Currently browsing posts about: Conflicts-of-interest

I learned about this one from a press release: “Can eating mangoes reduce women’s facial wrinkles?”

A new study from researchers at the University of California, Davis, finds eating Ataulfo mangoes, also known as honey or Champagne mangoes, may have another benefit — reducing facial wrinkles in older women with fairer skin. The study was published in the journal Nutrients.

Postmenopausal women who ate a half cup of Ataulfo mangoes four times a week saw a 23 percent decrease in deep wrinkles after two months and a 20 percent decrease after four months.

Surely, this can’t be serious?  Who paid for this?

The study: Prospective Evaluation of Mango Fruit Intake on Facial Wrinkles and Erythema in Postmenopausal Women: A Randomized Clinical Pilot Study.  Vivien W. Fam, Roberta R. Holt Carl L. Keen, Raja K. Sivamani .  and Robert M. Hackman.  Nutrients 2020, 12(11), 3381; https://doi.org/10.3390/nu12113381

Method: Women were given either 85 g or 250 g of mangos to eat every day for 16 weeks.  Their wrinkles were photographed and measured before and after.

Conclusion: “The intake of 85 g of mangos reduced wrinkles in fair-skinned postmenopausal women, while an intake of 250 g showed the opposite effect.”

Funding: “This study was supported in part by a grant from the National Mango Board (NMB)…which also supplied the fresh mangos for the study. The NMB had no role in the study design, data collection, data analysis, manuscript preparation, or publication decision.”

Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Comment:  I love mangos (despite being somewhat allergic to them), but come on.  According to the press release, the researchers “said it’s unclear why consuming more mango would increase the severity of wrinkles but speculate that it may be related to a robust amount of sugar in the larger portion of mangoes.”  Another interpretation is that mangos have no effect (which makes more sense).  In any case, this study did not compare mangos to any other fruit.  This is a classic case of an industry-sponsored study coming out with results favorable to the sponsor’s interests and allowing those interests to be announced in a press release.  The authors may think industry sponsorship does not create a conflict of interest, but much evidence strongly suggests that it does (I reviewed that evidence in my book, Unsavory Truth).

Even after writing Unsavory Truth: How the Food Industry Skews the Science of What We Eat I could hardly believe this particular example.

The Study: Exploring the Influence of Alcohol Industry Funding in Observational Studies on Moderate Alcohol Consumption and Health.   Moniek Vos, Annick P M van Soest, Tim van Wingerden, Marion L Janse, Rick M Dijk, Rutger J Brouwer, Iris de Koning, Edith J M Feskens, Aafje Sierksma.  Advances in Nutrition, Volume 11, Issue 5, September 2020, Pages 1384–1391.

Methods:  This is a meta-analysis of meta-analyses of studies examining the health effects of alcohol consumption that are used as the basis of international guidelines for alcohol consumption.

Results and conclusions: “only a small proportion of observational studies in meta-analyses …are funded by the alcohol industry. Based on this selection of observational studies the association between moderate alcohol consumption and different health outcomes does not seem to be related to funding source.

Funding: “The authors reported no funding received for this study.”

Author disclosures: “MV, APMvS, TvW, MLJ, RMD, RJB, IdK, and AS were employed by the Dutch Beer Institute during the study and writing of the manuscript. This Institute is funded by Dutch Brewers, which is the trade organization of the 14 largest beer brewers in the Netherlands. EJMF reports no conflicts of interest.”

Comment: This one defies credulity: an industry-funded study—most authors work for the beer industry—of whether industry funding affects research outcome.

Guess what?  It didn’t find any effect.

For years, the alcohol industry has been working hard to convince regulators and the public that moderate drinking, especially of wine and beer, is not only harmless but actually improves health.  This study is an example of how this industry attempts to accomplish that goal.

For another egregious example, see this post.

When I saw the title of this study, I had two questions:

• Why would anyone do a study like this? (OK, in short-term studies, consuming water or soup before meals reduces immediate calorie consumption, but in the long term?)
• Who paid for it?  (Getting the answer to this one took some digging).

The study: Association between soup consumption and obesity: A systematic review with meta-analysis. M.Kuroda and K. Ninomiya. Physiology & Behavior,  Volume 225, 15 October 2020, 113103.

Conclusion: “soup consumption is significantly related to lower odds ratio of obesity…suggesting that soup consumption was inversely correlated with a risk of obesity.”

Marta Zaraska, the author of Meathooked: The History and Science of Our 2.5-Million-Year Obsession With Meat and, more recently, Growing Young: How Friendship, Optimism and Kindness Can Help You Live to 100, sent me this message:

While doing research on my 3rd book I stumbled upon a research paper in which the authors “forgot” to disclose connections to the meat industry. I thought this may be interesting to you. Here is a link to the paper – https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10408398.2020.1741505

And here is a link proving that the lead author is taking money from the meat industry – which was not disclosed in the paper: https://www.usi.edu/liberal-arts/focus-newsletter/liberal-arts-achievements/la-achievements-2018-2019/

I thought this was well worth a look.  The full paper is here.

Title: “Meat and mental health: a systematic review of meat abstention and depression, anxiety, and related phenomena.”  Dobersek U, et al.  Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition, 2020, published ahead of print.

Method: This is an meta-analysis of previously published papers (18) that compared the psychologica health of meat consumers and meat abstainers.

Conclusion: “The majority of studies, and especially the higher quality studies, showed that those who avoided meat consumption had significantly higher rates or risk of depression, anxiety, and/or self-harm behaviors…Our study does not support meat avoidance as a strategy to benefit psychological health.”

When I saw this conclusion, I immediately wondered: “Who paid for this?”  Bingo!

Funding: This study was funded in part via an unrestricted research grant from the Beef Checkoff, through the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association. The sponsor of the study had no role in the study design, data collection, data analysis, data interpretation, or writing of the report [for an interpretation of this last statement, see my book, Unsavory Truth: How Food Companies Skew the Science of What We Eat].

What got Marta Zaraska’s attention was the denial of conflicted interests related to this paper.

Disclosure: “No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).”

But the University of Southern Indiana praises the 2018-2019 accomplishments of the first author of this paper as follows (my emphasis):

Dr. Urska Dobersek, assistant professor of Psychology, and her students presented their research, “Are levels of testosterone, willingness to cheat and exercise motives related?” and “The relationship between facial asymmetry and exercise” at the North American Society for the Psychology of Sport and Physical Activity national conference in Baltimore, Maryland.

Dobersek also received a $10,555 grant from the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association to conduct a systematic review on “Beef for a Happier and Healthier Life.“

Oops.  Omission of this grant gives the appearance of conflicted interest and should have been disclosed.  I hope the author corrects this oversight immediately.

If the other authors have similar connections to meat industry group, they too should disclose them.

Simón Barquera, who directs the Center for Research on Nutrition and Health at the National Institute of Public Health in Cuernavaca, sent me a copy of this letter, which he found on Twitter (but it’s no longer there):

It’s from the president of the Mexican Society of Nutrition and Endocrinology thanking Coca-Cola for donating Personal Protective Equipment to deal with Covid-19.

The Mexican Nutrition Society has a cozy relationship with Coca-Cola?

I wonder what that’s all about.

Conflicts of interest anyone?

Double-blind placebo controlled trial of the anxiolyticeffects of a standardized Echinacea extract.  József Haller,| Laszlo Krecsak| János Zámbori.  Phytotherapy Research.2019;1–9.

Conclusion: “These findings suggest that particular Echinacea preparations have significant beneficial effects on anxiety in humans.”

Conflict of interest statement: JH is one of the authors of a US patent on the anxiolytic effects Echinacea preparations.

Comment: I don’t usually bother to write about supplements because so little evidence supports their benefits over placebos.  This study finds small better-than-placebo benefits for this particular Echinacea supplement, presumably the one covered by the first author’s patent.  I’d be happier with independently funded research.  In the meantime, the European Food Safety Authority continues to have doubts.  Will this study make that agency change its collective mind?  We shall see.

I could not keep up with the number of e-mails I got last week with the subject line “Have you seen this?”

“This” referred to an opinion piece in JAMA entitled Backlash Over Meat Dietary Recommendations Raises Questions About Corporate Ties to Nutrition Scientists.

Definitely up my alley.

The article describes the outraged reaction to a series of papers in the Annals of Internal Medicine last year arguing that recommendations to eat less meat are unfounded (I posted about this at the time).  Some of the investigators involved in the meat papers turned out to have undisclosed ties to meat industry interests.

The JAMA article points out that the most outraged objections to the Annals papers came from investigators who have plenty of industry ties (plant-based) of their own.

My book, Unsavory Truth: How Food Companies Skew the Science of What We Eat, provides loads of evidence for a basic observation: research funded by food companies, regardless of the particular food studied, tends to produce results favorable to the sponsor’s interests.

It also describes how industry influence occurs at an unconscious level; recipients are unaware that they are being influenced.

How the influence gets expressed is also the subject of research.  Bias most frequently turns up in the framing of the research question.  It also turns up frequently in the interpretation of results.

Here is an example from a study of a healthy plant food—walnuts.

The study: Effect of a 2-year diet intervention with walnuts on cognitive decline. The Walnuts And Healthy Aging (WAHA) study: a randomized controlled trial.  Aleix Sala-Vila, Cinta Valls-Pedret, Sujatha Rajaram, Nina Coll-Padrós, Montserrat Cofán, Mercè Serra-Mir,  Ana M Pérez-Heras, Irene Roth, Tania M Freitas-Simoes, Mónica Doménech, Carlos Calvo, Anna López-Illamola, Edward Bitok, Natalie K Buxton, Lynnley Huey, Adam Arechiga, Keiji Oda, Grace J Lee, Dolores Corella, Lídia Vaqué-Alcázar, Roser Sala-Llonch, David Bartrés-Faz, Joan Sabaté, and Emilio Ros1.  Am J Clin Nutr 2020;00:1–11.

Conclusions: Walnut supplementation for 2 y had no effect on cognition in healthy elders. However, brain fMRI and post hoc analyses by site suggest that walnuts might delay cognitive decline in subgroups at higher risk. These encouraging but inconclusive results warrant further investigation.

Conflicts of Interest: AS-V, SR, JS, and ER have received research funding through their institutions from the California Walnut Commission, Folsom, CA, USA. JS and ER were nonpaid members of the California Walnut Commission Scientific Advisory Council. ER was a paid member of the California Walnut Commission Health Research Advisory Group. JS has received honoraria from the California Walnut Commission for presentations.  AS-V has received support from the CaliforniaWalnut Commission to attend professional meetings. All other authors report no conflicts of interest.

Comment: This looks to me like a classic example of interpretation bias.  Although the study showed no effect of walnut supplementation, the authors interpret its overall results as encouraging.  This is putting a positive spin on null results.

Walnuts—and other kinds of nuts—are plant foods with healthy fats.  Why does the California Walnut Commission need to do this?  So you will buy walnuts rather than hazelnuts, pecans, or macadamia nuts (all of which are sponsoring their own positive-result studies).  Studies like these are mostly about marketing.

Questions of whether meat is healthy or unhealthy—and, if unhealthy, at what level of intake—are about much more than marketing.   They need to be studied as objectively as possible.  It’s best to keep industry influence far away from such studies.

Even if the science is done well from start to finish, researchers’ ties to food company sponsors give the appearance of conflicted interests.  Such ties are best avoided from the get-go.

Follow-up

• A detailed analysis of the JAMA piece by the anonymous CarbSane blog
• Naomi Oreske’s comment in Scientific American
• Texas A&M’s letter to Harvard requesting an investigation of faculty belonging to True Health Initiative (who complained about the meat guidelines)
• Texas A&M’s Chancellor Calls on Harvard to Look Into Faculty’s Beef-science Ethics (AgDaily)
• Beef with Harvard (Inside Higher Ed)
• From Beef to Bots? Harvard Professors Mired in Debate over Spam Emails, Industry-Funded Research (Harvard Crimson)
• Conflict of Interest in the Post-Truth Era: What Is It, Now? (David Katz)
• Processed Meat “Guidelines:” Why the Exceptional Reaction? (David Katz)
• Tobacco, Soda, and the Beef with Truth (David Katz)
• Massive Meat Mayhem, Part 3 (ConscienHealth)
• Perspective: Red and Processed Meats and Health Risks: How Strong Is the Evidence? (Frank Hu et al)

Even though my book, Unsavory Truth: How Food Companies Skew the Science of What We Eat, is now published, I’m still collecting particularly entertaining examples of industry-funded research that should trigger the question, “Guess who paid for this?”

Matured Hop-Derived Bitter Components in Beer Improve Hippocampus-Dependent Memory Through Activation of the Vagus Nerve, by Tatsuhiro Ayabe, Rena Ohya, Yoshimasa Taniguchi, Kazutoshi Shindo, Keiji Kondo & Yasuhisa Ano .  Scientific Reports, 2018; 8: 15372.

Background: Our group has focused on the constituents of beer, and we found that iso-α-acids, major bitter components in beer derived from hops (Humulus lupulus L.), improve cognitive impairment in an Alzheimer’s disease (AD) mouse model and high fat diet-induced obese mice.

Conclusion: Vagus nerve activation by the intake of food materials including MHBA [matured hop bitter acids] may be a safe and effective approach for improving cognitive function.

Competing Interests: T.A., R.O., Y.T., K.K. and Y.A. are employed by Kirin Co., Ltd. The authors declare no other competing interests with this manuscript.

[Thanks to Eric Bardot and Maggie Tauranac for sending this excellent example}.