← Back to context

Comment by ChrisMarshallNY

2 days ago

You're right to be skeptical, but:

> They paid a total of 2 people $50,000.

That's over half a million, in today's dollars.

With inflation, and whatnot, we get numb to what money was, back when.

Other way around. To quote the article:

> To conduct the literature review, the sugar industry paid the Harvard scientists the equivalent of $50,000 in 2016 dollars [...]

So it was actually about ~$5,000 in 1965 dollars.

… it's $68,404 in today's dollars, according to BLS's inflation calc.

(…your figure works out to a 26% per annum inflation rate. The $50k figure is in 2016 dollars — "the sugar industry paid the Harvard scientists the equivalent of $50,000 in 2016 dollars".)