This week, one of the nation's most respected obesity experts, David B. Allison, Ph.D., director of the University of Birmingham's (UAB) Nutrition and Obesity Research Center, and co-author Dr. Mark Cope, a former UAB research associate, charged that a "white-hat bias" abounds in obesity research, and may skew reported results.

In a study published in the International Journal of Obesity, the researchers examined papers that cited two specific beverage studies. Of those papers, less than one-third were accurate in reporting the overall findings of those studies. However, more than two-thirds exaggerated the evidence -- mischaracterizing the findings to suggest that reducing sugar-sweetened beverage consumption also would reduce weight or obesity.

According to Cope and Allison, white-hat bias is described as the "tendency to distort information about products regardless of the facts, when the distortions are perceived to serve good ends."

Their study points out that, in the case of obesity research, results may be misrepresented by scientists operating with particular biases on topics related to weight, nutrition and the food industry, as well as biases toward products like sugar-sweetened beverages, and practices like breastfeeding.

For both the beverage and breastfeeding research, the resulting data were more likely to be published when it showed statistically significant outcomes. In fact, studies with outcomes that did not show negative consequences associated with sugar-sweetened beverage consumption were less likely to be published. The authors urged that the public health community "be vigilant to minimize and remove these biases."

Dr. Maureen Storey, senior vice president for science policy at the American Beverage Association, found this study to be groundbreaking. As a former member of the research faculty at Georgetown University, Virginia Tech and the University of Maryland, Dr. Storey has served as an expert nutrition policy advisor to a Secretary of Health and Human Services and has published numerous peer-reviewed journal articles on a broad range of nutrition, science and public health issues.

Dr. Storey commented, "We all have personal likes and dislikes. As scientists interpreting data, however, we must try to leave our personal preferences, politics and points of view outside the scientific process. Dr. Allison's research raises a 'red flag' for the public health community. Now, anyone interested in health research must scrutinize the original literature to see what data may have been omitted or what results may have been exaggerated."