We appreciate the thoughtful, diverse and engaging comments on our paper [1] by these distinguished alcohol academicians. We are even more grateful for the opportunity to respond.
First, we agree with Professor Heath's comments [2] that alcohol is known to have social as well as medical benefits, and that we could learn much by studying its benefits. However, given the increasing involvement of industry in alcohol science, studies of positive effects of drinking would be more trustworthy if they are not funded by the industry. We absolutely agree with Tanya Chikritzhs [3] and others that addiction journals have a crucial role to play as gatekeepers and that there is need for more research on conflict of interest declarations, as well as on all kinds of bias in alcohol research. . . . . .
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