Nutrition-related research biased by funding

EN: Well, I think it is nothing completely unexpected but interesting to see research going on about this: Lesser et al. showed that nutrition studies are biased by the sources of their funding.

For interventional studies, the proportion with unfavorable conclusions was 0% for all industry funding versus 37% for no industry funding (p = 0.009). The odds ratio of a favorable versus unfavorable conclusion was 7.61 (95% confidence interval 1.27 to 45.73), comparing articles with all industry funding to no industry funding.

A similar study regarding financial biases in clinical studies was published already some years ago [2].

[1] Relationship between Funding Source and Conclusion among Nutrition-Related Scientific Articles. Lesser LI, Ebbeling CB, Goozner M, Wypij D, Ludwig DS PLoS Med. 2007 Jan 9; 4(1): e5

[2] Association between competing interests and authors' conclusions: epidemiological study of randomised clinical trials published in the BMJ. Kjaergard LL, Als-Nielsen B BMJ. 2002 Aug 3; 325(7358): 249