Question

Read the following Science News article (Beil, Laura. "Sugar industry shifted health focus: payments to authors influenced 1967 report indicting fat." Science News, 15 Oct. 2016, p. 7.)

Part A

Records unearthed from library storage vaults reveal that, in the 1960s, the sugar industry paid Harvard University nutrition experts to downplay studies linking sugar to heart disease, helping to redirect the scientific narrative for decades.

The documents--which include correspondence, symposium programs and annual reports--show that the Sugar Research Foundation (its name at the time) paid professors who wrote a two-part review in 1967 in the New England Journal of Medicine. That report was highly skeptical of the evidence linking sugar to cardiovascular problems but accepting of the role of fat. The now-deceased professors' overall conclusion left "no doubt" that reducing the risk of heart disease was a matter of reducing saturated fat and cholesterol, according to researchers from the University of California, San Francisco, who published their report online September 12 in JAMA Internal Medicine.

"Why does it matter today? The sugar industry helped deflect the way the research was developing," says study coauthor Cristin Kearns, a dentist at UCSF's Institute for Health Policy Studies. The Harvard team's scientific favoritism helped direct research and policy attention toward fat and cholesterol. The first dietary guidelines published by the federal government in 1980 said there was no convincing evidence that sugar causes heart disease, stating "the major health hazard from too much sugar is tooth decay."

Following the Harvard report, fat and cholesterol controlled the scientific agenda for decades, leading to a craze of low-fat foods that often added sugar. Kearns points out that it was only in 2015 that dietary guidelines finally made a strong statement to limit sugar. Researchers writing this year in Progress in Cardiovascular Diseases note that current studies estimate that diets high in added sugars carry a three times higher risk of death from cardiovascular disease. (The Sugar Association says on its website that "the last several decades of research have concluded that sugar does not have a unique role in heart disease.")

The Sugar Association also acknowledged the secret deal, but noted that "when the studies in question were published, funding disclosures and transparency standards were not the norm they are today." Journals now require all authors to list conflicts of interest, especially funding from a source that has a vested interest in the outcome.

That doesn't mean that industry groups no longer have an influence, says Andy Bellatti, strategic director of Dietitians for Professional Integrity. But the influences may be more subtle, he says. "We're not talking about making up data, but perhaps influencing how a research question is framed."

In a commentary published with the new study, Marion Nestle, a nutrition researcher at New York University, cited recent New York Times investigations of Coca-Cola-sponsored research and Associated Press stories revealing that a candy trade group sponsored research attempting to show that children who eat sweets have a healthy body weight.

Bellatti says that researchers sometimes turn to commercial sources because "there is such little public funding for nutrition and disease" research.

For that reason, scientists should not reject industry money wholesale, says John Sievenpiper, a physician and nutrition researcher at the University of Toronto. A study of his was once ridiculed on Nestle's blog because the disclosures covered two pages. He says that any scientist who takes industry money should adhere to a higher standard of openness, including releasing protocols ahead of time so reviewers can make sure the research question was not changed midstream to favor a certain conclusion.

Which one(s) of the following likely bolstered the scientific agenda of the Sugar Research Foundation? Select all that apply

Which one(s) of the following likely bolstered the scientific agenda of the Sugar Research Foundation? Select all that apply

industry-funded research

a publicly funded study on the link between sugar and heart disease

a 1967 report in a peer-reviewed scientific journal

conflict of interest disclosures

Answer 1

Correct options:

industry-funded research

a 1967 report in a peer-reviewed scientific journal

Public funding in nutrition and disease research is scarce. Therefore, the researchers rely on industry money to fund their research projects. The Sugar Association exploited this fact and funded the nutrition and disease researchers. In return the the researchers served their interests by not linking sugars to cardiovascular diseases and instead they demonized fats in 1967 report in New England Journal of Medicine which is a peer-reviewed scientific journal. These bolstered the scientific agenda of The Sugar Association.