Literally sponsored by the makers of Febreze™. When the LK99 mania has subsided, I'm looking forward to this being replicated by disinterested parties.
It surely is important to note that `The study was supported by Procter & Gamble.`
Corporations and industry are the only ones willing to sponsor all sorts of studies. Can you at least show us some sort of historical convergence rate of industry vs non-industry funded studies? Is it 10%? 90%? If you have such a fatal knee-jerk response just seeing the funding, you must be able to do that, surely.
Frankly, I'd expect industry to simply discard studies that don't support their product (null or negative result) and publish the studies that do promote their products. Either way, I'm left reading the methodology no matter who publishes a study.
> Frankly, I'd expect industry to simply discard studies that don't support their product (null or negative result) and publish the studies that do promote their products.
There could have been a hundred attempts at this study before, all with a negative result, and none of them got published because they didn't have the result industry wanted. We simply don't know. But theoretically, this is something peer review should be able to fix: Researchers without industry support should be able to get the same results if they run the same methodology. Until then, being skeptical of the result seen, even if the methodology is sound, is completely reasonable.
You could level this criticism at any study much simpler. "Oh, the researchers just wanted this to be true." Why even bother singling out industry interest?
It's why meta-analyses are at the top of the evidence hierarchy: they look at multiple studies from varied sources.
But I'd still like to know how much industry funded research converges with non-industry-funded findings. Else you're doing the equivalent of dismissing, say, observational research even though it converges with RCTs 60%+ of the time which I think definitely takes some wind out of the sails of the "observational research is BS" knee-jerk.
As you said, corporations have lots of money, and people who find results that support the corporation’s desired outcomes often get relationships and additional funding. Those who don’t, don’t get relationships and additional funding.
This has at least two consequences:
1) There is a strong and ongoing financial incentive to fudge results in these studies.
2) Those who refuse to do so may not get funds that would allow them to continue in their field at all.
And the methodology means very little. There are tons of ways to cheat and skew the results, while the description of the methodology used remains the same.
Who cares?
What's the point of your comment? Verytrivial's comment had a purpose and utility. Not that it's required. I also would have upvoted your comment if it added anything of value to the discussion.