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Comment by geoka9 | Hacker News Reader

Or for Pete's sake...

What I tell patients is, if you like coffee, go ahead and drink as much as you want and can," says Dr. Peter Martin, director of the Institute for Coffee Studies at Vanderbilt University. He's even developed a metric for monitoring your dosage: If you are having trouble sleeping, cut back on your last cup of the day. From there, he says, "If you drink that much, it's not going to do you any harm, and it might actually help you. A lot.

What else can you expect from an "institute" with a name like this?

And, surely enough, a little more digging brings this:

Nashville's Vanderbilt University is to establish an Institute for Coffee Studies this fall, funded by $6 million from the Brazilian Coffee Association and other coffee-growing organizations.

http://www.nature.com/nm/journal/v5/n3/full/nm0399_252b.html

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That was a rather selective quote, given that the same article says this just a paragraph down:

Institute director, Peter Martin, stresses that his research group wants to maintain "arms length" from the coffee industry for ethical reasons. "We are setting up a foundation to oversee the funds which will be administered by independent scientific directors to ensure that there isn't even an appearance of conflict of interest," he insists.

In addition, the original article described a wide variety of studies done by many different institutions. I suppose it's possible that they're all just "studies" conducted by people in the pay of the nefarious coffee lobby, but we probably shouldn't start resorting to conspiracy theories without a little evidence.

For the institute you have a situation where there's an institution regarded as objective and credible and someone who has a vested interest in the outcome donating money. This happens all the time. There's some form of regulatory capture in any industry, even if the regulation is something like "a general consensus among certain people that everyone in the industry respects that something is or isn't ok."

Like in government, sometimes there is quid pro quo and sometimes there isn't, but I've never heard anyone come out and say, "Whoops, you caught us! We're totally taking money to sway our opinion!"

The breadth of studies makes this look pretty legit. I just don't put much faith in obligatory denials.

The described articles may be impeccable, but selected because they agree with whatever viewpoint an institute wants to present. It's possible they've ignored anything not agreeing with them. And it's probable that groups do research that isn't published when it doesn't agree with whoever's funding it.

Ben Goldacre's book (pro science, about flaws in current system of research and science reporting) "Bad Science" is w useful read.

" ... to ensure that there isn't even an appearance of conflict of interest ..."

Too late for that.

Except the articles selected where in the pro-coffee camp, the articles against coffee were not selected. This is called selection bias. I'd take what this guy has to say with a grain of salt.

>Or for Pete's sake...

Why do we assume that the Coffee Association is promoting bad science for their interests, rather than finding scientists who are working on things that relate to their business, and supporting those works?

Who else is going to fund coffee studies besides people with an interest (and money) to fund it? This is how the free market works; as long as the science is sound, who cares who is behind it? I'd rather the coffee industry pay for the studies from excess profits than it coming from the public coffers. It's not perfect, but it isn't full on corruption, either.

>>Why do we assume that the Coffee Association is promoting bad science for their interests, rather than finding scientists who are working on things that relate to their business, and supporting those works?

This is the exact equivalent of the coal industry finding the minority of scientists who think climate change is not man-made and funding their studies. The problem with this is obvious, and it is not good science.

>>This is how the free market works; as long as the science is sound, who cares who is behind it?

Often times, those who are funding the science have an impact on whether that science is sound. It's called a conflict of interest because the source of the funding can corrupt the motivation of the scientist to practice good science.

> This is the exact equivalent of the coal industry finding the minority of scientists who think climate change is not man-made and funding their studies.

No it isn't. This isn't about coal or climate change. It's about whether or not it's ok for people to drink coffee.

If you think they've published bad science you should prove it. That's the awesome thing about science, it's refutable.

Not as easy as that: the coffee industry can easily spend $6 million to promote its interests, but there isn't an "anti-coffee" industry that can spend $6 million to refute those studies. This principle of "organizability" is one of the big drivers of political power -- those who can organize into an interest group win.

Congratulations, you've just discovered one reason why the free market isn't the best system to organise basic science research.

In this case, the article is clearly a piece that's advocating coffee drinking. When research crosses over from "setting up and experiment and proving/ disproving a hypothesis" to "advocating something as good or not good in general", its important to look at the source of funding and apply a heavy discount on the validity of the research if its advocating "for the money".

This is not research "related" to coffee, so your hypothesis is not valid in this instance.

I am wondering how much of the world's (biased) research is being done by the special interest groups. As someone said (not sure who) "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"

John Updike, I think.

John Updike = Pennsylvania Dutch, funny accents, psychology of the middle class

Upton Sinclair = Chicago stockyards, abuse of animals and immigrants

Whoops! Up-something, anyway. ;)

Upton Sinclair

Ad hominem much?

Anyway, the article doesn't rest on that quote by a long shot, it goes on in enormously satisfying detail. It's a humanizing lead-in, at best. I think this is a great summary of recent research on the effects of coffee and caffeine, and it links to supporting studies on nearly every substantial point.

Huh? That's not an ad-hominem. That's simply pointing out a conflict of interest.

Pointing out a conflict of interest, by itself, is indeed an ad hominem. Whether someone has a conflict of interest or not has nothing to do with their argument being right or wrong. It only indicates that they might be willing to put forth their argument without exploring any supporting evidence (or willfully ignoring it). Besides, in this case, I personally think that is very unlikely.

Except that it does. Regardless of the ethos of a scientist, when a scientist sets out to research with a certain goal, "the positive effects of drinking coffee", the only case in which the result would be unfavourable to coffee would be when coffee has no positive effects whatsoever. This is as shown obviously not the case.

When you research "the effects of drinking coffee" it seems as though you are more neutral, but in fact there is still room for bias. Will you find every single effect of drinking coffee? How will you decide wether they are positive or negative? how will you decide the importance of these effects? Which effects will you research in more detail?

This weighing and ordering depends in part on the researcher, who will have a bias.

Ofcourse this is not a problem when there are lots of researchers all with their own biases, together they will paint a full picture. But if you only fund those researchers who have the kind of bias you like, then that full picture might be skewed (this is called publication bias: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publication_bias).

In this case people worry if the coffee research institute has hired biased researchers, rewards only the researchers who publish good things about coffee or even publishes selectively.

So it is a good thing to point out. And the argument is an attack on the reliability of the fundament for the argument, not necessarily on the researcher.

> Ad hominem

'Ad hominem' is a fallacy of relevance, meaning it involves dragging irrelevant information into the discussion to sway emotions. How is the source of the study's funding irrelevant?

Ad hominem (technically) means argument 'against the person', not the argument (of the person).[1] A personal conflict of interest may raise issues about motive/integrity. Example: an argument pre-texted because of hidden/ special interests (particular to that person).

tldr: Ad hominem != per-se fallacy.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

Maybe you aren't familiar with Vandy but I assure you - they are a highly respected university in the US. There is zero chance - none - that Vanderbilt University is creating a shadow puppet institute.

My brother and sis, who both went there, love to point out that it is called "The Harvard of the South"

It's not a binary proposition. You can have puppet institute and you can have a completely independent one. Usually you'll get something in between. I don't think that Vanderbilt's quality has a lot to do with it.

This next bit may be a bit cynical:

Even if they weren't funded by the coffee industry, however, they would have existential issues. If their whole purpose is to study coffee then I think that there will be a tendency to either promote coffee or to try to strike a balance. The latter is almost as bad as the former.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe they would have no problem publishing nothing about negative results if that was what they got, but I would bet against it. If they get a string of negative results (and don't lose their funding), they are going to start looking for studies that have a more potential upside to balance things out.

It is amazing that you're seemingly willing to stake your reputation that there's no possibility of a conflict of interest at an institution you're only distantly associated with. But, how serious are you? What odds will you give me that at least one conflict of interest scandal shows up at Vandy over the next, say, 30 years?

Do you have any idea--any notion at all--how respected is the football program at Penn State? Why, the mere suggestion of any impropriety is such a laughable proposition that my vest-buttons threaten violent detachment.

Red herring. If Penn State coaches had bet on the games, that might be applicable.

Did you mean to to type 'oh for Peet's sake?'

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