When it comes to coffee specifically, if you listen to the studies about coffee, it's some panacea full of anti-oxidants. However, it's a stimulant, it increases cortisol (stress hormone). Stimulants generally makes the body prioritize immediate energy spending over regeneration/healing. There's been a study claiming that caffeine decreases neurogenesis, which should negatively impact both long-term memory and mood.

While true and I get your point, there isn't anything inherently wrong with that. We should expect and welcome research with the awareness of vested interests.

Afterall it's not surprising for a substance to be beneficial in certain ways yet harmful in other ways. Research from opposing groups will help identify all interesting attributes of a substance. Until we learn all there is to learn, you should approach these papers more as additional clues pointing to a certain direction and not anything conclusive about the substance in question.

Many purely academic studies are done with predefined strategic objectives of advancing one's own prestige, only publishing positive results that fit "your narrative", and indeed polluting the literature with results that are at best incremental improvements, at worst regressions made up to look like improvements.

(if not then ignore the question - I'm just curious about the mindset of people who do ethically-questionable work)

That won't help. All research is subject to the bias of the researchers. For example, many researchers have been caught fabricating results so they'll get famous. And just because someone is being funded by the government hardly means the government doesn't have a biased interest in the result. Everyone running the government has an agenda that isn't exactly altruistic.

Just a while back there was an article posted about how studies SHOULD start out with defined objectives. The argument was that academics are so desperate to publish positive results that they'll draw any positive conclusion, even if it wasn't what the study started out trying to accomplish.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_dredging

No, we should ban vested interests from funding research studies and reduce the SnR.

How much caffeine was required for this effect and how long did it last?

We still aren't even sure what general diet is fully optimal long term let alone if one constituent can give actual life expectancy benefits.

Let's face it - who would spend the money to fund a study on a substance that's been around for hundreds (thousands?) of years?

Probably if you're going to spend the money to investigate it, you expect some kind of return. So sadly, all these studies end up being funded by people with an interest in a positive outcome.

The bigger question to me is, does that immediately invalidate their results?

It warrants skepticism of the strongest variety unless the study can be reliably replicated under better circumstances. Don’t be shocked when it doesn’t happen though.

Like alcohol studies paid for by brewers, this is hard to accept at face value given the knowns. Even when money isn’t pulling the strings, nutrition studies are notoriously unreliable by dint of human variability and the nature of the studies themselves.

I wouldn't be surprised if around 90-95% of special interest funded studies that aim for a p value of <5% aren't published.

This is true of the majority of publicly-funded research, too.

How many times did they fund this study with different research groups, quietly round filing the results each time until they found a research group willing to p-hack a flattering result?

“You are young yet, my friend,” replied my host, “but the time will arrive when you will learn to judge for yourself of what is going on in the world, without trusting to the gossip of others. Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see."

Considering that most such research results are already non-reproducible and p-hacking, the added vested interests land this squarely in the crap category.

People like us nerds thinking it through strict logic ("still this does not necessarily invalidate") might reduce some false negatives, but it mostly just wastes our time and has us taken for suckers from industry/marketing con men. With this kind of "research" taking a shortcut in its evaluation is more productive.

All true.

Now, by the same token, I am wondering about the effects of decaf. You know, all the alleged "good stuff", none of the sympathetic-nervous-system-stimulation.

If you just want antioxidants (which are themselves oversold too) just eat some berries or something...

I vaguely doubt that.

I mean, this could be tested. Three groups: cold turkey controls, crappy tasting instant coffee group (or even just give them a caffeine pill or something), and full-aroma real coffee group. Groups 2 and 3 get the same amount of caffeine. Now compare the outcomes.

That would be very interesting.

Edit to address Florin_Andrei's critique: last I checked, the organic solvent processes predominant. Just a gestalt, but I suspect there are some adducts produced and the separation, though evaporative, is still imperfect.

Just something to keep in mind.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decaffeination#Decaffeination_...

but you'd have to be more specific as to what your concerns are.

No, drinking burnt coffee isn't going to defend anyone's DNA. This is patently absurd. Come on y'all, don't vote for this kind of stuff. Shame.

The reality however where we don't trust the results (especially around nutrition), the issues with replication of studies, and wrong usage of p-values is the real problem. Perhaps we need to mandate replication studies... I'm not sure what the solution is - but I don't feel blaming the industry is the right approach either. Science has the problem here.

Hmm. This is why climate change deniers can get a foot in the door....

....the door has been jammed open by skewed commercial interests for decades.

Thanks for pointing it out.

Also the list of authors is a bit interesting. Nothing shocking - but interesting.

If it's just bribery, are all of these scientists just selling out constantly?

I have trouble with the notion that we should be immediately skeptical, without reviewing methodology, of any study with industry funding. Some 70% of research funding comes from private entities.[1]

That said, given the current sorry state of "science" (p value abuse, publish or perish, replicability crisis) it wouldn't surprise me if funding related bias really is a common problem.

1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funding_of_science

Cmon use your head here

Whether its the sugar company or the coffee company, who else would do the study just so some college conspiracy theorists dont make a netflix documentary

NOBODY

Its okay to acknowledge the conflict of interest thats literally what the disclaimer is for, but lets not pretend like a more objective version of this study would have ever happened

Precisely, because a more objective version would have found no effect whatsoever.