{"id":598008,"date":"2026-05-22T12:55:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-22T12:55:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/598008\/"},"modified":"2026-05-22T12:55:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T12:55:08","slug":"widely-criticized-keto-diet-study-retracted-retraction-watch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/598008\/","title":{"rendered":"Widely criticized keto diet study retracted \u2013 Retraction Watch"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Aamulya\/iStock<\/p>\n

A 2025 paper claiming the keto diet does not promote the formation of arterial plaques has been retracted after widespread criticism of the study\u2019s methods and claims. The journal found \u201cthe identified errors are too great to be corrected with a corrigendum,\u201d according to the retraction notice<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In April 2025, JACC: Advances published the study, which looked at plaque build-up in 100 otherwise generally healthy people who had experienced an increase in their cholesterol levels while being on a keto diet. The study claimed scans performed one year apart by the company Cleerly<\/a> showed the diet was not associated with the development of arterial plaques.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This finding went against what previous studies<\/a> had found<\/a>, and it led to what Wired called<\/a> \u201ca new war in the nutrition world.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Critics began flagging the paper soon after publication, including in a May 2025 letter to the journal<\/a> that raised other concerns, including \u201cselective reporting\u201d of data, questionable statistical analysis and too short a timeframe for the study. Others<\/a> noted that one of the paper\u2019s authors, Dave Feldman<\/a>, is \u201ca software engineer and entrepreneur without a medical license or training, who has devoted himself to all things keto and cholesterol.\u201d<\/p>\n

Three of the paper\u2019s authors \u2014 Nicholas Norwitz, Adrian Soto-Mota and Feldman \u2014 told Retraction Watch they didn\u2019t have access to the data before the study was published and did not know the analysis by Cleerly was not double-blinded. They first saw the data after publication and alerted the journal \u201cimmediately,\u201d they said. They advocated for the publishing of an expression of concern, which was attached to the paper<\/a> in January. They also said they were unaware coauthor James Earls was chief medical officer at Cleerly<\/a> when the data were collected.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In a Substack post<\/a> about the retraction, Norwitz wrote they purposefully did not have access to the data until after publication. \u201cEveryone who isn\u2019t involved in the statistical analysis toward the original findings is appropriately \u2018blinded\u2019 from the raw data in order to protect the integrity of the process,\u201d he wrote. \u201cHowever, after publication, the raw, anonymized data was then provided to the Citizen Science Foundation,\u201d which funded the study, \u201cand thus [to] Dave Feldman, who did a deeper analysis and found a number of anomalies.\u201d Feldman is the founder and president of the foundation.<\/p>\n

Norwitz told us he wished he had reviewed the data before publication. \u201cThe responsible thing at the time seemed to be forfeiting access until publication. That way, nobody could reasonably accuse me of putting my finger on the scale or influencing the analysis,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cMy real hindsight correction is that CSF should have required explicit, documented quality-control assurances for any outside vendor supplying analytical data to the study, including provisions for blinded re-analysis if serious concerns arose,\u201d Feldman told us. \u201cI did not anticipate that we could receive a dataset from a major commercial provider, later identify highly anomalous patterns, and still be unable to obtain a direct quality-control resolution of those concerns. That is the part I would never leave to assumption again.\u201d<\/p>\n

A representative from JACC: Advances told us Earls disclosed his affiliation with the company when the manuscript was submitted, and upon acceptance of the paper, he told the journal he held equity in Cleerly. The publication noted Earls\u2019 Cleerly affiliation but did not disclose the equity stake.<\/p>\n

In January, six members of the research team posted a preprint<\/a> reporting a reanalysis of the data using an \u201cindependent, blinded confirmatory analysis\u201d by the company HeartFlow. They told us the preprint is undergoing peer review at a different journal and said they addressed critics\u2019 concerns in their new manuscript.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Earls is no longer listed as a coauthor with the group and no longer listed as CMO at the Cleerly leadership webpage<\/a>. Christy Sievert, public relations manager for Cleerly, declined to answer questions, including about Earls\u2019 apparent change in position and why the company did not double-blind the data analysis.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Brad Stanfield, a nutritionist in New Zealand, and an outspoken critic<\/a> of the study, told us the reanalysis \u201craises new concerns rather than resolving the old ones.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe retraction was warranted, and the re-framing of the same data as confirming the original story is, in my view, more advocacy than science,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Internist Michael Mindrum, another critic<\/a> of the now-retracted study, said he sees improvement in the new analysis and acknowledged the authors responded to some of the criticisms of the original paper. In his view, however, \u201cthis whole endeavor is at the intersection of social media grifting and medical science. It is all unfortunate.\u201d He said it was clear the authors \u201cwill try to fit whatever data is there into their \u2018narrative.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mindrum called two of the authors, Norwitz and Feldman, \u201csocial media influencers with an outsized media footprint.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his post on Substack<\/a>, Norwitz wrote he was \u201cover-the-moon happy\u201d to be retracting the original paper because the findings remain \u201cincredibly robust\u201d and should now be published without engendering the controversies that affected the original article.<\/p>\n

He also took aim at what he called the \u201cembarassing\u201d and \u201cseemingly willful ignorance of some of our medical and academic detractors.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Stanfield disagreed that the central claim held. \u201cIf the original methodology was sound enough to promote as revolutionary, it shouldn\u2019t need retraction. If it needed retraction, the promotional campaign that accompanied its release was, at best, premature,\u201d he said. At the time, the Lundquist Institute for Biomedical Innovation at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, where three of the authors are employed and where the scans were performed, announced<\/a> the work as heralding a paradigm shift.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe public, including patients making clinical decisions about their own LDL, deserved more humility from the start,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Like Retraction Watch? You can make a\u00a0tax-deductible contribution to support our work<\/a>, follow us\u00a0on X<\/a> or Bluesky<\/a>, like us\u00a0on Facebook<\/a>, follow us on LinkedIn<\/a>, add us to your\u00a0RSS reader<\/a>, or subscribe to our\u00a0daily digest<\/a>. If you find a retraction that\u2019s\u00a0not in our database<\/a>, you can\u00a0let us know here<\/a>. For comments or feedback, email us at\u00a0[email\u00a0protected]<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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