FYI:
"H.K. received fees for providing consultant services to Tchibo GmbH. K.K. and S.M. reported no conflicts of interest."
One of the main authors was compensated by the largest coffee retailer in Germany.
One of the main authors was compensated by the largest coffee retailer in Germany.
It is decidedly in the interest of coffee conglomerates to demonstrate that coffee is good for society, because it justifies the great fiscal and human expenses they go to, to bring fresh coffee to your breakfast table. Not passing judgement either way, it's just an interesting lens to consider.
There was a nice article in the new yorker a couple months ago on the subject of society's shifting moods towards coffee, and how it's materialized in the literature and science. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/04/27/the-war-on-cof.... One of the reviewed books: https://www.amazon.com/Coffeeland-Mans-Empire-Making-Favorit....
Edit: oh boy. I misread the parent comment. I thought they had declared a conflict of interest. Sorry. I didn't intend for my comment to read as a corporate-research apologia.
Usually the science isn't good even with no conflicts of interest, with 80% or more of studies being non-reproducible BS full of errors and cherry-picking.
Now consider the percentage when there's also conflict of interest...
Coffee companies are businesses, not charities or art projects. They exist to make money, that is their justification for existing.
Notwithstanding whether the CoI is declared, that's about all it reads as, to be frank.
> It is decidedly in the interest of coffee conglomerates to demonstrate that coffee is good for society, because it justifies the great fiscal and human expenses they go to, to bring fresh coffee to your breakfast table.
I don't think that coffee is necessarily good for society, and that they're doing us a great service by revealing supporting information to us.
> consider the opportunity cost: we could instead be researching many other things that don't carry as high a cost as coffee (in terms of production labor, refining, and transportation), and may commute even greater benefits
I actually think we (as a society) should be more uniformly investing in the basic research: not only in things that make certain companies marginally more profitable, because now their expensive products are scientifically-proven to be "healthy".
However, I do think it's unreasonable to expect corporations to do this research for us, because they have no incentive to, as a sibling comment of yours pointed out. This vein of thought is nuanced, and I concede that it could be easily misinterpreted as apologia, given the context of my original message (which was misinformed).
To try and rescue the discussion, it's interesting to observe that many "healthy" things are "also" revenue-generating narratives. For example, "exercise is healthy" is great for the sportswear cartel, which has a similarly poor track record on human rights.
It doesn't mean that the thing itself can't be objectively healthy, but I totally agree with you that we should take these projections for what they are, especially when they're sponsored by the business that profits from them.
If you're curious in reading something that builds on the "revenue-generating narrative" idea more, I recommend the new yorker link, it's quite good. :)
People need to understand that "conflict of interest" does not mean "proof of wrongdoing", it means being in a situation where serving one interest could be a detriment to another. There is 100% a conflict of interest here.