I will still believe less biased sources like the British Medical Journal any day over a Gatorade-sponsored institute.
In 2012 the BMJ published a "scathing investigation" into this whole 'don't trust your thirst' issue. Sure, it's only one point of view of a two-sided debate about corporate funding for research, but I'm going to side with the noncorporate interests on this one.
(Article link here, but layman's summary here)
From the summary:
"
I work in the sciences myself, and funding source is THE biggest source of bias. Even if you fully well believe and even go out of your way to do unbiased work, your work must be judged as potentially compromised if a primary funding source is from a direct financial beneficiary of your work. This is why all the leading scientific journals demand full disclosure of funding source and conflicts of interest before publishing. It does not mean all corporate sponsored work is worthless, but it does raise the bar for examination based upon the claims made and the potential commercial impact. Tobacco companies didn't need a hidden agenda in their early research as well - it was enough to put researchers on their payrolls, and that was enough to sway them to conveniently finding avenues of 'productive' research that wouldn't put them out of a job by tanking the industry. In fact, that's one of the best, well known ways to silence a strong critic who could destroy your industry - hire them as a consultant or researcher. You don't even need to tell them what to do or what not to do - just give them their paycheck, and odds are high things will go your way.
In 2012 the BMJ published a "scathing investigation" into this whole 'don't trust your thirst' issue. Sure, it's only one point of view of a two-sided debate about corporate funding for research, but I'm going to side with the noncorporate interests on this one.
(Article link here, but layman's summary here)
From the summary:
"
- Undermining the body's signals: Cohen claims that one of the greatest accomplishments of the Gatorade Sports Science Institute, established in 1985, was to convince the public that thirst is an unreliable indicator of dehydration. There is ample evidence of ways in which the experts who propagated this information were funded or "supported" by sports drinks companies, and while this in itself isn't necessarily wrong, she argues that researchers who have conflicts of interest are not objective enough to be writing guidelines, as is the case here. There is no good evidence to support the ideas, for example, that "Without realizing, you may not be drinking enough to restore your fluid balance after working out" (Powerade), or that urine color is a reliable indicator of the body's hydration levels."
I work in the sciences myself, and funding source is THE biggest source of bias. Even if you fully well believe and even go out of your way to do unbiased work, your work must be judged as potentially compromised if a primary funding source is from a direct financial beneficiary of your work. This is why all the leading scientific journals demand full disclosure of funding source and conflicts of interest before publishing. It does not mean all corporate sponsored work is worthless, but it does raise the bar for examination based upon the claims made and the potential commercial impact. Tobacco companies didn't need a hidden agenda in their early research as well - it was enough to put researchers on their payrolls, and that was enough to sway them to conveniently finding avenues of 'productive' research that wouldn't put them out of a job by tanking the industry. In fact, that's one of the best, well known ways to silence a strong critic who could destroy your industry - hire them as a consultant or researcher. You don't even need to tell them what to do or what not to do - just give them their paycheck, and odds are high things will go your way.