Due to random chance, you'll sometimes get positive results, and sometimes get negative results. If all of those studies are published, then there isn't a huge problem -- a metastudy would show that on average cocoa doesn't affect health.

But instead, support that only the positive studies are published. A third party reviewing the relevant literature will assume that all studies conducted showed a positive result, when in fact they were only the studies that were published.

This is the problem with having sponsored research: the research itself can be done properly, but a bias in publishing can give an inaccurate view of the true science at hand.

Ask yourself why this is so. Could it have to do with a reduction in public investment in original research, or, alternatively, an overall reduction in investment in unencumbered research?

Point being: this work used to get done by non-corporate scientists, too.

And incidentally I'd say a big part of the problem is that the research is totally misleading.

You basically just answered your own question. You hate it when Big (Whatever) does the research, but you are actually more distrusting of a small operation.

I have spent a lot of years getting myself healthier. I have gone through something like 5 iterations of a health blog to try to talk about that and share information completely for free with people who desperately need a better answer than society is giving them currently.

I kept redoing the blog in part because it was such a total and complete shit show. I got all kinds of open hatred from people for trying to say "X, y and z were helpful for me. I think thus and such is why. Here is supporting research I found that fits with my experience." and making that information available absolutely for free.

I don't know an answer for you. But maybe think about how you are part of the problem here. Ask yourself: What would it take for you to trust a small operation? You are simply dismissing them out of hand. What if a small operation could be useful? What would they need to do to be useful and get taken seriously?

It's hard for any one person to read tens or hundreds of papers on a subject and critically examine them for fallacies, look for fake data, etc. It's just not plausible.

At this rate, if us commonfolk are just expected to take a default position of not believing a scientific study or consensus until we personally vet them, what are we to actually believe? Do I need to go out and personally vet that evolution is real by personally reproducing some fruit fly studies?

We're heading down a scary road if we cannot trust our scientific institutions to be unbiased.

There are NO institutions WHATSOEVER that we should trust.

Material science puts out thousands of papers a year, and ignoring them is easy because I lack context to understand them. IMO, the same is true of any field without a lot of study and literature review.

The very fact of science is that you can take the same experiment and under the said assumptions; you can repeat the same experiment yourself and come to similar conclusions as the one done by the original scientists.

> I doubt that mom and pop have the cash to do research. And I sure as hell won't trust any mom and pop research about pharmacology.

AD Hominem fallacy - the status of someone has no relation to the outcome of a scientific experiment.

Except that you can't: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-39054778

Science is facing a "reproducibility crisis" where more than two-thirds of researchers have tried and failed to reproduce another scientist's experiments, research suggests

That's not what the parent comment is arguing. The parent comment points out that research is expensive and not available equally to all groups.

The status of mom and pop doesn't effect the outcome of their research. Mom and pop weighing R&D against making their mortgage that month usually means they don't invest much in research.

> And I sure as hell won't trust any mom and pop research about pharmacology.

Regardless of Mom and Pop store investments, the outcome of scientific experiments don't depend on who does the experiments.

It is not an ad hominem fallacy. I don't know how you twisted his meaning to come to that conclusion.

Not to mention supplies. I worked as a lab assistant for a dude studying the effects of zebra mussels in closed freshwater lake systems in Indiana (dams and whatnot, where the mussel would need to have been introduced to the lake). Microscopes capable of counting the young, ventilation hoods (for preservation chemicals), scales, and methods of disposing of biowaste from the traps for adults? Yeah, that's even more - and this dude had a pretty low budget. What he did have was the time to put into the research which is yet another thing that alludes folks. Some fields of study really needs better equipment than we were using - plus it has been 20 years since then.

It isn't that the low-budget stuff or the "mom and pop research" is less valid or not good enough. It is that even that level is cost-prohibitive.

Heck, we used xrays to fit shoes on people long after she died.[1] I'm sure part of that was humans being slow to regulate it, but still.

Knowing that x or y substance is dangerous brings a different perspective, I think. By the time I worked with formaldehyde, we knew we needed some precautions. I also think it is wise to consider age and mental capacity: IF someone isn't old enough to have full adult rights (including drinking, warring, and renting cars) they probably shouldn't be able to decide to not be careful. But then again, by the time one is educated to today's standards, they are old enough.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoe-fitting_fluoroscope

Because the comment also mentioned this

> And I sure as hell won't trust any mom and pop research about pharmacology.

The comment essentially means that peer reviewed scientific experimental results from mom & pop are untrustworthy over big companies.