I did not get the chance to point out the interesting points in the Huffpost link:
As questions mounted over the past week, it seemed Stanford had also provided all the ingredients for a lot of noise: Supporters of the $25 billion-plus organics industry were ready and willing to start digging up dirt.
The blogosphere is now filled with suspicions that Stanford downplayed the benefits of organic foods because they had received large donations from conventional agriculture giant Cargill. When questioned by The Huffington Post, Stanford officials denied any such link. The research itself received no external funding, and the Cargill money went to a department not directly involved in the research, said Lisa Lapin, a Stanford spokesperson.
At least some experts interviewed suggested that the industry money could still pose a subtle influence. And that pressure, or aura of accountability to a funding source, could then be easily hidden from the public.
It seems BOTH sides could be equally influenced by big money donations from a big money industry ......
The Stanford researchers have acknowledged their review's limitations. "The reason this study has the notoriety it has is because people don't really recognize that all this study does is look at nutrients," said Olkin, adding the inherent problems in trying to combine, compare and contrast data from diverse studies.
"We tried to be really clear about when there was good evidence of a difference and good evidence of no difference, versus also being clear about when there was not good evidence of a difference," added Dr. Dena Bravata, senior researcher on the team.
But this subtlety may have been missed by the average reader of Bravata's quote in the press release, which was subsequently included in many news stories: "There isn't much difference between organic and conventional foods, if you're an adult and making a decision based solely on your health."