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Coca-Cola's influence on research

Quote:

“Always read the small print”: a case study of commercial research funding, disclosure and agreements with Coca‑Cola

Sarah Steele, Gary Ruskin2, Martin McKee, David Stuckler

Abstract

Concerns about conflicts of interest in commercially funded research have generated increasing disclosure requirements, but are these enough to assess influence?

Using the Coca-Cola Company as an example, we explore its research agreements to understand influence. Freedom of Information requests identified 87,013 pages of documents, including five agreements between Coca-Cola and public institutions in the United States, and Canada. We assess whether they allowed Coca-Cola to exercise control or influence.

Provisions gave Coca-Cola the right to review research in advance of publication as well as control over (1) study data, (2) disclosure of results and (3) acknowledgement of Coca-Cola funding. Some agreements specified that Coca-Cola has the ultimate decision about any publication of peer-reviewed papers prior to its approval of the researchers’ final report. If so desired, Coca-Cola can thus prevent publication of unfavourable research, but we found no evidence of this to date in the emails we received. The documents also reveal researchers can negotiate with funders successfully to remove restrictive clauses on their research.

We recommend journals supplement funding disclosures and conflict-of-interest statements by requiring authors to attach funder agreements.

https://link.springer.com/content/p...019-00170-9.pdf

Very interesting find, Grav. I find the following statements make me extremely uneasy:

Quote:

"Although not all agreements we reviewed allow for full recall of research documents and materials, we identified several agreements that in effect allow Coca-Cola to terminate a study, if the findings are unfavourable to Coca-Cola."

"We did find evidence suggesting that Coca-Cola exerts influence on the design, conduct and write-up of studies, retaining rights to comment and have input throughout the research process."

This allows subtle and not so subtle actions to influence outcomes or suppress unfavorable news. Bias then becomes something that could be present and not easily detected.

This doesn't just happen with Coke. It is rampant in the pharmaceutical industry too. The studies that are killing people need to be stopped early of course, but there are ones where the placebo outperforms the drug. It is not my field, but I was on my university's Research Policy and Development Committee when a young professor and several grad student stipends were paid by a grant from BigPharma that stopped a study prematurely and basically set the professor's career back 5 years and the grad students had to drop out or scramble to find another project or supervisor. Academically, continuing the studies would have been very interesting, since in science we learn more when things do not go as expected. If a theoretical weight-loss drug makes some people gain weight, for instance, wouldn't you want to know why and try the opposite? When scientists are not allowed to publish the bad results, others will waste time and money trying the same thing.