The idea that you'd need 8895 IU of vitamin D per day comes from a real paper (Veugelers & Ekwaru, 2014) that did spot a statistical error in the official calculation — but its own authors present that number as an extrapolation to read with caution, not a dose to follow: it far exceeds the 4000 IU/day safety ceiling that every body which re-examined the question still upholds.

noli's read

Named source: Veugelers & Ekwaru, "A Statistical Error in the Estimation of the Recommended Dietary Allowance for Vitamin D," Nutrients, 2014. Evidence type: a methodological letter re-analyzing the Institute of Medicine's (IOM) original data, not a clinical trial. The error they flag is real: the IOM conflated a prediction interval around study averages with an interval around individual values, which would inflate how many people the 600 IU/day RDA actually covers. But an independent expert panel convened in 2017 by the National Academies reviewed this critique and concluded it likely didn't meaningfully change the underlying recommendation, and two other bodies (EFSA, the UK's SACN), working from different data, landed on similar daily intakes (400-600 IU) with the same 4000 IU/day safety ceiling. Presenting 8895 IU/day as the "correct" dose skips over the fact that the paper's own authors call it "far beyond the range of studied doses," warranting caution in interpretation. Direction: the methodological critique is real; the dose promoted as a practical takeaway exceeds what the paper itself recommends.

the sources

1. 1NIH Office of Dietary Supplements 2026
2. 2Manson JE et al. 2019