Who’s Really Biased? The Uncomfortable Truth About Clinical Research Funding

Supplements, functional foods, other wellness products, and cosmetic brands are often trapped in a lose-lose situation. They’re criticized for lacking clinical studies to substantiate their claims. However, when they do fund research, the results are often met with skepticism and dismissed as biased because the company itself footed the bill.

So, who should pay for clinical studies? If a brand can’t fund its research without the results being seen as skewed, what’s the alternative? To be fair, this is a question as old as the first industry-funded clinical trial; it’s an ethical dilemma asking: Can we trust research when the sponsor has a financial stake in the outcome?

While the instinct to question industry-funded research is understandable, it doesn’t mean we should automatically dismiss the findings. The reality is that research needs funding, and in industries like health & wellness, where the potential financial gain is clear, it’s easy to cry bias. But let’s face it, no one but the brand itself will likely fund clinical trials for products that can’t be patented. Even pharmaceutical companies routinely fund their own studies, so why should supplements be held to a different standard?

And let’s not forget the alternatives: government grants, private investors, and independent research foundations all have their own motives and limitations. If we discredit entirely industry-sponsored studies, are we actually hindering progress? Even academic researchers at prestigious universities aren’t immune to bias. Many have made headlines for manipulating data, often driven by the need to protect a hypothesis they’ve spent their careers developing or simply because journals are more likely to publish positive findings over negative ones. Financial bias is just one piece of a much larger puzzle, but intellectual bias can be just as damaging to research integrity.

But going back to funding, the core issue is obvious: conflicts of interest. When a supplement company funds its own research, there’s always a risk, conscious or not, that financial incentives could influence the results. But let’s be real: conflicts of interest aren’t exclusive to industry-funded studies. As established above, government-backed research, foundation-sponsored trials, and even academic studies are all susceptible to bias, whether it’s financial, intellectual, or something else entirely. The real question isn’t whether we can eliminate these conflicts because we can’t, but rather how we can effectively manage them to maintain the integrity of the research.

The skepticism around industry-funded research largely comes from legitimate concerns: skewed study designs, biased data analysis, and cherry-picking favorable results. There have certainly been notorious instances where companies buried unfavorable findings to safeguard their profits. But does that mean we should throw out all industry research? Absolutely not. What we need are stronger safeguards to minimize the risk of bias and ensure that industry-funded studies adhere to the highest standards of transparency and oversight.?

One widely accepted approach is to disclose financial relationships upfront. Transparency about who funds a study allows consumers and the scientific community to make informed decisions about the credibility of the research. However, disclosure alone isn’t enough. Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) and independent oversight committees must play a significant role in reviewing study designs and monitoring the integrity of the research process. These bodies should be empowered to reject studies with blatant conflicts of interest or at least ensure that potential biases are acknowledged and addressed.

Some might argue that even with oversight, industry-sponsored studies cannot be trusted. This is where independent validation, like we do at Citruslabs, comes into play. To safeguard against undue influence, the analysis of clinical trial data should be conducted, or at least verified, by independent organizations unaffiliated with the sponsor, such as Citruslabs. This separation between funding and data analysis is crucial for maintaining the integrity of the findings and ensuring that the results are not tainted by financial motivations. Ideally, the brand just pays for the study, and a contract research organization like Citruslabs designs and executes the study independently and obviously also does the analysis independently. The results are then the results, unfiltered.??

And let’s also not forget that many supplement companies are genuinely invested in advancing the science behind their products. These businesses thrive on consumer trust and often seek to prove the efficacy and safety of their offerings. If we discredit their ability to conduct or fund research, we risk stopping innovation in an industry that could potentially offer real health benefits.?

Critics have valid concerns about industry-funded research, and there are historical reasons for this distrust. However, dismissing all studies sponsored by supplement companies or other companies in the health & wellness space as biased or untrustworthy does a disservice to the scientific community and to consumers. Instead of condemning industry sponsorship outright, we should focus on creating systems that ensure transparency, accountability, and independent verification of results.?

So, while it may be tempting to ask, “Who should pay for clinical studies?” the more relevant question is: how can we ensure that the research is credible, regardless of who funds it? The answer lies not in excluding industry sponsorship but in building robust safeguards that prevent conflicts of interest from corrupting the process. We should focus on managing these conflicts rather than eliminating them entirely. After all, science is too important to leave unfunded, and health outcomes too critical to ignore valuable research just because a company paid the bill.

About Susanne Mitschke

Susanne Mitschke is the co-founder and CEO of Citruslabs, the leading contract research organization for consumer brands. She has a background in epidemiology, biostatistics, and women’s health through her Master of Public Health (MPH) at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and a background in business through an MS in International Management & Leadership from the University of Glasgow - Adam Smith Business School.