4 Myths about Organic Foods / Healthy Food Secrets

[facismrising]

13. You like subjective research, the rest of us don't!

https://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/09/13-5

We were not one bit surprised to find that the agribusiness giant Cargill, the world’s largest agricultural business enterprise, and foundations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which have deep ties to agricultural chemical and biotechnology corporations like Monsanto, have donated millions to Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute, where some of the scientists who published this study are affiliates and fellows," said Charlotte Vallaeys, Food and Farm Policy Director at the Cornucopia Institute, a non-profit organic farm policy organization.

http://www.stanforddaily.com/2012/11/16/authors-stand-by-results-of-controversial-organic-food-study/
From stanford website
FOLLOW THE MONEY PEOPLE!
Another area that came under criticism was the source of funding for the research. Critics accused the authors of bias because of Stanford’s financial ties to agricultural companies like Cargill, Inc. and Monsanto Company.

Cargill and Monsanto are both agricultural giants in the food production industry. Both companies have reportedly donated to Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute (FSI). In particular, Cargill has worked with Stanford for 25 years in the Food, Security and the Environment (FSE) program. It has donated $3 million to the University, with another $2 million pledged. The Center for Health Policy, with which Bravata and Smith-Spangler are affiliated, is part of FSI.

However, the Stanford team asserts that neither the FSI nor the money that Cargill donated to FSE was directly associated with any of the research conducted for the study.

“We did not have anything to do with this study,” said FSE Director Rosamond Naylor. “Cargill does not support any of our research projects. They support just the base funding…for running the operation.”

Nonetheless, critics like health advocate and journalist Anthony Gucciardi created a Change.org petition titled “Retract the Flawed ‘Organic Study’ Linked to Big Tobacco and Pro-GMO Corps” calling for the retraction of the study and a review of the findings by a third party. This petition currently has over 6,700 signatures.

Further criticism of the meta-analysis method pointed out the link between Olkin and Big Tobacco companies. The petition alleges that Olkin worked with Big Tobacco companies in the past that used meta-analysis to skew data on the health effects of cigarettes. Due to this precedent, the Change.org petition described the meta-analysis method as a “a way to lie with statistics.”