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Resveratrol Health Benefits Relied on Faked Data

January 16th, 2012 Leave a comment Go to comments
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Red wine aficionados take note: The health benefits of antioxidant resveratrol may have been exaggerated or outright falsified. A researcher from the University of Connecticut played around with data in 145 different studies over the course of seven years, in order to make the chemical compound, derived from the skins of grapes, appear more beneficial to our health than it really is.

There’s a danger in academic research that tends to create a bias towards the results hypothesized by the researcher:

“If you are blatantly honest about your failures, you will get nowhere…The fact is that reviewing agencies want success. Therefore you spin your data in the most favorable way. That’s where the dangers begin to come – that you spin it a little more than you can justify and then one thing leads to another. It’s a very mushy, very fuzzy line.” Read more from the Los Angeles Times….

Now guess what happens to bias when research is funded by a food company interested in specific outcomes. Even if the company does not explicitly say what the expected results are, there is a certain pressure to please. For example, most research done on aspartame over the course of its existence was funded by companies with financial interest in its success as an artificial sweetener.

Nutrition science is complicated. It is so hard to isolate a specific nutrient and see how it affects metabolism, weight loss, or disease control. Designing research that accounts for hundreds of variables and still yields trustworthy results is a difficult task.

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  • http://twitter.com/ShakleeDistr Cheryl Legg

    This is why I choose to work with Shaklee Corporation and their products. Dr. Jamie McManus, Chairman of Medical Affairs, Health Sciences and Education, Shaklee Corporation said, “Our team has invested years of research to locate and isolate a unique blend of potent plant phytochemicals which when combined with resveratrol have been shown in laboratory studies to positively impact four key mechanisms of cellular aging by protecting and repairing cellular DNA, positively impacting genetic regulators, promoting cellular energy production and Vivix ingredients are 10 times more powerful than resveratrol alone at slowing AGE protein formation.”*[You can find Shaklee clinical studies information at:http://www.clinicals.shaklee.com/ as well as http://www.physicians.shaklee.com/. I recommend checking these out... many peer-reviewed journals have and have published the results as well.]

  • http://www.fooducate.com/blog Fooducate

    You’ve got to be kidding. We would delete this comment as spam, but it actually serves to point out the quackery out there today. 
    How about eating fruits and vegetables to get those plant phytochemicals?

  • http://www.fooducate.com/blog Fooducate

    You’ve got to be kidding. We would delete this comment as spam, but it actually serves to point out the quackery out there today. 
    How about eating fruits and vegetables to get those plant phytochemicals?

  • http://www.facebook.com/jcyochum James Yochum

    You can eat fruits and vegetables? 

  • http://twitter.com/kenleebow Ken Leebow

    For a reality check, I recommend reading Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science … http://bit.ly/glqExY

    It starts out saying: Much of what medical researchers conclude in their studies is misleading, exaggerated, or flat-out wrong. So why are doctors—to a striking extent—still drawing upon misinformation in their everyday practice? Dr. John Ioannidis has spent his career challenging his peers by exposing their bad science.

  • Greg Keeports

    Your article smacks of the tendencies that you criticize. Where is the dasta to prove this? What is your evidence? The private companies use research to further their success and using falty datas is always discovered and the risk/price is too high. As an ex-research manager in a private corporation we valued negative results since that helped us to decided direction of research in the future. Following poor leads due to false data is ruinous. What you describe is more applicable to global warming studies are shown to be biased when all data is considered and e-mail record demonstrates deliberate collusion. Univeristy and governemnt researchers have more motive to present “favorable” results, otherwise their funding disappears.

  • Greg Keeports

    Wow, your website is really unstable this morning.

  • http://www.nutsci.org Colby

    The title and commentary here is inappropriate. Sure it is a shameful example of shady research practices, but retracting these publications does not invalidate all resveratrol research (see for example
    http://retractionwatch.wordpress.com/2012/01/12/so-how-peripheral-was-dipak-das-resveratrol-work-really/ ). There are hundreds of papers on resveratrol each year, it is one of the most researched compounds mechanistically. Sure it is probably premature to promote supplementation with it based on the limited  clinical trials, but that stands true prior to these retractions. 

    The recent small human trial showed some metabolic benefits to resveratrol supplementation (which I doubted would happen). Should others/larger trials confirm, it may yield an inexpensive method to subtly improve some measures of health.

  • Mariah

    Greg, there was a link to the L.A. Times article that this small article is based off of. You should check it out…

  • http://www.nutsci.org Colby

    Another good article that was just published: 
    http://chronicle.com/blogs/percolator/red-wine-and-lies/28345

  • stupid people should not breed

    Right, we get our science facts from the L.A. Times. It is a rag. What an insipid turd you are, Mariah. Maybe a good swirlie would straighten you out — you should check it out.

  • http://foodtrainers.blogspot.com Lauren Slayton

    This is so upsetting, yes would expect from company funded but now “where’s the research” does not apply. So we can trust who? 

  • Replying to Idiont

    The LA Times isn’t exactly The Lancet, dear. I bet you get your “science” from Oprah and Dr. Oz, don’t you?

  • Mariah

    Woah, chill out! No need to insult.

    “Your article smacks of the tendencies that you criticize. Where is the dasta to prove this? What is your evidence?” 
    I was referring to this quote. I was simply stating that Fooducate is mostly explaining a story and giving a link, not giving “dasta” to prove it. Maybe if you had thought about the context of my comment you wouldn’t have written a rude reply.