Coca-Cola contracts could allow it to “quash” unfavourable research findings

Coca-Cola might be able to suppress unfavourable findings from health research it funds at public universities in the United States and Canada, a new study has found.1

Researchers studied over 87 000 documents obtained through freedom of information requests and found several clauses that allow the drinks giant to terminate research projects without reason and walk away with the data.

Coca-Cola funds research in the fields of nutrition, physical inactivity, and energy balance. It publishes a list of the funding it has allocated from 2010 to the present on its transparency website.2

The research team, from the University of Cambridge, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, the University of Bocconi, and non-profit group US …