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."