Thursday, January 12, 2012

Red Wine and Resveratrol A Fraud?

Yup.

"A University of Connecticut researcher who studied the link between aging and a substance found in red wine has committed more than 100 acts of data fabrication and falsification, the university said Wednesday, throwing much of his work into doubt.

"Dipak K. Das, who directed the university's Cardiovascular Research Center, studied resveratrol, touted by a number of scientists and companies as a way to slow aging or remain healthy as people get older. Among his findings, according to a work promoted by the University of Connecticut in 2007, was that 'the pulp of grapes is as heart-healthy as the skin, even though the antioxidant properties differ.'

"'We have a responsibility to correct the scientific record and inform peer researchers across the country,' Philip Austin, the university's interim vice president for health affairs, said in a statement..."

It's hardly surprising.

The French Paradox arose from the fact that the French eat lots of saturated fat (especially dairy fat) yet have low rates of heart disease.  Since we knew that eating saturated fat caused heart disease, clearly something had to protect them from heart disease. 

Resveratrol was the candidate, since we all know those Frenchies drink red wine all day. (Don't you love how this science was justified by a crude stereotype?)

Of course now we know that saturated animal fat not only doesn't cause heart disease, but that eating lots of dairy fat is protective from heart disease. The French Paradox disappears.  Resveratrol is no longer needed, nor is red wine.

So why the heck are they still studying resveratrol?

Also, the only way they ever got resveratrol to do anything was by giving huge doses, far more than even the most alcoholic wine-swigging Frenchman would ever consume.

And now it turns out that guy was just faking the data? Well, he pretty much had to be, right?


(Thanks to Teech.)

P.S. For anyone interested in doing more reading on this, the Wikipedia summary has lots of links to further reading.

This pretty much sums it up, IMHO, though: "Again, there is no published evidence anywhere in the scientific literature of any clinical trial for efficacy in humans. There are limited human safety data. Long-term safety has not been evaluated in humans."

I'll pass. Call me in 50 years when you finish the long-term studies.

8 comments:

  1. He was hardly on the only researcher to publish positive results of resveratrol.

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  2. Given that 50% to 90% of research is wrong, then odds are the other positive results are also bogus.

    "Is Science Broken? Part 1

    "Is Science Broken? Part 2"

    Scientists and medical professionals are still posting results confirming Ancel Keys' research from the 50s, even though large parts of his work was debunked in the 50s. The negatives are just ignored. Bad for business...

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  3. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  4. You may be right about the rest of the research although there really is a mountain of it. The problem with this post is that it implies that the positive view of resveratrol was largely driven by this guy's research when in fact his research is only a very small fraction of the positive research on resveratrol. Apparently there is more to the story on this fraud accusation but even if it turns out to be true it does very little to weaken the case for resveratrol because it pertains to only a tiny fraction of the total research on it. There are thousands of published studies on resveratrol. Again, I don't know whether resveratrol is good or bad but this post is very misleading.

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  5. Thanks for your feedback, Taylor. Mark Sisson makes the same observation you do in his post today.

    I suppose we shall see... But I don't see any reason to take reveratrol for health benefits. Certainly no one who's been ingesting it through red wine has ever seen those benefits...

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  6. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  7. I thought reservatrol was the key to solving the French paradox? Hence the big push to "prove" its another magical compound that can be sold for a pretty prenny. Ill stick to eating real food and drinking my doses of reservatrol.

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  8. Teech, exactly. They're moving the goalposts. That's always a reason to be skeptical...

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