I think this question is part of the bigger question: "How to find out who / what organization funded a study / research?". If a meat producer or organization is behind a study, most probably the results will be biased towards what is convenient for it.

So, the more important issue is to spot biased studies.

Since any study requires money to be made, funding bias may be a concern. Misconduct is rarely the cause, but other more subtle causes will bias the results, such as publication bias or selection bias. This type of cause often make the study/research appear as very professional and convincing, as only those with some statistics and/or research background will be able to understand the flaws.

Coming back to your question, I think one may use the following criteria in evaluating how biased a study may be:

1. Disclosure of funding sources - is a good indicator to be used in bias assessment (source)

2. Journal reputation - the reputation of the journal publishing the research may help in quality assessment. Typically, high reputation journals will avoid publishing low quality (high-biased) studies.

3. Very simple conclusion - most contexts deal with hard to understand phenomena. E.g. effect of red meat consumption. This article seems quite biased to me, because it concentrates on the health benefits minimizing the side effects. However, this article is balanced in dealing with both positive and negative effects.

4. Research effort - an article/study that goes into many aspects of the problem (especially the one opposite to the conclusion) is less likely to be biased. I find this article to be such a case.

5. Background information - researchers academic background, how they are seen by their peers, study citations and other academic indicators may help in assessment of research quality

6. "findings are thus inconsistent" - I find that such a conclusion is the most appropriate in most cases. It shows a good modesty that we do not really know everything about something and further research is required. However, two things should come with such a conclusion:

• a clear illustrations of pros and cons with relevant references, so that one can have an informed decision: assumes the cons wile pursuing the pros (e.g. takes the risk of developing forms of cancers while eating the read meat, while aiming for B12, Iron etc.)

• how we deal with it. One way is to use the precautionary principle ("an action or policy has a suspected risk of causing harm to the public, or to the environment, in the absence of scientific consensus (that the action or policy is not harmful), the burden of proof that it is not harmful falls on those taking that action.") and this is quite popular within the European Union. For our red meat eating example, it means: I would better avoid eating red meat because they could not prove it is not harmful (higher risk of developing some forms of cancer is quite a health risk).

I think this question is part of the bigger question: "How to find out who / what organization funded a study / research?". If a meat producer or organization is behind a study, most probably the results will be biased towards what is convenient for it.

So, the more important issue is to spot biased studies.

Since any study requires money to be made, funding bias may be a concern. Misconduct is rarely the cause, but other more subtle causes will bias the results, such as publication bias or selection bias. This type of cause often make the study/research appear as very professional and convincing, as only those with some statistics and/or research background will be able to understand the flaws.

Coming back to your question, I think one may use the following criteria in evaluating how biased a study may be:

1. Disclosure of funding sources - is a good indicator to be used in bias assessment (source)

2. Journal reputation - the reputation of the journal publishing the research may help in quality assessment. Typically, high reputation journals will avoid publishing low quality (high-biased) studies.

3. Very simple conclusion - most contexts deal with hard to understand phenomena. E.g. effect of red meat consumption. This article seems quite biased to me, because it concentrates on the health benefits minimizing the side effects. However, this article is balanced in dealing with both positive and negative effects.

4. Research effort - an article/study that goes into many aspects of the problem (especially the one opposite to the conclusion) is less likely to be biased. I find this article to be such a case.

5. Background information - researchers academic background, how they are seen by their peers, study citations and other academic indicators may help in assessment of research quality

6. "findings are thus inconsistent" - I find that such a conclusion is the most appropriate in most cases. It shows a good modesty that we do not really know everything about something and further research is required. However, two things should come with such a conclusion:

• a clear illustrations of pros and cons with relevant references, so that one can have an informed decision: assumes the cons wile pursuing the pros (e.g. takes the risk of developing forms of cancers while eating the read meat, while aiming for B12, Iron etc.)

• how we deal with it. One way is to use the precautionary principle ("an action or policy has a suspected risk of causing harm to the public, or to the environment, in the absence of scientific consensus (that the action or policy is not harmful), the burden of proof that it is not harmful falls on those taking that action.") and this is quite popular within the European Union. For our red meat eating example, it means: I would better avoid eating red meat because they could not prove it is not harmful (higher risk of developing some forms of cancer is quite a health risk).