Adulterated evidence of supplement adulteration

Critics of the supplements industry — Big Suppla — believe that supplements often do not contain what they claim to contain. The most popular citation to support that belief has come under fire. Jonathan Jarry regarding the allegations:

…the lead researcher’s data seem to be missing, fraudulent or plagiarized. The paper was widely cited and it became one of those easy-to-grab bits of evidence that skeptics love to pull out.

I avoided citing this famous paper … but only because I somehow missed it. If I had known about it, I probably would have cited it! The last time I looked at supplement adulteration/contamination, I did think that the data was a bit thin. I don’t really doubt that some supplements are adulterated and contaminated, but it may not be as common and serious a problem as skeptics would “like” to believe.

For the record (and unsurprisingly), the researcher accused of cooking the data has denied all wrongdoing.