Disclosure: "This study was funded in part via an unrestricted research grant from the Beef Checkoff, through the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association."
I thought you were kidding, but I checked, and sure enough at the bottom:
"This study was funded in part via an unrestricted research grant from the Beef Checkoff, through the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association. The sponsor of the study had no role in the study design, data collection, data analysis, data interpretation, or writing of the report."
Maybe not, but how likely is it that they'll continue funding more studies if you come back with results that don't support more beef consumption?
Sorry, don't mean to be overly cynical, but <gestures around at basically everything>.
If this were real science, it wouldn't matter because anyone could repro the results.
But almost all of this nutritional "science" is just people in white coats messing with statistics and sounding authoritative. Goes for the "meat is good" camp and the "meat is bad" camp.
(My personal belief is that only a very small amount of meat is good for your body, but having more meat is good for your brain.)
As the paper described, all they did was pull available data from other studies. That's about as low a barrier to repro as you could wish - you could probably do it yourself.
If you want to see what appears to be a training ground for beef industry propaganda, check out /r/AntiVegan on Reddit. The vitriol is overpowering. I simply quoted a contradictory statistic from a paper a mod posted themselves that supposedly showed that not eating meat is unhealthy, and got banned.
A far more believable source would be a university studying causes of depression. Literally anyone else not profiting off meat would be more believable though.
Universities are prone to fads and political correctness. Try publishing results that are unpopular in academic circles, and see how long your funding lasts.
Sure, it would be more believable if they did. But they won't.
Maybe not, but how likely is it that they'll continue funding more studies if you come back with results that don't support more beef consumption?
Sorry, don't mean to be overly cynical, but <gestures around at basically everything>.