
The fight over the sugar industry's influence on nutrition research - Tomte
https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/23/17039780/sugar-industry-conspiracy-heart-disease-research-mark-hegsted-harvard
======
socrates1998
The deeper you get into the research industry, the crazier things get. We are
taught growing up that scientists value truth above everything and scientists
are sort of seen as these demigods of the universe.

Yet, sadly, we know that they are just people who want to be right more than
they want the truth too often.

I mean, if you spent 3-5 years (sometimes much more) of your prime working on
something only to come to the conclusion that your wrong would you just accept
it? OR you "re-adjust" the data and somehow make your p-value significant,
then BOOM, your research is valuable!

This is why so many studies are not reproducible.

~~~
nonbel
>"I mean, if you spent 3-5 years (sometimes much more) of your prime working
on something only to come to the conclusion that your wrong would you just
accept it? OR you "re-adjust" the data and somehow make your p-value
significant, then BOOM, your research is valuable!"

From what I've seen I don't think there is any "OR". That is standard behavior
and people don't even believe there is anything wrong with it.

There really is always some legitimate reason to adjust the data... the
problem is that the method of drawing conclusions (checking for significant
p-values) is incompatible with this. So one or the other practice needs to go.

~~~
3pt14159
Scientists / scientists in training are starting to understand it.

I think almost every last field taught in university would benefit from more
statistics courses, with at least one of them from a bayesian perspective.

The problem is that statistics is boring. Most things in university are
causal. Statistics is kinda fuzzy and unintuitive.

~~~
nonbel
I think you have the blame reversed. These problems were _caused by
statisticians_ who failed to understand there is always a reason to "adjust"
the data. They taught people to apply methods that were inapplicable to the
real-life research conditions they would face.

~~~
ethbro
Agreed.

Statistics can be counter-intuitive, but it's not rocket science.

Playing the "keeper of the true flame" and hiding the internals in intro stats
courses does everyone a disservice.

I get there are a huge amount of non-mathematical scientists who go through
these courses, but they should at least be equipped to get a funny feeling if
they see something odd (and therefore go ask for advice). Rather than just
believe "that's the number that came out."

Mathematically rigorous and vetting meta-studies seem like they would help
here too... validating methods and that studies reproduce within a range.

------
mr_tristan
> One thing is clear: the food industry keeps funding research today — with
> dire consequences.

This article makes it sound like the _majority_ of research funding is coming
from industry, very little from government. Maybe this exacerbates focus on
needing to "succeed" in research, in order to keep justifying funding from
profit motivated sources.

It seems like everyone is so focused on producing "successful" research, that
we just try to fit experiments into to a positive light, and toss out data
that just didn't really "work". Meanwhile, there's probably a lot of data that
just goes unpublished and never shared, and thus, we remain largely ignorant
of what's actually being discovered.

Part of me still feels like it's more of a just broader cultural problem, and
simply shifting who's funding things isn't going to help. Not sure if there's
any effort to simply provide a way of sharing experimental data, i.e.,
something like "open source licensing" for experimental data, etc, where
sharing means you don't get screwed by someone else.

~~~
erichocean
> _This article makes it sound like the _majority_ of research funding is
> coming from industry, very little from government._

Your implication that, were the research funded by government (or some other
non-profit entity), it would somehow be "better" is false. The source of the
funding in all cases influences the allowed results, and determines the
likelihood of future follow-on funding.

If anything, government (at least in the US) is responsible for some truly
harmful dietary advice, and funds researchers who support its policy
positions.

~~~
mr_tristan
That was the article's implication, which I'm not totally convinced of either.

My sense is that the main problem is still the focus on "positive" research
results, and a complete lack of sharing of anything that wasn't successful.
"That research doesn't hold up in this case" isn't really a statement anyone
seems to publish much.

_Maybe_ that's exacerbated by private funding, though I think it's just
generally a cultural problem within the scientific community.

Perhaps a public source of funding would enable the opening up and sharing of
"negative" research results, of which I think there is considerably more data
for. But, given that universities haven't really done that at all to my
knowledge, I'm skeptical of that as well.

The last paragraphs of this article are what struck me as "anti private
funding".

------
will_brown
This Time article details enforcement action by the FTC against a sugar
industry ad campaign for their fake claims:
[https://www.google.com/amp/amp.timeinc.net/time/4088772/suga...](https://www.google.com/amp/amp.timeinc.net/time/4088772/sugar-
information-history/%3fsource=dam)

It’s pretty good as it includes some of the original ads...”sugar is part of a
balanced diet” “sugar doesn’t just fast good, it’s good food” “eating sugar
will help you lose weight”.

~~~
village-idiot
"Eating sugar will help you lose weight" has got to be up there for the most
bold faced lies of the decade, if not the century.

~~~
spraak
It's an indirect lie. Fat is what causes you to gain weight, and then excess
calories. If your diet is not in excess of fat and calories then you can lose
weight with sugar, but no, it doesn't have some magical weightloss chemical in
it.

~~~
village-idiot
That’s not quite right either. You need fat and sugar together. Humans can’t
synthesize fat easily, so dietary fat is what gets stored. But insulin is the
chemical responsible for storing said fat, and insulin levels are heavily
modulated by sugar and other simple carbohydrates.

The rub is that humans _need_ some level of dietary fat. Without it we go into
“rabbit starvation” and die. What we don’t actually need is carbohydrate, we
can live just fine without it for arbitrary periods of time. Since any human
in a non-extreme situation will have dietary fat and can control their carbs,
it’s colloquially correct to say that “sugar causes weight gain”, even if the
technical answer is more complicated.

~~~
spraak
The human body is physiologically a complex (starch) and simple (sugar)
carbohydrate machine. There is enough fat in rice or oats, for example, to
survive. Yes the human body can live without carbohydrates, but it's basically
in adaptive illness that it does. If you start talking about the Eskimo or
Inuit, I'll point to their extremely short lifespan and epic numbers of heart
disease.

------
emodendroket
You don't have to be a mustache-twirling villain with no integrity to be
subtly influenced by your sources of funding.

~~~
Applejinx
But if you do want to attract or turn people into mustache-twirling villains,
offer money.

~~~
antt
Conversely, if you want people to be susceptible to mustache-twirling villains
offer as little money as possible with no job security what so ever.

Modern hard sciences academia is a horrible place and the problem is economic:
there are too many scientists and too few jobs for them.

To quote Stephenson's Cryptonomicon:

>Three years later, he left the Astronomy Department without a degree,and with
nothing to show for his labors except six hundred dollars in his bank account
and a staggeringly comprehensive knowledge of UNIX. Later, he was to calculate
that, at the going rates for programmers, the department had extracted about a
quarter of a million dollars' worth of work from him, in return for an outlay
of less than twenty thousand.

~~~
aidenn0
The math never checked out for me with that; the average PhD student I know
consumes at _least_ twenty thousand in free food while scavenging from various
events.

------
dawhizkid
I'm still dumbfounded how we can have advanced so far in so many areas of
science and technology and yet we are in the dark ages when it comes to
nutrition science. Why is that?

~~~
ballenf
There is only one explanation for the resistance up to hostility I see against
sound advice--willful ignorance. People are so emotionally dependent on food
for a feeling of success, happiness and reward that their mind responds to any
threats like that of an addict threatened with supply interruption.

It's crazy to me how hard it is to switch to a view of food as fuel instead of
as a reward. People who readily eat the worst foods on earth would never think
of putting bad fuel in their car.

With that backdrop, all the food industry needs to do is sew the tiniest
amount of confusion and that lets everyone do whatever they want, because "who
knows for sure!?!?"

~~~
opportune
Asking people to view food as fuel is akin to asking people to view sex as for
procreation. Seems very Puritanical to view the pleasure we receive from food
as a problem or distraction.

People like to eat. It feels good. There is of course a lot of ignorance about
food (and even if you aren’t ignorant it’s still easy to willfully make bad
choices) but that doesn’t mean we should dehumanize it. Just like with sex, we
should study it and develop a healthy culture for it that balances pleasure
and what’s good for us.

Also, I’m somewhat convinced myself that the reason poor people tend to be
very fat is that food for them provides way more bang-per-buck than anything
else at certain income levels. Yeah you may not be able to afford a car or a
nice place to live, or healthcare, or education for your kids, but goddamn you
can eat some delicious food for relatively cheap. It sucks that poor people
get hit hardest by obesity and almost nobody wants to be fat... but at the
same time, I feel like trying to decouple food from pleasure would mean
depriving poor people of one of the few joys they can afford

~~~
rootusrootus
"Among men, obesity prevalence is generally similar at all income levels, with
a tendency to be slightly higher at higher income levels."

[https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db50.htm#mennn](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db50.htm#mennn)

~~~
zeroego
Slightly below that it says the opposite is true for women. Obesity increases
as income decreases.

~~~
rootusrootus
Or put another way, there is no correlation.

------
ilovecaching
That’s why we have peer reviews, PhD defenses, and conferences. No system is
perfect. As a scientist, I find it appalling how distrustful the public is of
science. The only issue is the misrepresentation of science in the media and
the lack of understanding the general public has of the scientific process.

~~~
obmelvin
On one hand, I agree, however, I think it is also quite bad that many
scientists effectively say 'hey, I'm a scientist so you should trust me.'

Clearly we need to find more effective ways to convey science and make people
comfortable with believing research that they aren't capable of assessing.

------
Reedx
The sugar industry is the new cigarette industry. History won't be kind to
them.

~~~
wolco
The sugar industry has been powerful for a long time. The first slaves were
sugar workers. Back then the powers settled wars by trading islands with
sugar.

Sugar has and will be more powerful than cigarettes evet were.

~~~
r00fus
s/cigarettes/tobacco/ and it's still a crapshoot as to which is more powerful.

Both are plantation crops and benefitted from slave labor.

~~~
blevin
Sugar is also a major ingredient in cigarettes. In some brands it is the #2
ingredient by weight.

[http://cebp.aacrjournals.org/content/27/3/357.1](http://cebp.aacrjournals.org/content/27/3/357.1)

------
SketchySeaBeast
> In 2016, The Associated Press showed that candy makers funded a study
> showing that kids who eat candy weigh less than those who don’t.

I don't understand how that level of absurdity can be offered up without
assuming we'd be skeptical. I can see "kids who eat candy don't gain any more
weight" as being a possibility, but thinner? What hubris.

~~~
village-idiot
I mean, if I eat one piece of candy a year, I won't gain weight either.
Somehow I don't think that's the story they're trying to sell.

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
Yeah, not gaining weight is possibly believable - losing weight is ridiculous.

~~~
wolco
It can be true. After antibiotics I lost so much weight rapidly. I can eat
bags of sugar without gaining any weight. I can't breakdown fat at all so
there is more to the story then sugar = weight increase.

It really depends on the bacteria we have in our guts.

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
If you can't break down sugar or fat, what are you living on? You must eat a
heinous amount of protein each day.

~~~
wolco
I eat a ton of fruit based sugar, plant based food and some protein.

No matter how much dried fruit I eat I can't seem to gain a pound. Quantities
like 400 grams of raisins.

~~~
nradov
That could be partially due to the fiber in all that dried fruit acting as a
laxative.

