When The Media Says “Experts” They Mean Paid Corporate Shills (part 12)
Originally posted on Quora June 26, 2023
California’s State Dental Director, Dr. Jayanth Kumar, who also serves on the American Dental Association’s National Fluoridation Advisory Committee, published a meta-analysis that omitted data contrary to his preconceived conclusion: that fluoridated water is not associated with lower IQ in children at the current threshold of 1.5 mg/L. The paper was so fraught with cherry picking and data shopping that it was rejected four times by peer reviewed journals before being accepted by the Journal of Public Health. The bias was so obvious that even the ADA journal, Dr. Kumar’s own organization rejected it twice. Email correspondence between Kumar and his research team revealed that they obtained results from an analysis of 33 studies that were opposite of what they intended for identifying 1.5 mg/L as a “safe threshold” for fluoridated water; the studies in question revealed a negative association between water fluoridation and IQ below the aforementioned threshold. In response, Kumar had this analysis deleted from the draft.
Through a California Public Records Act request, it has been revealed that in a March 2023 deposition, from the ongoing lawsuit to stop water fluoridation, that Dr. Kumar admitted to ‘literally being paid to promote fluoridation’ and has received awards from the ADA for his fluoridation advocacy. In a 2021 presentation, Dr. Kumar promised to pre-empt the National Toxicology Program by publishing a study that would find current fluoride levels had no significant effect on IQ. In the same March 2023 deposition, Dr. Kumar admitted his goal was to pre-empt the NTP meta analysis by publishing his doctored meta-analysis first.