According to The Guardian, social network Facebook and researchers at the Cornell University have denied that the allegations of several publications which claimed that the controversial "emotion contagion" experiment carried out by Facebook was funded by the US Department of Defence (DoD).

The possibility of the Facebook's "emotion contagion" experiment being in service of the US military has been voiced by several publications. The allegations are apparently rooted in the fact that Cornell University professor Jeffrey Hancock - one of the leading academic researchers on the Facebook study - earlier had ties with the DoD's Minerva Research Initiative.

However, rebutting the allegations about DoD having probably funded the "emotion contagion" experiment, Facebook told The Guardian that the study was entirely self-funded.

Facebook also asserted that the company is definitely not a willing participant in the 2008-launched Minerva Initiative, which funds research into the modelling of dynamics, risks and tipping points for extensive civil unrest all over the world, under the command of different agencies of the US military.

Reiterating Facebook's assertion, John Carberry - Cornell University's director of media relations - said: "While Prof Hancock, like many researchers, has conducted work funded by the federal government during his career, at no time did Professor Hancock or his postdoctoral associate Jamie Guillory request or receive outside funding to support their work on this PNAS paper."