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A comment on Nutrient found in beef and dairy improves immune response to cancer. Parent comment

Re:Nutrient found in beef and dairy improves immune response... by odyssey7 on Monday November 27, 2023 @12:45PM (#38435446)
It is interesting that this PR pre-empts the natural takeaway many would have — eating more dairy or red meat — by reductively representing the options as “cheeseburgers” and “pizza.”

Checking out the research paper[1], the competing interests section declares that Chen “has patents pending on TVA and TVA derivatives.”

I don’t think the underlying reasoning is incorrect, but the way it’s presented is interesting.

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06749-3

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Re:Nutrient found in beef and dairy improves immune response... by jdkee on Monday November 27, 2023 @12:51PM (#38435549)
"the competing interests section declares that Chen “has patents pending on TVA and TVA derivatives.”"

That basically destroys his credibility on the topic.

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Re:Nutrient found in beef and dairy improves immune response... by s1artibartfast on Monday November 27, 2023 @02:00PM (#38436625)
I think it confers credibility on the topic. It is what you would expect if they actually believe it has therapeutic potential.

I would be more skeptical if they made claims about benefit but we're taking no Acton to commercialize or protect it

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Re:Nutrient found in beef and dairy improves immune response... by hilux on Monday November 27, 2023 @01:55PM (#38436539)
I think that's going a bit far.

Technology commercialization by universities is the way any academic research (potentially, eventually) reaches the public, and it's quite normal for the original researchers to be involved in the commercialization venture, as advisers, or as CEO. They know the topic best.

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Re:Nutrient found in beef and dairy improves immune response... by Root_Denied on Monday November 27, 2023 @02:03PM (#38436659)
I agree - in cases like this patents are a large part of the motivation behind studying the thing in question, if they didn't have patents they wouldn't do the research.

It's up to peer review and replication studies to confirm any effects. Even if there weren't any credibility issues with a piece of research this would be true.

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