I almost missed the support section for authors C.W.C.K. and J.L.S because they are ridiculously long.

"Ethical Approval

Ethical approval was not required for this research."

International Life Sciences Institute, financed by food and chemical industries such as BASF, Coca-Cola, Nestlé, McDonald’s, Monsanto, Syngenta and Pepsi

>Hillarious. The study that says honey good got support from honey.com

What is so hilarious about this? A site that advocates for a product supports anyone who can prove them right, that is just common sense. Would it be equally hilarious if the White House supported a study to show democracy was great? "Oh look, a "democracy" state funded this study, so surely it's all bogus!" Please, think for yourselves, don't just imitate.

I think the parent is pointing to the obvious issue that even an appearance of a conflict of interest undermines the validity of the study even if it does not automatically disqualify it ( edit: not to search very far, at my employer there can't even be an appearance of conflict of interest ). Separately, as some other posters noted, it is interesting that this part will not make the news, but the fact that product X does Y will.

And this also brings out another interesting point about the world we live in today. We have so many resources at our fingertips. I don't consider myself an average consumer, but there is not a day, where I don't find something new about the world and how it operates. It is genuinely hard and time-consuming to dig into details for every single little thing. You have to be able to defer to some level of authority ( and verification of data ), because you will not be able to complete any other relevant work.

This underscores it that point. Most people will start buying more honey. People on HN will tear the paper apart.

So if you speak highly of honey, you get funding from honey.com. If you don't, you get nothing. Now, if you rely on donations to pursue your research, wouldn't that skew the results in favor of honey?

You might want to do some reading about something called "conflict of interest."

How is that hilarious? Do you expect Exxon or Facebook to fund studies on honey?

If you believe honey has good properties, and you even go into the honey business because you believe in it so much, do you just need to wait around until an independent researcher gets the idea to study honey to find out about it?

How about this: can you point to any part of the study which is improper or wrong or looks like this bias may have affected it?

This argument reminds me of back in the day how republicans lambasted al gore for both caring about climate change, and being invested in solar panel companies. Maybe the reason he invested in the companies is exactly because he cares about the issue.

You might want to do some reading about something called "conflict of interest."

I'm familiar with it.

Great comment.

So you have no qualms with the research paid for by tobacco companies or oil companies either, I take it?

I'm a bit perplexed by your comments (and a sibling one) who seems to take great ire (offense?) to a comment that take a part out of the linked article that I personally found "Hillarious".

>How about this: can you point to any part of the study which is improper or wrong or looks like this bias may have affected it?

The comment that I commented on did exactly this; did you expect me to recite that part? I get your criticism if I directly commented on the article, but I merely commented on the additional detail already presented in a comment. (or are you suggesting that a requirement for finding something hilarious is a thoroughly analyzed rebuttal on top of an existing criticism?)

Also, again, I didn't make any argument, but a comment of a quote (observation) presented in the source material linked by parent comment.

so I'd suggest take a step back, read the two comments, ask yourself "what context am I willfully ignoring and putting word in to the commenters mouth"

Thanks for your opinion though, interesting fact about politics and al gore

No, the comment you commented on didn't do that. That person was commenting on the reaction to the paper - of the science journos that wrote an article about it, and readers who took the article's take as gospel. Which is why they ended their post with "I guess no one even took the time to read the abstract of the paper". Because the abstract is fairly innocuous and straight forward, as is the conclusion.

If your assertion is that GPs criticism is about the confidence intervals and the prevalence of "low certainty" - that is the conclusion of the paper. The researchers can't really know the conclusions until they do the research. So would it be better if they didn't publish their paper since the results weren't a glowing endorsement of honey? Isn't it a good thing they published results and called out the fact that they are low certainty?

It would be less hilarious if there were more "honey bad funded by big honey" studies. But those seem to be rare. "Alcohol bad for you funded by Budweiser" stories never seem to show up on HN but if they did they would immediately get my attention.

> Do you expect Exxon or Facebook to fund studies on honey?

yes, through the public research funds allocated from taxes

Can't wait for the next government drawn food pyramid.