The Global Energy Balance Network launched in 2014 with a website, a scientific advisory board, and a message: that public health had placed too much emphasis on diet in the obesity debate and not enough on physical activity, and that the evidence for the food side was weaker than assumed.
Its president was a respected exercise scientist at the University of Colorado. Its vice-president was at the University of South Carolina. The scientists involved held real positions, had published real work, and — as far as the record shows — believed what they were saying.
In August 2015 the New York Times reported that the network had received nearly one and a half million dollars from Coca-Cola, that Coca-Cola had funded the university positions of its leaders to a much larger degree over years, and that the company had been involved in the organization's founding. Emails obtained subsequently under freedom of information law showed Coca-Cola executives involved in shaping its messaging and its choice of targets.
The network disbanded in late 2015. Coca-Cola's chief scientific officer left the company.
The mechanism is not bought conclusions. It is bought attention.
An ordinary reader cannot evaluate nutrition epidemiology. What they can evaluate is whether the people making the claim are credentialed scientists, and that substitution — a hard question replaced by an easier one that comes readily to mind — is what Kahneman describes as attribute substitution. The credential is real, so the substitution passes.
And the framing exploits the focusing illusion. Whatever variable is under discussion appears causally dominant simply by being discussed. A public conversation about exercise is a conversation in which diet is not the subject, and the shift requires no false claim about either.
The energy-balance frame is itself the technique in miniature. It is true that weight is a function of energy in and energy out. It is also true that the two are not equally tractable — the evidence that exercise alone produces substantial weight loss is weak, and the evidence on sugar-sweetened beverages is not — so a frame that treats them as symmetric is misleading while containing no falsehood.
Which is chapter 63's finding arriving in public health: a complete, accurate, non-deceptive description that determines the answer.
The general defensive move is the one the reporting performed. Ask who funds the work, and ask it as a routine question rather than as an accusation, because the answer is frequently available and is frequently decisive.
Cross-ref: Attack — Choose the Battlefield