4 ms·

Interesting paper. Anyone know if there's a hint of a conflict of interest between the authors and Prolon? (Prolon being the FMD package they used)

by strken 3y ago

pazimzadeh 3y ago
The experimental FMD was provided by L-Nutra Inc. USC has licensed intellectual property to L-Nutra that is under study in this research. As part of this license agreement, the University has the potential to receive royalty payments from L-Nutra. V.D.L. and T.E.M., who have equity interest in L-Nutra, did not participate in the collection and analysis of the data. One-hundred percent of V.D.L.’s equity will be assigned to charitable organizations and companies including the Create Cures Foundation. The remaining authors declare no competing interests. It's not nothing..
biomcgary 3y ago
This is a submarine research paper. They could have used a non-proprietary formulation with the same macro-ingredients but chose not to. This is NOT science that can be replicated. Nutrition studies are noisy enough as it is. Very funny to see a closed source diet in an open access paper. It's open access because they paid the publisher, so it is a submarine ad.
- xk_id 3y ago
  > They could have used a non-proprietary formulation with the same macro-ingredients but chose not to. Do you have any idea how expensive it is to run high quality human trials, that meet all regulatory controls? It’s often not realistic without industry sponsors. Also the diet is not closed source. The full list of ingredients/supplements being used has been published before in other papers they’ve sponsored. I’ve written elsewhere on this submission about why this is actually a valuable contribution: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39638556 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39638556
  - biomcgary 3y ago
    Excellent points. Just because it is financially motivated, does not mean it is false. For full disclosure, I work at a biotech company that is trying to enable motivated groups of people to participate in interventional studies of their own collective design with quantitative endpoints. The goal is to avoid the need for financially motivated groups to finance the study. Obviously, this isn't going to work for traditional drug development, but can for nutrition and nutraceuticals.
- 000ooo000 3y ago
  What's a submarine ad/research paper? Hard to search.. I get real submarines.
  - chatmasta 3y ago
    It's an allusion to Paul Graham's "submarine" essay [0], which isn't usually applied to promoting academic papers, but perhaps still makes sense here: > One of the most surprising things I discovered during my brief business career was the existence of the PR industry, lurking like a huge, quiet submarine beneath the news. (I've got no idea what a "closed source diet" is, btw) [0] https://paulgraham.com/submarine.html https://paulgraham.com/submarine.html

Interesting paper. Anyone know if there's a hint of a conflict of interest between the authors and Prolon? (Prolon being the FMD package they used)

by strken 3y ago

Interesting paper. Anyone know if there's a hint of a conflict of interest between the authors and Prolon? (Prolon being the FMD package they used)

pazimzadeh 3y ago

The experimental FMD was provided by L-Nutra Inc. USC has licensed intellectual property to L-Nutra that is under study in this research. As part of this license agreement, the University has the potential to receive royalty payments from L-Nutra. V.D.L. and T.E.M., who have equity interest in L-Nutra, did not participate in the collection and analysis of the data. One-hundred percent of V.D.L.’s equity will be assigned to charitable organizations and companies including the Create Cures Foundation. The remaining authors declare no competing interests. It's not nothing..

biomcgary 3y ago

This is a submarine research paper. They could have used a non-proprietary formulation with the same macro-ingredients but chose not to. This is NOT science that can be replicated. Nutrition studies are noisy enough as it is. Very funny to see a closed source diet in an open access paper. It's open access because they paid the publisher, so it is a submarine ad.

xk_id 3y ago
> They could have used a non-proprietary formulation with the same macro-ingredients but chose not to. Do you have any idea how expensive it is to run high quality human trials, that meet all regulatory controls? It’s often not realistic without industry sponsors. Also the diet is not closed source. The full list of ingredients/supplements being used has been published before in other papers they’ve sponsored. I’ve written elsewhere on this submission about why this is actually a valuable contribution: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39638556 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39638556
- biomcgary 3y ago
  Excellent points. Just because it is financially motivated, does not mean it is false. For full disclosure, I work at a biotech company that is trying to enable motivated groups of people to participate in interventional studies of their own collective design with quantitative endpoints. The goal is to avoid the need for financially motivated groups to finance the study. Obviously, this isn't going to work for traditional drug development, but can for nutrition and nutraceuticals.
000ooo000 3y ago
What's a submarine ad/research paper? Hard to search.. I get real submarines.
- chatmasta 3y ago
  It's an allusion to Paul Graham's "submarine" essay [0], which isn't usually applied to promoting academic papers, but perhaps still makes sense here: > One of the most surprising things I discovered during my brief business career was the existence of the PR industry, lurking like a huge, quiet submarine beneath the news. (I've got no idea what a "closed source diet" is, btw) [0] https://paulgraham.com/submarine.html https://paulgraham.com/submarine.html