Whenever a piece of evidence is published suggesting that the $50-billion food supplement pill industry’s products are ineffective, or even harmful, an enormous marketing machine lumbers into life, producing spurious and groundless methodological criticisms of the published data in order to muddy the waters—not enough to be noteworthy in a meaningful academic discussion, but that is not their purpose. This is a well-worn risk-management tactic from many industries, including those producing tobacco, asbestos, lead, vinyl chloride, chromium and more. It is called ‘manufacturing doubt’, and in
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