Critique #294 – Commentary on Clay et al. 2025

The International Scientific Forum on Alcohol Research (ISFAR) critiques of alcohol research: Promoting health benefits and downplaying harms

J.M. Clay, T. Stockwell, S. Golder, K. Lawrence, J. McCambridge, N. Vishnevsky, A. Zuckermann, T. Naimi. Addiction (2025) https://doi.org/10.1111/add.70132

Summary

ISFAR’s critiques are not more favourable towards studies highlighting benefits, nor are they more critical of those reporting harms.

ISFAR selects peer-reviewed, published papers for critique when we believe we can make a constructive contribution to the scientific discourse.  Furthermore, judging research papers solely on whether they support or oppose a particular theory, without evaluating the validity of the theory itself, is logically flawed. This is essentially equivalent to proving the Earth is flat. Consider someone reviewing a paper claiming that the Earth is flat or spherical. A similar critique of these papers might find that the authors “lean away” from papers that find the Earth flat and conclude that not only are the reviewers biased against a flat Earth, but that, in fact, this bias shows that the Earth is flat!    

Indeed, we suspect that Dr Clay and his colleagues have published this paper simply because they are unable to find fault with the actual rationale for any of our critiques.

We invite you to read one or more ISFAR Critiques to see the extent of careful and thoughtful examination and how balanced they are. https://alcoholresearchforum.org/reviews/

Introduction

Do ISFAR members receive industry funding?

Clay et al. (2025) present the International Scientific Forum on Alcohol Research (ISFAR) as having a pro-alcohol industry bias.  We do not. 

As described on the website (https://alcoholresearchforum.org/), ISFAR is a group of 51 scientists, all of whom have expertise related to medical, scientific, and/or public health issues connected to alcohol consumption, working in academia, government, and research institutions. No member is currently employed by any industry organisation. As noted in their biographies, some have received industry funding for specific research projects in the past, but without bias towards the research outcome. In other words, the researcher’s funding was not dependent on a particular research outcome.

Please note that many ISFAR members have retired from their professional careers. ISFAR has produced critiques of recently published scientific papers on aspects of alcohol and public health to evaluate how well the studies were conducted and, importantly, whether the results support the conclusions drawn. ISFAR does this because it is their shared experience that many papers are flawed in this regard, meaning the data cannot justify the findings. This matters because ISFAR strongly believes that public health policy should be based on and informed by evidence. ISFAR’s collective experience, however, shows that this is often not the case, and this applies to studies claiming to show health benefits as well as harms. We aim to offer impartial external expertise in interpreting the conclusions drawn from the experimental data. ISFAR has experienced experts, generally with over 30 years, in biostatistics, clinical medicine, epidemiology, physiology, pharmacology, and the chemistry of alcoholic beverages. No ISFAR member is paid for their contributions to these critiques; they are volunteers. The two co-directors receive a modest honorarium for administering the website.

How does ISFAR define its relationship to the alcohol industry?

ISFAR, as an organisation, has no ties to the alcohol industry. As stated in the members’ biographies on the website, a few members have conducted work as scientists funded partly or entirely by the industry or have worked for institutions financed by the alcohol sector. This is how certain members, for example, have gained their expertise, but the vast majority of members have had none or a small fraction of their research funded by the industry. In addition, none of the Board members have been employed directly by the industry but have worked for independent academic institutions.  Our approach is to seek scientific insight when evaluating published work and strive for clarity in understanding the significance of that work. We do not consider any perspective to be automatically biased based on the scientist’s background.  Such a divisive approach would make critical thinking pointless, just as political discourse and compromise have been undermined by a similar approach to politics.  For example, ISFAR would never condemn the validity of research from the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research, simply because its funding depends on reducing alcohol consumption, or because its members have criticised ISFAR. Specifically, ISFAR would never claim that the conclusions drawn by the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research are untrustworthy because they are funded by organisations responsible for addressing alcohol misuse.

ISFAR’s goal is to address the merit of the scientific arguments and the scientific integrity of the conclusions.

Commentary

Clay et al. (2025) represent considerable effort to discredit ISFAR and its critiques without actually engaging with the scientific merits of any of the critiques. This paper is not an exercise in scientific discourse. It is an attempt to discredit and silence the scientific interpretations, views, analyses, and experience of those who have not agreed with the conclusion of prior papers published by the authors.

The authors appear to interpret the concept of scientific critique through a simple-minded “us vs them” lens, all too common today, when in reality, a review or critique of a study must, of necessity, address the merits of points raised in a nuanced manner rather than a simple bi-variate classification.

Examination and critique are essential parts of the scientific process. Raising questions or challenging a study’s methodology is a legitimate aspect of the scientific method, and opposing viewpoints should be expressed and debated openly. Attempts to dismiss critical analyses on ideological grounds, and under the assumption that any contact between a researcher and a member of the alcohol industry at any point renders that researcher incapable of independence in thought and action, are anti-science.

The methods employed by the authors are not a serious attempt to engage in the real issues or debate the merits of any scientific points made in the ISFAR critiques. Instead, the authors apply a coding system that if applied to the body of their own commentaries, public statements, interviews, reviews would have the same type of findings — nearly every article, etc. promotes a view of alcohol harm at all levels of drinking, minimizes evidence of no harm or reduced harm in some cases at low levels, and relies almost entirely on their own publications; 62% of the references in this article are by at least one of the named authors, not counting the 13 citations related to the sentiment analysis, risk of bias, and statistical modelling sources named in the methods section. Fundamentally, assessing critiques based on whether they favour or oppose a given thesis is logically flawed. Any evaluation of a study’s results should depend on whether the theory being examined by the researchers is correct and supported by impartial scientific data.

There is a bigger point about a reductionist-thinking approach versus a systems-thinking approach. Clay et al. (2025) attempt to reduce alcohol consumption to something simple and straightforward, and ignore its complexity and interaction with many other complex systems. Their reductionist thinking also limits how they see people—researchers are either biased or unbiased.  Acknowledging research that has found reduced risk does not mean you are promoting moderate drinking for everyone. It’s evidence to support an understanding that moderate drinking can be part of a healthy lifestyle, along with other healthy factors.

We invite readers to judge for themselves; read an ISFAR critique and note the extent of careful and nuanced examination. The principal aim of ISFAR critiques is to provide constructive criticism. Clay et al. (2025) is a classic case of “shooting the messenger” because they cannot address the message. https://alcoholresearchforum.org/reviews/

This ISFAR commentary on Clay et al. (2025) was prepared by:

Creina Stockley, Co-director ISFAR, PhD, MBA, Independent consultant and Adjunct Senior Lecturer in the School of Agriculture, Food and Wine at the University of Adelaide, Australia

R. Curtis Ellison, Chair ISFAR, MD, Section of Preventive Medicine/Epidemiology, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA, USA

Henk Hendriks, Co-director ISFAR, PhD, Independent consultant and partner of the Nutrition Consultants Cooperative, Netherlands

Andy Waterhouse, PhD, Department of Viticulture and Enology, University of California, Davis

Richard Harding, PhD, Formerly Head of Consumer Choice, Food Standards and Special Projects Division, Food Standards Agency, UK

Giovanni de Gaetano, MD, PhD, Department of Epidemiology and Prevention, IRCCS Istituto Neurologico Mediterraneo NEUROMED, Pozzilli, Italy

Fulvio Mattivi, MSc, Scientific Advisor, Research and Innovation Centre, Fondazione Edmund Mach, in San Michele all’Adige, Italy

Monica Christmann, PhD, Head of Institute, Department of Enology and Professorship for Enology, Hochschule Geisenheim University, Germany

James McIntosh, PhD, Retired Professor of Economics, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada

Mladen Boban, MD, PhD, Professor and Head of the Department of Pharmacology, University of Split School of Medicine, Croatia

Erik Skovenborg, MD, specialized in family medicine, member of the Scandinavian Medical Alcohol Board, Aarhus, Denmark

Pierre-Louis Teissedre, PhD, Faculty of Oenology–ISVV, University Victor Segalen Bordeaux 2, Bordeaux, France

Tedd Goldfinger, DO, FACC, Desert Cardiology of Tucson Heart Center, University of Arizona School of Medicine, Tucson, AZ, USA

Dominique Lanzmann-Petithory, MD, PhD, Nutrition/Cardiology, Praticien Hospitalier, Hôpital Emile Roux, Paris, France

This ISFAR commentary on Clay et al. (2025) was endorsed by all ISFAR members: https://alcoholresearchforum.org/members/