Science
A Scientist Is Paid to Study Maple Syrup. He’s Also Paid to Promote It.
For more than a decade, Navindra Seeram, a biomedical researcher, has praised maple syrup, calling it a “hero ingredient” and “champion food” that could have wide-ranging health benefits.
Dr. Seeram, dean of the School of Pharmacy at the University of New England, has published more than three dozen studies extolling the power of maple. Much of his work has been bankrolled by Canada’s maple syrup industry and the Canadian and American governments.
At the same time, he has taken on another role: maple syrup pitchman.
“I am uniquely qualified as the world’s leading researcher on maple health benefits with the scientific reputation and credibility to promote the sales of maple products,” he has written in grant applications. He has assured leaders of the Canadian industry that he would always support maple from Quebec, according to emails obtained through a public records request.
As he straddles the realms of scientific inquiry and promotion, he has distorted the real-world implications of his findings and exaggerated health benefits, according to a review by The Examination and The New York Times of 15 years of his studies and public statements. In videos and press releases, he has suggested that consuming maple syrup may help stave off diseases including cancer, Alzheimer’s and diabetes. Other scientists told The Examination and The Times that they thought he had overstated his lab findings and made misleading claims.
Industry funding is commonplace in nutrition research and may become even more critical as scientists grapple with the Trump administration’s sweeping cuts. Dr. Seeram’s work shows the perils of intertwining science and salesmanship, propelling information that can shape consumer habits and public health.
At the University of Rhode Island, where he worked until last year, Dr. Seeram oversaw projects that were awarded $2.6 million in U.S. government funding, including a grant explicitly intended to increase maple syrup sales. That promotional work produced a stream of social media posts like, “Maple Syrup’s Benefits: Anti-Cancer, Anti-Oxidant, Anti-Inflammatory.”
In a video posted on YouTube in 2019, Dr. Seeram said nutrients in maple syrup could “potentially together prevent and/or delay the onset” of conditions such as “cardiovascular disease, metabolic syndrome, diseases of the brain and so on.”
But his studies have found something more limited: that maple syrup contains small amounts of polyphenols, compounds in plants that are generally considered beneficial. To demonstrate their effects, he tested highly concentrated maple extracts in lab settings — not people’s consumption of commercial maple syrup.
Dr. Seeram told The Examination that he believed in the power of natural medicines, which were part of his upbringing in South America. And he defended how he had spoken about his findings: “No one can go back to direct-quote from me to say, ‘It’s going to cure cancer, it’s going to cure diabetes.’”
His conclusions often include hedging language — that maple syrup “may” or “could” have meaningful health effects — or disclaimers recommending further study. But several researchers said that the caveats weren’t enough to counterbalance broad health claims, and that Dr. Seeram had leaped too far from lab findings to practical applications.
“They are framing it in a far more positive light than they should,” said Christopher Gardner, a nutrition researcher at Stanford.
In an interview, Dr. Seeram blamed a former colleague at the University of Rhode Island for stirring up what he said was unwarranted scrutiny of his work. A university official said the school had investigated and found no research misconduct.
At a maple industry conference in October, Dr. Seeram described his work as making “it simple for Mom to understand” that syrup is beneficial.
“We have to convince the consumer that this sugar is good for you,” he told an audience of maple farmers, and laid out how to reach the public: Studies like his would be published in peer-reviewed journals, leading to marketing and media coverage and inspiring consumers to buy.
The Quebec Maple Syrup Producers, an industry association that markets and regulates most of the world’s maple syrup, has long funded Dr. Seeram’s work. The association and the Canadian government have together provided at least $2.8 million for his research, according to a 2019 grant application. The association disputed that figure but would not provide details; neither would Dr. Seeram.
The association has also hired him for consulting and what it termed “PR activities” for at least a decade, according to emails and invoices. In 2023, his fees totaled $37,000, emails show.
In response to one of several emails from association officials thanking him for his work, he wrote in 2018 that he would “always work to find ways to promote maple products from Quebec.”
The maple association approached him in 2009, after the owners of POM Wonderful had funded and used some of his research on pomegranate to promote their juice during the pomegranate craze of the 2000s. (The Federal Trade Commission later issued a cease-and-desist order accusing the company of making misleading or false claims, based in part on a study he coauthored.)
Though Dr. Seeram had not previously researched maple, he told The Examination he was intrigued because he had recently moved to the Northeast, where it is an important agricultural product. Over the next couple of years, Dr. Seeram announced he had discovered dozens of polyphenols in maple syrup, including one his team named Quebecol.
Based on his lab tests of concentrated compounds, he began suggesting that maple syrup had wide-ranging applications for human health.
“Maple syrup is becoming a champion food,” he said in a 2011 press release. “Several of these compounds possess antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties, which have been shown to fight cancer, diabetes and bacterial illnesses.”
But experts say the low levels of these compounds in syrup are unlikely to improve health. Dr. Seeram acknowledged in interviews that a person would have to consume gallons of maple syrup to get the nutritional equivalent of the extracts. He noted, as he often has, that he isn’t encouraging anyone to consume more sugar, merely to choose maple syrup over alternatives.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture, another important benefactor, awarded more than $2.6 million for Dr. Seeram’s work. This included nearly $500,000 in 2017 to study whether maple syrup extract could improve the health of obese mice. Their health did not improve, and in some cases worsened, according to study findings cited by a government website and a student dissertation. The results weren’t published in an academic journal. Dr. Seeram, who in recent weeks stopped responding to queries from The Examination and The Times, didn’t answer questions about this study.
In 2018, the U.S.D.A. awarded $500,000 to a group led by Dr. Seeram for a promotional campaign that would showcase maple research on a University of Rhode Island website. Dr. Seeram’s grant application said he would be responsible for translating the science into “lay-friendly terminology.”
The website, overseen by his team, called maple syrup “immensely healthy for you.” And though it carried disclaimers that more research was needed, it made misleading statements connecting studies of reduced-sugar maple extract to the consumption of maple syrup, such as: “Did you ever think that you could fight high blood sugar with some things as sugary and delicious as maple syrup?”
It also said the Quebecol compound could become a “potential cancer prevention drug,” noting that it looked “remarkably similar” to the breast cancer drug Tamoxifen — a comparison Dr. Seeram has also made in presentations.
In interviews, three cancer researchers called this comparison misleading. Geoffrey Greene of the University of Chicago said it was like expecting the brother of a concert violinist to also be a concert violinist because they looked similar.
When asked why he has used his research to promote maple products, Dr. Seeram said he was simply fulfilling the terms of the government grant. A U.S.D.A. spokeswoman said the University of Rhode Island was responsible for the website’s claims.
The university wouldn’t comment on the research. After inquiries from reporters, the website was taken down. The university said this was part of a broader effort to remove dormant pages.
One of Dr. Seeram’s studies involved giving maple syrup extract to genetically modified worms to examine Alzheimer’s-related effects. His team observed that some worms fared better, but on average they were worse off. Nevertheless, the top-line summary in Dr. Seeram’s paper, published in 2016 by the journal Neurochemical Research, ignored the negative results and said the syrup extract “showed protective effects” for the worms.
An industry association press release said maple syrup extract had prolonged the worms’ lives — even though on average they died sooner — with a disclaimer that more research was needed. That nuance was lost in headlines in Canada, India, England and the United States proclaiming that maple syrup could protect against Alzheimer’s.
Christopher Link of the University of Colorado Boulder, who pioneered Alzheimer’s research on that kind of worm, criticized the study, citing the lack of basic details like the number of worms tested and whether the experiment had been replicated. Dozens of plant extracts have produced positive results in similar experiments, Dr. Link said, but that doesn’t mean they have real-world applications.
In a statement, Julie Barbeau of the maple association said it adheres to strict ethics rules and has had “no influence whatsoever” on the scores of research projects it has backed.
At least a dozen of Dr. Seeram’s papers that the maple association says it funded didn’t disclose that relationship. Also not disclosed in his papers: his paid consultant role and a Canadian maple extract patent that names him and Ms. Barbeau as co-inventors.
Six publishers of Dr. Seeram’s work said they require authors to declare potential conflicts of interest. Dr. Seeram did not respond to questions about his disclosures.
In public statements, he has acknowledged receiving financial support from the maple association. And in earlier interviews, he said that industry funding is vital, because other research dollars are scarce. He also defended his patents, saying, “The driver here is not for me to get rich.” The maple association said it was protecting its intellectual property.
Last year, the association hailed a new study, which it funded, as the “first human clinical trial” of maple syrup.
Participants replaced a small amount of sugar in their diet with maple syrup — for instance, to sweeten coffee. The scientists told Newsweek that the results, published in The Journal of Nutrition, showed that maple syrup improved measures of blood sugar, blood pressure and fat, and might help lower the risk of diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
Dr. Seeram, who was not an author of the study, said the results validated his work.
But three independent experts who reviewed the research said the conclusions were overstated — emphasizing a few positive results among dozens of measures — and the study appeared to show no meaningful difference between maple syrup and refined sugar.
“They took it too far,” said Kimber Stanhope, a nutritional biologist at the University of California, Davis.
The lead researcher, André Marette of Laval University, said that while the differences between maple syrup and refined sugar were “modest,” they were meaningful. Through a public relations firm hired by the industry association, he said, “We were careful to state that the clinical relevance of the work will need to be further substantiated.”
In the meantime, the findings have reached the general public. “Sweet!” effused a headline in a women’s magazine last fall. “Maple Syrup in Coffee Could Help You Lose Weight.”
Mago Torres contributed reporting.
NEW YORK — Scientists have unearthed communities of marine life — including jellyfish, tubeworms and brittle stars — thriving on a whale graveyard that is millions of years old.
These graveyards form when whale carcasses fall to the sea floor, becoming a sustaining snack for nearby critters. This one, located up to 23,000 feet below the surface of the southeastern Indian Ocean, spans the largest area and is so far the deepest and oldest found.
A whale’s sheer size and the unique chemistry of its bones are the keys to forming these unique underwater neighborhoods, said Xikun Song, a biologist with the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Deep-sea Science and Engineering.
“At the same time, the very nature of the deep ocean makes these sites exceptionally difficult for scientists to locate,” Song, who was involved with the latest find, wrote in an email.
Researchers explored the remains during multiple deep-sea submersible trips in 2023, collecting samples and mapping the extent of the necropolis. They found five carcass sites and fossils, including skulls belonging to beaked and baleen whales. The oldest bones date back 5.3 million years.
Feeding and living on the carcasses were myriad creatures, large and small, including sea cucumbers, squat lobsters and saltwater clams. Many of them are likely species that have never been documented, according to findings published Wednesday in the journal Nature.
“The potential number of specimens is just astounding,” said paleontologist Stephen Godfrey with the Calvert Marine Museum in Maryland, who wasn’t involved in the research.
Many factors likely conspired to preserve the bones for millions of years, according to the study authors. They’re dense enough to outlast attacks from bone-eating worms, and located deep enough in the ocean to avoid getting buried by dust and loose particles. The bones also were coated with a light layer of minerals from the surrounding seawater, which may have prevented them from degrading.
Why did so many whales die here? Maybe they were already living in the area and died of natural causes. A few could have perished from exhaustion or illness caused by deep-sea diving. The area’s shape, akin to the letter V, could also have funneled the remains to their resting spot, the authors wrote.
Such discoveries are important because they clue scientists into the vibrant communities that find a way to live even in remote, hard-to-reach environments.
Studying the whale graveyards “is important for understanding how life can adapt to such extreme conditions, not only due to the lack of light and oxygen but also to the incredibly high pressure,” said study co-author and paleontologist Giovanni Bianucci with the University of Pisa in Italy in an email.
Ramakrishnan writes for The Associated Press.
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Science
El Niño turns crumbling California pier into climate battleground over what to save — and who pays
As a historic El Niño supercharges the Pacific Ocean and San Francisco experiences record high seasonal sea levels, the latest structural casualty of intense wave action is prompting Bay Area politicians to call for help from the state and federal governments.
They want to rebuild a concrete pier shut down this month after officials deemed it unsafe because of cracking from decades of pounding surf and storms.
As waves crashed against the derelict structure Monday morning, U.S. Rep. Sam Liccardo (D-San José) held a news conference and asked the federal government to follow through on $50 million in climate resilience funding promised by the Biden administration but terminated by the Trump administration in 2025.
The city of Pacifica had been on the shortlist for the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program, managed through FEMA. California and 22 other states successfully sued to reinstate the program, but the funding has yet to be allocated.
Liccardo also asked for nearly $1 million in promised funds from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for a handrail project on the pier and an additional $9 million to protect coastal bluffs.
Coastlines are already being buffeted and inundated by rising seas. With the closed-off Pacifica Municipal Pier in the background, local politicians and community members said they’re on the front lines and want to rebuild.
“Pacifica is ground zero for coastal resilience,” said state Sen. Josh Becker (D-Menlo Park), as he asked Gov. Gavin Newsom to declare a state of emergency and “help us fix this pier and help this community recover again.”
“This is very much a reminder that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” he said, noting that previous attempts for funding went unheeded. “We cannot wait until infrastructure fails before we invest in protecting it.”
As climate change starts to become expensive, it prompts questions about what to protect and what to abandon.
Chad Nelson, chief executive of the Surfrider Foundation, a coastal environmental advocacy organization, said city piers provide coastal access to people who can’t swim or walk on the beach; they are often popular fishing spots and tend to serve a broad swath of their communities.
On the flip side, he said, they keep getting beat up by the ocean and costing taxpayers millions of dollars to repair or replace.
In Santa Cruz, a public wharf damaged by storms in 2024 recently reopened after $1.3 million in repairs. In Capitola, a storm-damaged wharf reopened earlier this year after $10 million had been sunk into repairs. The city is now considering building an open-air restaurant, public bathrooms, a bait shop and a boat launch.
“I think the larger question is: Are we subsidizing bad responses to problems that we know are going to persist?” he said, responding to a question about infrastructure that won’t last.
Charles Lester, director of the Ocean and Coastal Policy Center at UC Santa Barbara, agreed with Nelson that it’s important to distinguish public from private benefits.
“There’s a bit of a difference between a public recreational pier, for example, and your private development that’s going to impact the beach,” he said.
And at some point, he said, we have to acknowledge things are only going to get worse.
In a white paper authored by Lester and Nelson, the two described the coming El Niño as a “reckoning” for the California coast.
El Niños result in larger waves, elevated sea levels and powerful storms — “predictable signature(s) of a climate pattern that returns every two to seven years and is expected, as the planet warms, to intensify,” they wrote.
Wave energy along the shore can run 50% above average during an El Niño, while sea levels can climb 6 to 12 inches — flooding coastal homes, roads and infrastructure. Coastal erosion increases by more than 69% during extreme El Niño events, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
During the 1997-98 El Niño, seven Pacifica seaside houses were condemned after powerful waves and storms made them unsafe and irreparable. Seventeen people in the state died as a result of the historic flooding and storms.
The funding requests for the pier also come as San Francisco sees its highest summer water levels ever. On Saturday, the National Weather Service recorded levels 1.83 feet above normal high tide. Early Monday morning, the popular Pier 14 along the city’s Embarcadero waterfront was submerged.
High surf along the coast killed a young girl in Laguna Beach, and hundreds of people have been rescued at Newport Beach. Water stranded a hiker along the cliffs of San Francisco’s Presidio — requiring a seven-hour rescue mission that ultimately left the hiker and a rescuer injured as the waves crashed them into the rocks.
“This stretch of coast has been a continuous coastal emergency declaration for almost 10 years due to the repeat damage of storms in recent El Niño years,” the mayor of Pacifica, Christine Boles, said.
Pacifica has been planning for climate change for years, she said. But climate change is outstripping those efforts, and without financial and regulatory support from the federal and state governments, the battle will be all but lost.
Science
Californian is infected with rare tick-borne illness. What to know about the deadly bacteria
A Northern Californian has been confirmed as the fourth-ever person diagnosed with a newly recognized and rare tick-borne disease that causes symptoms similar to Rocky Mountain spotted fever.
The California Department of Public Health confirmed the latest case of Rickettsia lanei bacteria in a patient who was diagnosed in April of this year. Two other California cases were reported in 2004 and 2023.
Public health officials told The Times that the infected person “was seriously ill, hospitalized and has since been discharged and is recovering.”
It is unclear how long the person was in the hospital or what their symptoms were. The state agency said it could not disclose the home county of the person but confirmed the infected person lived and worked in Northern California.
Rickettsia lanei comes from the spotted fever group Rickettsia, bacteria transmitted to humans from the bite of an infected tick.
In California three types of ticks — the American dog tick (Dermacentor similis), the Pacific Coast tick (Dermacentor occidentalis) and the brown dog tick (Rhipicephalus sanguineus) — can transmit the bacteria that cause Rocky Mountain spotted fever in humans and dogs, according to the California Department of Public Health.
Symptoms of Rocky Mountain spotted fever can range from fever and a rash to long-term effects that include damage to internal organs or neurological disorders.
The tick-borne disease has been spreading globally since the early 2000s, most notably in Mexico and Brazil, with reported fatality rates that can exceed 50%, according to a study published by UC Davis.
What is Rickettsia lanei?
Rickettsia lanei bacteria were identified this year in a few Pacific Coast ticks, including a tick in Contra Costa County, according to SFGate, where the latest case was first reported in April.
The new bacterium was added to the list of potentially transmittable pathogens in 2024 by the state public health department after its severe symptoms were studied in two cases of infected men nearly 20 years apart, according to a report published in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Emerging and Infectious Diseases journal.
“Sustained investment in public health has enabled development of the advanced molecular tools that detected these infections,” the California Department of Public Health said in a statement to The Times.
According to the report, both men fell ill after spending time outdoors, one playing golf at five courses in Alameda and Contra Costa counties within 14 days of the onset of his symptoms. This first patient had fever, headaches, muscle pain, malaise, loss of appetite, diarrhea and abdominal pain, among other symptoms. His condition worsened on his third day in the hospital, according to the report. The man was ultimately in the hospital for 22 days, including 11 in the intensive care unit with a primary diagnosis of rocky mountain spotted fever and a secondary diagnosis of acute kidney injury.
The other infected person had visited and camped at a county park and state beach in San Mateo and Marin counties. The second man reported a five-day history of headaches, vomiting, light sensitivity, neck pain and confusion, according to the report. On the third day of hospitalization, the man became comatose and was intubated, the report stated. After 13 days, he was discharged with a primary diagnosis of severe Rickettsia.
Researchers have known about Rickettsia lanei since 2018 when it was detected in rabbit ticks in Sonoma County, but they didn’t know its potential harm to humans because the rabbit tick rarely bites people.
“The Pacific Coast tick, which bites humans more frequently, may occasionally acquire the organism from an infected rabbit, which is the most likely route for the rare human infections that have been identified,” the state health agency said.
Should I be worried about contracting Rickettsia lanei?
Human infections are rare but could be underreported because Rickettsia lanei symptoms are very similar to those of rocky mountain spotted fever, said Janet Foley, veterinarian and disease ecologist at UC Davis.
“I think it’s so new that I don’t know if anybody’s really gotten a grant to study it or put it under a microscope,” Foley said.
Rickettsia lanei bacteria cases could also have gone undetected for so long because some cases were not severe, she said.
Foley said Californians should be aware of Rickettsia lanei and take precautions against tick bites.
How to keep disease-carrying ticks at bay
The best way to avoid ticks and tick bites is to be vigilant in your surroundings, Foley said, noting that ticks can transmit other diseases such as Lyme disease.
To keep a disease-carrying tick at bay, Foley recommends:
- Covering up your arms and legs when outdoors by wearing pants and long-sleeved shirts.
- Staying out of the grass where a tick can latch onto your clothing. Instead stay on a cleared path.
- Wearing light-colored clothing so it’s easier to spot a tick if one jumps on you.
- After an outdoor activity, take off your clothes, toss them in the wash and take a shower.
- If your dog goes with you for outdoor activities, give it a bath and then apply tick medication.
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