[1] Public health researchers David Allison and Mark Cope first discussed this bias in a 2010 paper and explained the motivation behind it in terms of "righteous zeal, indignation toward certain aspects of industry", and other factors.
[1] The term white hat refers idiomatically to an ethically good person, in this case one who has a righteous goal.
This initial paper contrasted the treatment of research on the effects of nutritively-sweetened beverages and breastfeeding on obesity.
[citation needed] Allison and Cope suggest that science might be protected better from these effects by authors and journals practicing higher standards of probity and humility in citing the literature.
Young, Ioannidis and Al-Ubaydli (2008)[3] discuss related concepts, framing scientific information and journals in the context of an economic good, with the goal being to transfer knowledge from scientists to its consumers, suggesting that acknowledging the full spectrum of effects on publication and treating addressing the effects as a moral imperative may aid this goal.