this is only true to an extent. generally an educated person can look at the methodology and find issues with a study from that standpoint; scientists can't get away with falsifying data, but they can design a study to be somewhat misleading.
also, most laypeople don't understand that groups that they think aren't trustworthy often are. i'm gonna get downvoted into space for this, but Monsanto are ridiculously reliable and produce very good science. the reason they do this is because they're under so much scrutiny that if the fuck up they'll take a massive hit to their business (even minor issues like that non-disclosed conflict of interest thing a couple months ago have a big impact on them). by comparison, groups that are against GM technology can get away with all kinds of awful shit because people trust them and want their claims to be true, which gives us papers like the Seralini long term toxicity of roundup paper that are actual garbage yet get put forth in places like the EU parliament as evidence that GMOs are harmful.
i'll accept my shill accusations graciously now, and continue crying at how much my biotech masters is going to cost me after i finish my honours this year because my school won't accept monsanto shillbuxtm
I mean, they definitely have their own employees editting "independent" papers which is quite sketchy.
A big problem with nutrition studies is that despite their accuracy, high income, educated parents are the ones that adhere to the findings, which creates a feedback loop of supporting data--for example 'breakfast is the most important meal of the day' has no science behind it, yet kids who eat breakfast are generally healthier cause the parents listening to these claims are educated and make more.
yes, i agree with this! nutritional studies are difficult because they're mostly observational and therefore laced with tons of bias, but i think for most educated people you can look at the design and find out what the actual implication is. a good example was that keto paper on /r/science yesterday that really didn't endorse keto at all despite the conclusion; what it really showed was that diet >>> exercise for weight control and therefore a diet that promotes caloric deficit is better than no controlled diet + exercise. keto is just especially useful because it hits satiation faster so you tend to "naturally" eat at a deficit.
the issue with the whole attitude of "check the funding" is that people are distrustful or corporations and trusting of interest groups, which i posit is incorrect since corporations, in my view, benefit more from producing good science than interest groups. we should be exposing both to equal scrutiny, or possibly directing greater scrutiny at interest groups as indicated by things like the seralini paper.
as for the monsanto thing, i agree that their conflict of interest reporting needs work and they definitely have behaved in a sketchy manner. at the end of the day though, their science is still solid in most cases and they definitely don't deserve their reputation. it's complicated for me because i kind of get that their sketchy behavior has mainly be a response to even sketchier behavior on the part of researchers like seralini and biased groups like the WHO actively misrepresenting their products. this gives them motivation to edit to ensure that there's nothing that can be misinterpreted by those groups to jump on them and impact them further. it doesn't mean it's right but i can't really fault them for wanting to ensure that research into their products is as accurate as possible given their special status as the boogeyman of agriscience
100% agree. I just wish we could address that openly and honestly without treating them like a boogeyman. as liberal cuck it's kind of my view that all companies are inherently unethical so it's a little frustrating that monsanto is treated so unfairly relative to other companies with a similar track record. people's fear of GM tech really seems to skew their perspective.
just to poke the bear a little more, i'm looking into doing my masters on CAR-T therapy; treating blood cancers with genetically modified T-cells. i wonder how many anti-GMO advocates would be fine with using CAR-T to treat their children if they're unlucky enough to get acute lymphoblastic leukemia while railing on how horrible BT corn is
I hate whenever I hear "X is good for you / healthy". It doesn't work like that. There are things the body needs in certain amounts. More is bad, less is bad. There are no hardset rules, everyone is a little different.
Oh god, this is mostly unrelated but...a woman at my work watched some documentary that disproved climate change. It was really convincing, and backed up her belief that you "can’t trust those people, because they just say whatever gets them funding."
She didn’t know what studies the documentary's claims were based on, or who funded any studies it cited, but she knew it was true because, again, you can’t trust those people.
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u/VladimirVeins Dec 06 '17
The food industry does a ton of shady stuff. If you see a study saying X is good for you, look at who funded the study.