Should industries fund health research? Should we believe them if they do?

January 13th, 2007

Who pays the piper calls the tune.

Well, not ALWAYS, but often enough that you need to identify the funding source before you can have full confidence in published research on beverages.  An article in the online journal PLoS Medicine finds that when an industry funds research into one of its own products — beverages in this case — the results tend to be more favorable to the industry.  In this study out of Boston, researchers found that studies of interventions had 0% unfavorable findings when there was industry funding, but 37% unfavorable when there was no industry funding.  Statistically, it is very unlikely that this is just by chance.

There is a controversy here.  A lot of health-related research is funded by industry.  PLoS editors say that 30% of the 100 billion spent on biomedical research in 2004 was provided by pharmaceutical companies.  Can we trust it?  Should we insist on foundation or government funding, insulated from economic or political pressure?

Entry Filed under: Uncategorized, Healthy Lifestyle Research, Making Choices