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Sugar_cubes

Co-ordinate to a report just published in the Journal of the American Medical Clan, a delegation from the Sugar Research Foundation paid off Harvard scientists to produce reports that falsely downplayed the role of sugar in coronary heart disease.

Yes. Sugar contributes to coronary artery disease, more than we have been led to believe.

Reports had linked both dietary sugar and dietary fat to middle disease as early on as the mid-50s; by 1960 nosotros knew that low-fat diets high in sugars even so resulted in high cholesterol levels. So in 1964, the director of the SRF proposed that the group "commence on a major plan" to dispute the data as well as whatsoever "negative attitudes toward saccharide." They found a group of Harvard diet scientists who would take their money, and started making plans.

Complete with a codename, Project 226 was designed to protect the interests of the carbohydrate manufacture past "recapturing" the 20% of American calorie intake they expected to lose once this whole sugar-isn't-great-for-your-eye thing percolated through into public awareness. Information technology resulted in a ii-part review published in the prestigious and influential New England Periodical of Medicine, which hand-waved away huge swathes of enquiry pointing out the risks of dietary sugar.

The authors went to absurd lengths to discount studies that didn't tell the story the Sugar Research Foundation wanted to tell. For instance, to get the results they wanted, they had to throw out all the studies done on animals, because not a single animal study supported the conclusion they wanted. Simply after they finished their work, they reported that epidemiological studies showed a positive clan between loftier dietary sugar consumption and ameliorate centre disease outcomes. The review ended that there was "no doubt" that the only manner to avoid eye disease was to reduce saturated fat.

sugar

How did this get past the sanity check at NEJM? The authors were experts, respected in their fields, and they were at least consistent cherry-pickers. They also conveniently failed to report that the Sugar Research Foundation funded their "study." NEJM didn't start requiring authors to report conflicts of involvement until 1984, and by and then the carbohydrate industry had floated comfortably on their 1964 precedent, funding study after study supporting their pro-saccharide narrative "every bit a principal prop of the manufacture'due south defense force."

Nobody knows how many reviewers they paid to endorse the conclusions of their false science.

Manufacture-funded conclusions

Can we finally talk almost manufacture-funded studies? I'k not saying that scientists shouldn't be able to work for individual research establishments. Obviously the money to buy the pipettes and reagents has to come from somewhere. Simply I am proverb that there needs to exist an unpleasantly vivid spotlight on the financial resources enabling the scientific findings cited to back up policymaking, whether political or medical. What industry would e'er pay to support research that would put it out of concern? Whether or not yous're in favor of industry cocky-regulation, no matter whether the research is funded by taxes, commercial revenue, or charitable sources, everyone deserves policies that are made based on the whole truth — not based on a callously selective interpretation of the facts that ends upward lining someone's pockets at the expense of others' wellness. After how many deaths or lost person-years practise the industry payoffs offset existence blood coin?

I for one, as a demote scientist, am mightily tired of hearing about scientists taking money to produce the right determination. This is the kind of crap Bill Nye was railing confronting in his comments that the industry barons who pay off scientists to fit the results to the desired conclusions maybe should be thrown in jail. It's prima facie fraud.

The whole point of science is that you take the measurements and then y'all report them. The conclusions you lot describe must stand up to the best-researched, best-founded, and most pedantic objections your colleagues can make. If they don't — if your results aren't reproducible — then you lot accept to field another, better explanation. It's non supposed to be done under anyone's agenda, nor for anyone's conclusions that they want you to reach, and shame on the people who manufacture research to support their preconceived ideas. This is exactly like what Phillip Morris and the other cigarette companies did. Shit similar this is the reason people don't trust science.

Solving the access problem

The peer-reviewed paper in which the scientists make this report is freely available from the JAMA, and that'south how it ought to be. The just solution to corruption in scientific discipline is to get more critical eyes on the whole process. In that location needs to be an independent body of investigative experts accountable to the public, who have to submit to a zealous and hard-hitting research into their financial interests, and who can serve equally a sanity check for advisory boards or legislative committees.

We need a Mythbusters for medical advice: someone who isn't a wholly owned subsidiary of the industry. Someone who tin turn on the lights and force the roaches of corruption to scatter. Pay-to-win gaming isn't fair, and people hate it, and pay-to-win science is just as bad. It'due south about time to start paying the skeptics, because an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Just the just way we tin can do the to a higher place is if the science is accessible. How much practice you call up a subscription to every major scientific periodical would cost, even at the discounted academic rate? The Eu's Horizon 2020 directive provided hosting and admission that fabricated freely available all enquiry funded even in function by Eu coin — while the authors retain the correct to license, patent or commercialize their work, the peer-reviewed papers reporting their results are at present free, every bit in libre and gratuitous. When they publish in Nature or wherever, they also have to publish in the European Inquiry Quango'south public database.

We should do that in the US, considering hosting is inexpensive. Then peradventure we could beget to hire people like Penn and Teller, Adam and Jamie, or Phil Plait and James Randi: people with faces we know and judgment nosotros've checked, people whose stock in trade it is to root out misunderstandings and weasel words. Policy grounded in research needs to be officially subjected to the kind of person who simply can't stand up information technology when someone is wrong on the internet. Give us some accountability and tear downwards this paywall.

Research: doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2016.5394

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