The excellent ConscienHealth blog, writing about a fierce debate in the world of nutrition science, reminds us that big shadowy agenda-led corporations having paid scientists to conduct their research is not the only sort of conflict of interest we should care about when evaluating scientific studies.

We read a lot about perceptions of conflicted interests in nutrition and obesity research. Typically the focus is on financial interests. If a company funded the research, does that mean we cannot trust results that might favor business interests of that company? But experience tells us that intellectual investments can produce equally powerful biases.