Should We Do Away with Responsible Gambling?

Abstract

These stakeholders discuss responsible gambling in the context of today’s gambling research environment. Currently, the field of gambling studies is in the midst of an unnecessarily combative research environment of accusations and innuendo that lean on the shadow of past industry funding abuses and masquerade as objectivity and empiricism. The authors indicate that this situation makes judgments regarding responsible gambling difficult. The authors illustrate this difficulty by discussing contemporary controversies related to psychological and biological gambling research, responsible gambling, and industry-funded gambling research, more generally. Following these discussions, the authors focus on the issue of responsible gambling in detail and provide perspective, as research scientists, for how responsible gambling efforts can effectively move forward in the current environment. The authors conclude the chapter by considering whether the escalating attacks on industry funding in gambling research are empirically warranted or, on the contrary, empirically ignorant, and whether gambling research and researchers can serve as models for achieving ethical industry partnerships in science.