A team of scientists laboriously reviewed decades of research comparing organic fruits and vegetables with those grown the usual way. They found that, as many had suspected, the organic produce, farmed without synthetic fertilizers or pesticides, was more nutritious, with more vitamin C, on average, and many more of the plant-defense molecules that in people help shield against cancer and heart disease.

That is probably not the study you heard about.

The findings, by scientists at Newcastle University in England, appeared in April 2011 and barely made a ripple in the news media or in the public consciousness.

But last month, after a team from Stanford University conducted a similar review of many of the same studies, they came to opposite conclusions — and set off a firestorm. Organic meat and produce, the Stanford researchers said in an article in Annals of Internal Medicine, is no more nutritious than conventionally grown foods.

A debate erupted between those who saw the Stanford study as validation of their belief that organic food is an expensive, pointless exercise and people who said the report ignored the main reasons they buy organic food and pay a premium: to avoid pesticides, for the health of farm workers and for environmental considerations.