A new paper published early this month by “Advances in Nutrition” looked at the important question of whether industry funded research on alcohol and health could lead to sponsorship bias. Today, pretty much any research that is fully or partially funded by industry is often disregarded on the claim of sponsorship bias. However, as long as proper protocols are put in place and fundamental scientific principles are duly respected, the source of funding should not constitute a problem per se.
The first result of this review is that only a tiny part of studies included in the review, 5.4% to be exact, were actually sponsored by industry between 2006 and 2017. Not a lot, since we are talking about 7 meta-analyses that included information from 386 observational studies on the relation of moderate alcohol consumption to a large number of health outcomes, including cardiovascular diseases, cancer, and mortality. All these studies have been used to inform the development of drinking guidelines at the national level.
The second, more important, conclusion is that results were largely identical – whether the study was funded by the drinks industry or not. Ironically, in those cases where results did differ, the results from non-alcohol-industry funded studies tended to demonstrate more favourable health results from moderate drinking than those sponsored by the industry!
This article would be incomplete if we did not acknowledge that some of the authors of the paper are associated with the Dutch Beer Institute. However, doesn’t this maybe proof the very point they are trying to make? The authors have clearly done a very complete analysis, and all the data are available in a 90+ pages supplement allowing anyone to do their own assessment in case of doubt.
This transparent and replicable piece of research appears to confirm a strong consensus about certain health benefits of moderate alcohol consumption. It also shows that research should primarily be scrutinized against the scientific standards used and applied, rather than the source of funding received.
For further comments and analysis click on an article by the International Scientific Forum on Alcohol Research
