Over the holidays the Journal of the American Medical Association published an enigmatic little article about nutrition research: “Disclosures in Nutrition Research: Why It Is Different.” The title may suggest a real tub-thumper, an anti-industry screed full of dark accusations (at least, it did to me), but it’s not. Instead, it’s a modest, temperate little suggestion that nutrition researchers might do well to be a bit more open about their conflicts of interest.

“Nutrition research is among the most contentious fields of science,” the authors write. “Although the totality of an individual’s diet has important effects on health, most nutrients and foods individually have ambiguously tiny (or nonexistent) effects. Substantial reliance on observational data for which causal inference is notoriously difficult also limits the clarifying ability of nutrition science. When the data are not clear, opinions and conflicts of interest both financial and nonfinancial may influence research articles, editorials, guidelines, and laws.”

Where things start to get interesting is when the article explains what it means by conflicts. It calls out industry funding but argues that “the puritanical view that accepting funding from the food industry ipso facto automatically biases the results is outdated.” There are plenty of ways for nutrition researchers to have conflicts—from the indirect sort of financial rewards you get from publishing a best-selling diet guide to the way that advocacy groups have to keep their supporters happy by sticking to the party line. And then there’s the subtler kind of conflict: Researchers often come to believe what they’ve discovered or the causes they advocate. It’s all bias, and even “white hat” bias ought to be disclosed. (The National Institutes of Health describes “white hat” bias, in lay language, as “bias leading to distortion of information in the service of what may be perceived to be righteous ends.” It’s especially common in obesity research.)

Read more on the latest nutritional research by Patrick Clinton at The New Food Economy