixed and global health might not be the most effective use of funds, the Gates foundation trying to advocate for and leverage funds for global health might have net negative side effects.
Within causes, disclosure statements might not be as important.
In this case here with psychedelics, there is legitimate worry about (real or perceived) conflicts of interest, especially because some prioritization is highlighted (“psilocybin for depression, is similarly as impactful as our recommendations in other areas”) and given that the Good Ventures funding for these two non-profits that are singled out was very recent (one a year ago).