Khaberni - With the widespread use of social media, skepticism about medical and nutritional studies has become a common discourse. Some influencers say that pharmaceutical and food industries fund research to keep people sick to generate higher profits, urging the public to reject the results of these studies outright.
However, this proposition - despite its historical roots - ignores the profound transformations that medical research has undergone in recent decades and overlooks how science is evaluated today.
There is no doubt that loss of trust has real causes. The last century witnessed documented cases of commercial interests manipulating scientific research, such as studies funded by tobacco companies to downplay the risks of smoking, or certain pharmaceutical and nutritional studies that concealed undesirable results.
These practices shocked the public, but at the same time were a direct reason for tightening regulations and developing stricter oversight mechanisms on medical research.
Today, medical research is not funded by a single entity. Governments and public bodies primarily fund basic research and early stages, such as understanding disease mechanisms, epidemiological studies, and public health research.
Universities contribute through public grants and institutional financing, while charities and non-profit organizations play an important role in specific fields like cancer and rare diseases. However, these sources, important as they are, are not sufficient to fund large clinical trials.
The advanced clinical trials, especially in their final phases, are among the most costly and complex forms of research. They involve thousands of participants in multiple countries, last for years, require precise organizational structures, long-term follow-up, and strict compliance with regulatory systems, in addition to large-scale manufacturing of treatments under trial.
Often, the cost of developing a single drug can reach hundreds of millions of dollars. Practically, only pharmaceutical companies have the financial capability to bear these costs, making their participation in medical research inevitable.
Additionally, the risks of failure are very high; most molecules or interventions that seem promising in early stages do not succeed in proving their efficacy or safety in advanced stages. These potential losses cannot be borne by universities or public institutions; only giant corporations are financially capable of handling this level of risk.
But corporate funding does not mean that the results are accepted without scrutiny. When a medical study is evaluated, the central question is not: Who funded it? But: How was it conducted? Reviewers and scientists focus on the solidity of the scientific methodology, the clarity of the research question, the appropriateness of the study design, and the method of selecting participants to minimize bias.
Careful attention is given to the use of control groups, random distribution, and blinding, which are fundamental tools to ensure reliable results. Statistics play a central role in this assessment. The sample size is scrutinized to ensure it is sufficient to draw sound conclusions, and the strength of the statistical study to detect real effects rather than random results is evaluated. Also assessed is whether the statistical methods used were appropriate and adhered to without selection or manipulation.
One of the most important modern guarantees in medical research is known as pre-registration of clinical trials. In the fields of health and nutrition, researchers are required to publish the full protocol and statistical analysis plan before starting the study. This includes defining the primary objectives, the method of data analysis, and the criteria for including and excluding participants. This procedure aims to prevent changing hypotheses or analyses after reviewing the results, which is one of the most common forms of manipulation in the past.
Also, the evaluation of studies pays special attention to confounding factors, which are variables that may affect the results without being part of the intervention studied. When studying the impact of a diet or medication, it is necessary to consider age, lifestyle, smoking, and social and economic status. Therefore, modern studies are required to identify these factors and address them either through the study design or through statistical adjustments, otherwise their results are of limited value.
Equally important is assessing the generalizability of the results. A study conducted on a specific group may have valid results within that context, but they do not necessarily apply to all population groups. Therefore, researchers are expected to clarify the limits of their study, and reviewers to ensure that conclusions do not exceed what the data allows.
Today, transparency has become a fundamental standard for credibility. Prestigious scientific journals require the disclosure of funding sources and conflicts of interest, and the deposit of raw data in scientific repositories for re-analysis by independent researchers, as well as the submission of original files for lab images to detect any potential manipulation. The scientific community does not hesitate to retract studies that are later found to have fundamental flaws, reflecting a system that corrects itself instead of covering up its errors.
One issue that is often misinterpreted is the emergence of side effects from some drugs years after they are marketed. Clinical trials, no matter how precise, are time-limited, usually not exceeding a few years. Therefore, rare or long-term effects may not appear until after the drug is used widely and over a long period. Hence the importance of pharmacovigilance, where monitoring the safety of drugs continues after their approval, and health authorities can update warnings, restrict use, or withdraw the drug if necessary.
In the end, the question "Who funds medical studies?" is legitimate, but it alone is not enough to judge the credibility of science. More important is understanding how studies are designed, how they are pre-registered, how their data are analyzed, and how they are reviewed and corrected. Informed skepticism is necessary, but rejecting science just because of its funding source does not protect public health as much as it weakens it.
