Last November, JAMA Internal Medicine published an excellent invited commentary piece from New York University’s Dr. Marion Nestle on industry funding.
As she reports on her Food Politics blog, the journal then published an objecting letter from a Salt Institute executive.
Dr. Nestle has now shared her response.
Highlights:
* “Although some industry-funded research does produce results contrary to the sponsor’s interests, such instances are rare. Most ends up useful in some way to the sponsors’ commercial objectives; it is marketing research, not basic science.”
* “All scientists have intellectual biases—that is how science gets done and why science works best when researchers with different views of science repeat each other’s experiments. But the goals of scientists pursuing intellectual hypotheses differ markedly from those of companies seeking to sell food products.”
* “Food companies are not public health agencies and should not be expected to be; their first priority is to provide profits to owners and shareholders. Funding research helps with that effort.”
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