What volte face? Real nutrionists and dieticians (as opposed to pill salesman and "nutritional therapists") have known for ages that very few people are deficient in vitamins, and that some can be harmful in high doses, Naturally the pill industry does not like the excellent Cochrane review.

David Colqhoun, London, UK

"But the study ignored 405 other reports..." and so it should have done. Not sure why? Go read the original at http://mrw.interscience.wiley.com/cochrane/clsysrev/articles/CD007176/pdf_fs.html
"...yet the paper passed peer review." I feel sure this article would not have done

Dr Dave, Exeter,

No profits in vitamins, and if there's even a small chance they keep people healthy and away from big pharms expensive drugs then this kind of manipualtion of the scientific process is inevitable. Each vitamin must be examined in isolation to determine (contradictive) effect. This study is flawed.

kevin, Lincoln, UK

I'm sure if one is looking for absolutism, then science isn't the way to go. Science is all about probabilities and the preponderance of evidence. In science new evidence changes old analyses and conclusions.
However, if absolutism is what one wants then the way to go is religion and journalism.

pv, Treviso, Italy

Another problem with peer review is that orthodoxy can make it difficult for genuine new ideas to surface and flourish.

After all, most peer reviewers are senior members of the scientific community, and many will have built their careers on the prevailing scientific orthodoxy.

Chris Palmer, Southampton, England

So let me see if i understand, Scientists put forward a paper attempting to move an idea forward. This is reviewed by peers who compete for grants for research into the same field?WOW this could be really messy, maybe what you need is something really scary like a big asteroid or global warmi...,OH

steve, Sunshine Coast, Australia

many scientific papers are not perfect.

wilson, guangdong, china

In essence, Scientists are people with their foibles just like the rest of us.I trust science but not those pitching for news attention or funding.
Finding the right notes to play the pipers tune is a fact of both science and journalism.Scepticism is better for you than vitamins ever were.

robert everitt, wolverhampton,

This article complains that researchers looked at "artificial", not "natural" vitamins. Since the study is assessing the safety of vitamin supplements, this makes perfect sense. If you want to find out if vitamin pills are safe, looking at people taking those pills seems a good place to start.

P Wilson, London,

A few points for those who do not understand meta analysis:
Rejected studies were rejected for scientifically sound reasons such as inadequate methodological or data quality, and especially for the fact that as this was a study about deaths, only those studies which had deaths could be looked at!

Adam Gibb, Manchester, England

I think that a peer-reviewed article would make it clear what evidence the authors looked at, what evidence they didn't, and precisely how they reached their conclusions. One can then judge how solid and how applicable those conclusions are.

Newspaper articles almost never do this, nor should they

Hal, New York, United States

If all this article is stating is that there are times when science is not infallible, and it so happens that an article with no scientific basis guesses the correct answer, then, statistically, this is of course an inevitability.

Dominic Pearson, Dubai, UAE

The really sad thing about Fleet Street these days is that the speculative article n today's Times (presented without a single conditional verb, of course) about Madeleine McCann's movements on the night of her disappearance probably would pass peer review amongst ordinary journalists...

Ian Kemmish, Biggleswade, UK

Surely this article notes merely that findings in peer-reviewed science journals may need to be subjected to further research. This article makes no reference to the credibility of newspapers contrary to the comparative opening paragraph. That is therefore not a credible assertion without evidence.

John Scott, London,

This is all very well, but I think more research is needed.

Christopher Chantrill, Seattle, USA

Hm. I'm sure many scientific papers are flawed. But the same can be said of some of the selective reports that appear in newspapers. The Press (and broadcast media) are not renowned for letting facts and balance stand in the way of a good story.

James, Hong Kong, China