Coke's Top Scientist Steps Down After Revelations On "Science" Downplaying Sugar-Obesity Link

[hatrack]

Coca-Cola’s top scientist is stepping down after revelations that the beverage giant initiated a strategy of funding scientific research that played down the role of Coke products in the spread of obesity.

Rhona S. Applebaum, Coke’s chief science and health officer, helped orchestrate the establishment of a nonprofit group known as the Global Energy Balance Network. The group’s members were university scientists who encouraged the public to focus on exercise and worry less about how calories from food and beverages contribute to obesity.

Coca-Cola spent $1.5 million last year to support the group, including a $1 million grant to the University of Colorado medical school, where the nonprofit group’s president, James O. Hill, a prominent obesity researcher, is a professor. Coke’s financial ties to the group were first reported in an article in The New York Times in August, which prompted criticism that the soft drink giant was trying to influence scientific research on sugary drinks. The university returned the money to Coca-Cola this month after public health experts raised concerns.

EDIT

The A.P. also published a series of emails between Dr. Hill of the University of Colorado and Coke executives that revealed the initial strategy of the Global Energy Balance Network. Before the G.E.B.N. was created, Dr. Hill proposed publishing research that would help the company fend off criticism about its products by shifting the blame for obesity to physical inactivity.

EDIT

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/11/24/cokes-chief-scientist-who-orchestrated-obesity-research-is-leaving/

[GreatGazoo]

1. Universal single-payer healthcare would help stop some of this crap.

They can play the public, bribe scientists, attack critics, buy universities off and spout "cigarette science" but they couldn't effectively hide the cause and effect links from another large entity.

Parallel example: Insurance companies aren't playing around with climate change denial. They are just suing and declining payments to those who don't adapt to the new normal.