EDITORIAL

Industry funding

Chasing the dollar: why scientists should decline tobacco industry funding

R E Malone and L A Bero

R E Malone, L A Bero, University of California, San Francisco, USA

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Ruth E Malone, Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, School of Nursing and Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education, University of California, San Francisco, Box 1390, UCSF, San Francisco, CA 94143–1390;
rmalone@itsa.ucsf.edu

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Tobacco dollars are a bad bargain

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Keywords: conflict of interest; ethics; funding; scientists; tobacco industry

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Most tobacco researchers now know how the tobacco industry for decades operated clandestinely to obstruct and obfuscate the scientific evidence that smoking causes cancer and, later, that secondhand smoke causes disease in non-smokers. The tobacco industry’s internal documents, released as a result of the US states Attorneys General lawsuits and other legal cases, provide ample evidence that is analysed in an expanding body of work.^1,2 What may not be as widely known is that these documents also highlight how the industry used respected scientists to advance its goals. Fields and Chapman’s important and well documented case study in this issue of the journal shows that even internationally renowned scientists are not immune to the seductions of industry funding.³

What is important for today’s scientists to understand is that credibility is perhaps the most desired scientific product for tobacco industry funded research. To illustrate, you need look no further . . . [Full text of this article]

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