{"id":45674,"date":"2014-10-21T15:23:49","date_gmt":"2014-10-21T19:23:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/?post_type=news&p=45674"},"modified":"2014-10-21T15:23:49","modified_gmt":"2014-10-21T19:23:49","slug":"retraction-for-paper-behind-the-green-coffee-bean-diet-craze","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/2014\/10\/21\/retraction-for-paper-behind-the-green-coffee-bean-diet-craze\/","title":{"rendered":"Study Behind the Green Coffee Bean Diet Craze Retracted"},"content":{"rendered":"

The “scientific” paper that helped ignite the green coffee bean diet craze has been retracted. The details of the retraction and the full background of the story were fully reported by Ivan Oransky on\u00a0Retraction Watch<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The paper<\/a>, published in\u00a0Diabetes, Metabolic Syndrome and Obesity: Targets and Therapy,<\/em>\u00a0purported to report the substantial weight loss findings of a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover study of green coffee bean extract.\u00a0The article has been\u00a0viewed or downloaded<\/a>\u00a0by more than three-quarters of a million people since its publication in January 2012.<\/p>\n

Following the paper’s publication, Dr. Oz featured the product on his television show. \u00a0According to Scott Gavura, writing in\u00a0the\u00a0Science-Based Medicine<\/em>\u00a0blog<\/a>, Oz\u00a0\u00a0used the terms “magic,\u201d \u201cstaggering,” \u201cunprecedented,\u201d \u201ccure,\u201d and \u201cmiracle pill” to describe the product, which then became an international bestseller.<\/p>\n

The statement of retraction provides few details:<\/p>\n

The sponsors of the study cannot assure the validity of the data so we, Joe Vinson and Bryan Burnham [two of the three authors], are retracting the paper.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Vinson and Burnham are a chemist and a psychologist at the\u00a0University of Scranton in Pennsylvania. But more details about the affair are provided by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which last month \u00a0reached a $3.5 million settlement with\u00a0Applied Food Sciences, Inc. (AFS), the company that\u00a0sponsored the study and that markets the extract.<\/p>\n

In its\u00a0press release,<\/a> the FTC said\u00a0that “the study was so hopelessly flawed that no reliable conclusions could be drawn from it.” According to\u00a0the FTC, AFS hired researchers in India to perform the clinical trial.\u00a0AFS “knew or should have known that this botched study didn\u2019t prove anything. In publicizing the results, it helped fuel the green coffee phenomenon.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to the FTC:<\/p>\n

…the study\u2019s lead investigator repeatedly altered the weights and other key measurements of the subjects, changed the length of the trial, and misstated which subjects were taking the placebo or GCA [Green Coffee Antioxidant] during the trial. When the lead investigator was unable to get the study published, the FTC says that AFS hired researchers Joe Vinson and Bryan Burnham at the University of Scranton to rewrite it. Despite receiving conflicting data, Vinson, Burnham, and AFS never verified the authenticity of the information used in the study, according to the complaint.<\/p>\n

Despite the study\u2019s flaws, AFS used it to falsely claim that GCA caused consumers to lose 17.7 pounds, 10.5 percent of body weight, and 16 percent of body fat with or without diet and exercise, in 22 weeks, the complaint alleges.<\/p>\n

Although AFS played no part in featuring its study on\u00a0The Dr. Oz Show<\/em>, it took advantage of the publicity afterwards by issuing a\u00a0press release highlighting the show. The release claimed that study subjects lost weight \u201cwithout diet or exercise,\u201d even though subjects in the study were instructed to restrict their diet and increase their exercise, the FTC contends.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The “scientific” paper that helped ignite the green coffee bean diet craze has been retracted. The details of the retraction and the full background of the story were fully reported by Ivan Oransky on\u00a0Retraction Watch. The paper, published in\u00a0Diabetes, Metabolic Syndrome and Obesity: Targets and Therapy,\u00a0purported to report the substantial weight loss findings of a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":196,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,7],"tags":[2401,1555,2400,970,969,355],"class_list":["post-45674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-prevention","tag-dr-oz","tag-fraud","tag-green-coffee-bean","tag-retractions","tag-scientific-misconduct","tag-weight-loss"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/196"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45674"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45674\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}