This would've required us to state it in the manuscript and would've reflected badly on our research (readers would've been suspicious)

Why aren’t you sharing the data publicly? That would inspire confidence by readers.

Yes, indeed and we'll probably do that after publication. It probably also opens us to accusations of mishandled data / bad interpretation by the company, though?

>It probably also opens us to accusations of mishandled data / bad interpretation by the company, though?

Isn't that how science works? I also don't think they're called accusations.

You work with data and you state something based on that data. Someone else may point out that some steps of the process are flawed, or the data is flawed. That's the very nature of this.

Depends on who makes the claim, I guess. We are absolutely not afraid of scientific reviews. We're afraid of potential legal reviews made in bad faith. A company doesn't have to win a legal case to win against researchers, they just have to make a fuss.

I see. Is this common in your area of research?

It's not common, although a group was sued by a company this year. So we'd like to anticipate, just in case.

Not just the company, but other researchers and peers as well. This seems kinda like the point of including it with the publication, doesn't it? What's the value of the study of it can't be evaluated or peer-reviewed with the data present?

In my field, most studies are peer-reviewed without review of the data itself. The study was conducted strictly according to best practices guidelines, so we are not afraid of peer review. We are afraid of the suits coming in and making a fuss because they're big and have big money while we're small and penniless.