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Sugar_cubes

According to a report just published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, 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.

Yep. Sugar contributes to coronary artery affliction, more than we have been led to believe.

Reports had linked both dietary sugar and dietary fat to center disease as early on as the mid-50s; by 1960 we knew that low-fat diets high in sugars still resulted in high cholesterol levels. So in 1964, the director of the SRF proposed that the grouping "embark on a major program" to dispute the information as well every bit any "negative attitudes toward saccharide." They institute a group of Harvard diet scientists who would accept their coin, and started making plans.

Complete with a codename, Project 226 was designed to protect the interests of the sugar industry by "recapturing" the 20% of American calorie intake they expected to lose once this whole sugar-isn't-nifty-for-your-heart thing percolated through into public awareness. Information technology resulted in a two-office review published in the prestigious and influential New England Journal of Medicine, which manus-waved abroad huge swathes of research pointing out the risks of dietary sugar.

The authors went to absurd lengths to discount studies that didn't tell the story the Saccharide Research Foundation wanted to tell. For example, to get the results they wanted, they had to throw out all the studies done on animals, because not a single animal written report supported the conclusion they wanted. But after they finished their work, they reported that epidemiological studies showed a positive association betwixt loftier dietary sugar consumption and amend centre affliction outcomes. The review concluded that at that place was "no uncertainty" that the merely way to avoid heart illness was to reduce saturated fatty.

sugar

How did this get past the sanity bank check at NEJM? The authors were experts, respected in their fields, and they were at least consequent ruddy-pickers. They also conveniently failed to study that the Sugar Research Foundation funded their "written report." NEJM didn't kickoff requiring authors to written report conflicts of interest until 1984, and past then the sugar industry had floated comfortably on their 1964 precedent, funding study after written report supporting their pro-carbohydrate narrative "as a principal prop of the industry's defence force."

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

Industry-funded conclusions

Can we finally talk about industry-funded studies? I'one thousand not proverb that scientists shouldn't be able to work for private research establishments. Obviously the money to buy the pipettes and reagents has to come from somewhere. But I am proverb that there needs to be an unpleasantly brilliant spotlight on the financial resources enabling the scientific findings cited to support policymaking, whether political or medical. What industry would ever pay to support research that would put it out of business? Whether or not yous're in favor of industry cocky-regulation, no thing 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 up lining someone'southward pockets at the expense of others' health. Later how many deaths or lost person-years do the manufacture payoffs kickoff being blood money?

I for one, every bit a bench scientist, am mightily tired of hearing near scientists taking money to produce the correct conclusion. This is the kind of crap Bill Nye was railing against in his comments that the industry barons who pay off scientists to fit the results to the desired conclusions possibly should be thrown in jail. It'south prima facie fraud.

The whole point of science is that you accept the measurements and and so you written report them. The conclusions y'all draw must stand up upward to the best-researched, all-time-founded, and most pedantic objections your colleagues tin make. If they don't — if your results aren't reproducible — so you take to field some other, better explanation. It's non supposed to exist done under anyone'southward 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 like 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's how it ought to be. The only solution to corruption in scientific discipline is to get more than critical eyes on the whole procedure. There needs to be an independent torso of investigative experts accountable to the public, who have to submit to a zealous and difficult-hitting research into their financial interests, and who can serve every bit a sanity check for advisory boards or legislative committees.

We demand a Mythbusters for medical advice: someone who isn't a wholly owned subsidiary of the manufacture. Someone who tin turn on the lights and forcefulness the roaches of corruption to besprinkle. Pay-to-win gaming isn't off-white, and people detest it, and pay-to-win science is just as bad. It's virtually time to kickoff paying the skeptics, because an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

But the only style we can do the above is if the science is accessible. How much do you think a subscription to every major scientific periodical would cost, even at the discounted academic rate? The European union'due south Horizon 2022 directive provided hosting and access that made freely available all research funded even in role by EU money — while the authors retain the right to license, patent or commercialize their piece of work, the peer-reviewed papers reporting their results are now gratuitous, equally in libre and gratis. When they publish in Nature or wherever, they also take to publish in the European Research Council's public database.

Nosotros should do that in the US, because hosting is cheap. So mayhap we could afford 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 merchandise it is to root out misunderstandings and weasel words. Policy grounded in inquiry needs to exist officially subjected to the kind of person who but tin't stand it when someone is wrong on the internet. Give usa some accountability and tear downward this paywall.

Research: doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2016.5394

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