“Make no mistake, the Stanford organics study is a fraud,” says Mike Adams of Naturalnews.com and Anthony Gucciardi of Naturalsociety.com.

“The mainstream media has fallen for an elaborate scientific hoax that sought to destroy the credibility of organic foods by claiming they are ‘no healthier’ than conventional foods (those grown with pesticides and genetically-modified organisms).”

Adams and Gucciardi note that Dr. Ingram Olkin, a co-author of the organics study and a professor emeritus in statistics at Stanford, has deep financial ties to Cargill, the agribusiness multinational which sells genetically-engineered foods. They note that Olkin has in the past accepted money from the tobacco industry’s Council for Tobacco Research.

Stanford University responded to the controversy in a defensive manner: “This paper was published in a reputable, peer-reviewed journal, and the researchers received no funding for the study from any outside company. We stand by the work and the study authors,” the university is quoted as saying in the Los Angeles Times article.

The New York Times and the BBC, along with numerous other publications, printed stories based on this Stanford study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. The study, “Are Organic Foods Safer or Healthier Than Conventional Alternatives?: A Systematic Review,” concluded that the published literature lacks strong evidence that organic foods are significantly more nutritious than conventional foods even though consumption of organic foods may reduce exposure to pesticide residues and antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

There are facts, and then there are facts.

As a loyal reader of the New York Times I’d like to think I can believe whatever they print. In this case the truth seems yet to be told.