Bias in Dairy Research

Over the past decade, I have exposed many dozens
of frauds published in scientific journals, often
uncovering hidden financial relationships between
the powerful dairy industry and unethical scientists
who literally take the money and run (to hell).

This week, a European journal (Public Library of
Science-Medicine, Jan, 2007) concluded:

"Industry funding of nutrition-related scientific articles
may bias conclusions in favor of sponsors' products, with
potentially significant implications for public health."

On one hand, it is personally comforting for me to have
support for beliefs regarding such bias, but on the other
hand, it is frustrating that such lies continue for the
unwary public, and that those lies are reinforced by the
continuous media support paid for and delivered by a
deceptively calculating dairy industry.

The Abstract: PMID: 17214504

Lesser LI, Ebbeling CB, Goozner M, Wypij D, Ludwig DS.

BACKGROUND:

Industrial support of biomedical research may bias
scientific conclusions, as demonstrated by recent analyses
of pharmaceutical studies. However, this issue has not been
systematically examined in the area of nutrition research.
The purpose of this study is to characterize financial
sponsorship of scientific articles addressing the health
effects of three commonly consumed beverages, and to
determine how sponsorship affects published conclusions.

METHODS AND FINDINGS: Medline searches of worldwide
literature were used to identify three article types
(interventional studies, observational studies, and
scientific reviews) about soft drinks, juice, and milk
published between 1 January, 1999 and 31 December, 2003.
Financial sponsorship and article conclusions were
classified by independent groups of coinvestigators. The
relationship between sponsorship and conclusions was
explored by exact tests and regression analyses,
controlling for covariates. 206 articles were included in
the study, of which 111 declared financial sponsorship.
Of these, 22% had all industry funding, 47% had no industry
funding, and 32% had mixed funding. Funding source was
significantly related to conclusions when considering all
article types (p = 0.037). For interventional studies, the
proportion with unfavorable conclusions was 0% for all
industry funding versus 37% for no industry funding (p = 0.009).
The odds ratio of a favorable versus unfavorable conclusion
was 7.61 (95% confidence interval 1.27 to 45.73), comparing
articles with all industry funding to no industry funding.

CONCLUSION:

Industry funding of nutrition-related scientific articles
may bias conclusions in favor of sponsors' products, with
potentially significant implications for public health.
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Consider that there are 250,000 journals in this biased
world of ours, and that those studies making it to the
newspapers, magazines, and radio and television programs,
are those which are promoted by rigorous marketing efforts
including expensively catered press conerences paid for
by those with financial product bias. In that sense, there
is no level playing field, and the group of scientists
performing the above research should take that factor into
account in a follow-p study. They would most certainly
discover that the problem of fairly presenting scientific
information to the layperson is much greater than they
even imagined.

Robert Cohen
http://www.notmilk.com
i4crob@...