{"id":2631,"date":"2013-10-18T20:33:42","date_gmt":"2013-10-18T19:33:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/?p=2631"},"modified":"2013-10-18T20:34:10","modified_gmt":"2013-10-18T19:34:10","slug":"smoking-out-tobacco-industry-supported-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/2013\/10\/18\/smoking-out-tobacco-industry-supported-research\/","title":{"rendered":"Smoking out Tobacco Industry-Supported Research"},"content":{"rendered":"

BMJ Open<\/em>, along with a couple of other journals, published a statement a couple of days ago<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/span> saying that they’d no longer accept papers based on research wholly or partially funded by the tobacco industry. \u00a0The gloss on the statement is damning:<\/p>\n

The tobacco industry, far from advancing knowledge, has used\u00a0research to deliberately produce ignorance and to advance its\u00a0ultimate goal of selling its deadly products while shoring up its\u00a0damaged legitimacy. \u00a0We now know, from extensive research\u00a0drawing on the tobacco industry\u2019s own internal documents, that\u00a0for decades the industry sought to create both scientific and\u00a0popular ignorance or \u201cdoubt.\u201d \u00a0At first this doubt related to the\u00a0fact that smoking caused lung cancer; later, it related to the\u00a0harmful effects of secondhand smoke on non-smokers and the\u00a0true effects of using so called light or reduced tar cigarettes on\u00a0smokers\u2019 health. \u00a0Journals unwittingly played a role in\u00a0producing and sustaining this ignorance.<\/p>\n

Some who work within public health and who buy the notion\u00a0of \u201charm reduction\u201d argue that the companies that now produce\u00a0modified cigarette products and non-cigarette tobacco products,\u00a0including electronic nicotine delivery devices (e-cigarettes), are\u00a0different from the tobacco industry of old, or that the tobacco\u00a0industry has changed. For \u201chardened\u201d cigarette smokers who\u00a0can\u2019t or won\u2019t quit cigarettes, the argument goes, new tobacco\u00a0products could represent potential public health gains, and\u00a0company sponsored research may be the first to identify those\u00a0gains.<\/p>\n

But one fact remains unassailably true: the same few\u00a0multinational tobacco companies continue to dominate the\u00a0market globally and, as smaller companies develop promising\u00a0products, they are quickly acquired by the larger ones. However\u00a0promising any other products might be, tobacco companies are\u00a0still in the business of marketing cigarettes. As US federal court\u00a0judge Gladys Kessler pointed out in her judgment in the case\u00a0of US Department of Justice versus Philip Morris et al, the\u00a0egregious behaviour of these companies is continuing and is\u00a0likely to continue into the future. \u00a0And just this summer\u00a0documents leaked from one company showed a concerted\u00a0campaign to \u201censure that PP [plain packaging of tobacco\u00a0products, bearing health warnings but only minimal branding]\u00a0is not adopted in the UK.\u201d \u00a0The tobacco industry has not\u00a0changed in any fundamental way, and the cigarette\u2014the single\u00a0most deadly consumer product ever made\u2014remains widely\u00a0available and aggressively marketed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What should we make of the policy?<\/p>\n

A bad argument against the ban – yeah, I know that that misses some linguistic subtlety, but it’s close enough – is that it’s a violation of free speech: it really is no such thing, for the simple reason that noone is trying to stop the tobacco industry making its case – a right to free speech doesn’t imply a right to a platform. \u00a0Of course, if every reputable publisher denies the industry a platform, than this might be a\u00a0de facto<\/em> rather than\u00a0de jure<\/em> curb on free speech – but that’s just the way it goes: just as noone gets to insist that a particular person gives them a platform, they don’t get to insist that they be provided with one at all. \u00a0(Also – though it doesn’t apply in this case – merely to splutter “B…b.. but free speech!” isn’t an argument anyway.)<\/p>\n

Still, I guess I am uneasy about a ban. \u00a0There’s a range of reasons for this. \u00a0One of these has to do with a kind of fallacy about repeat offenders. \u00a0Let’s allow that the tobacco industry has a record of unreliable research – that’s not all that much of an allowance. \u00a0More: let’s allow that the industry has been systematically dishonest about what it does, and its funding habits have been an extension of that dishonesty. \u00a0Yet we wouldn’t be entitled to say based on that that every instance of research was unreliable: one swallow doesn’t make a spring, but the fact that it’s spring doesn’t mean that everything’s a swallow. \u00a0And, besides: the fact that research has been unreliable in the past isn’t an indication that future research will be; one would prefer to think, surely, that a given piece of research should be taken on its own merits, rather than on the merits of the person who did it, or the merits of the last piece of research.<\/p>\n

So there’s at least a chance that\u00a0there might be decent research carried out on tobacco industry’s dollar – and the slim possibility that there might be some hitherto unrecognised benefit that’s derived from tobacco. \u00a0There’s even a chance (vanishingly small, I admit, but not nothing) that we’ve got tobacco wrong all along. \u00a0Science sometimes works like that. \u00a0More worryingly, if we’re concerned that tobacco-funded research has an agenda, shouldn’t we also entertain at least the vague possibility that research funded by, say, a cancer charity also has an agenda? \u00a0And if we can adjust for the latter, why not the former? \u00a0Along these lines, one might say that journals have a duty to be disinterested, and that the policy violates that duty.<\/p>\n

I think that these worries are non-negligible; but they don’t necessarily tip the balance for all that. \u00a0This is partly, but not wholly, because I don’t think that there is a duty to research anyway – and so to forego the opportunity to publish research isn’t anything more than just that: foregoing an opportunity. \u00a0So even if there is good research that won’t get published… well, meh.<\/p>\n

And while it might be the case that we’ve got tobacco all wrong, or even that it has some minor mitigation, as it stands, the overwhelming balance of probabilities is that we haven’t. \u00a0And note that the policy is not that no papers will be published that question conventional wisdom about tobacco – those would\u00a0normally have to pass a fairly high bar anyway\u00a0(for reasons related to Hume’s reasoning\u00a0concerning miracles<\/span><\/a><\/span>: there’re certain things that we’re entitled to discount, even if not ignore, just because believing them would require such a grand suspension of disbelief), and it hasn’t been raised; it’s just that tobacco-industry\u00a0sponsored stuff is ruled out. \u00a0That actually makes unexpected results more trustworthy on aggregate, because it’s more likely to be disinterested. \u00a0Industry-supported research is more likely to be favourable to the industry that supports it, not least because a sponsor might have the ability to sit on research that isn’t favourable.<\/p>\n

The biggest worry has to do with the possibility of drowning out an unpopular bias with a popular one. \u00a0But it has to be said here that cancer charities do not have a track record of distorting research; even if there is the occasional dodgy paper – one ought never to say never – there’s no evidence of anything like the practices of big tobacco. \u00a0Of course, this takes us back to the point about the past not providing evidence of\u00a0this<\/em> particular piece of research. \u00a0But still – there’s room to be at least slightly wary of tobacco-sponsored research in a way that doesn’t apply to the other stuff. \u00a0Cancer charities don’t have a profit incentive, and not-smoking isn’t an addictive revenue-source, for one thing. \u00a0So even if you think that the BMJ statement is a bit too righteously angry, the general point stands.<\/p>\n

Hence that particular line of attack on the ban, I think, fails.<\/p>\n

What we do have reason to believe is that tobacco is harmful; and those with a fairly obvious interest in selling the stuff also have a corresponding interest in pushing research that talks down those risks. \u00a0Hence there’s a conflict of interest. \u00a0And since there’s no obligation to publish to begin with… well, it’s probably no great loss, all told.<\/p>\n

Should we be wholly at ease with the policy? \u00a0Probably not. \u00a0But the idea that we should always be at ease with moral decisions is fallacious. \u00a0I think that the policy is, at the very least, defensible, and could well be right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BMJ Open, along with a couple of other journals, published a statement a couple of days ago saying that they’d no longer accept papers based on research wholly or partially funded by the tobacco industry. \u00a0The gloss on the statement is damning: The tobacco industry, far from advancing knowledge, has used\u00a0research to deliberately produce ignorance […]<\/p>\n

Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[575,1542,397,472],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bmj","category-in-the-journals","category-research-ethics","category-thinking-aloud"],"yoast_head":"\nSmoking out Tobacco Industry-Supported Research - Journal of Medical Ethics blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/2013\/10\/18\/smoking-out-tobacco-industry-supported-research\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Smoking out Tobacco Industry-Supported Research - Journal of Medical Ethics blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"BMJ Open, along with a couple of other journals, published a statement a couple of days ago saying that they’d no longer accept papers based on research wholly or partially funded by the tobacco industry. \u00a0The gloss on the statement is damning: The tobacco industry, far from advancing knowledge, has used\u00a0research to deliberately produce ignorance [...]Read More...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/2013\/10\/18\/smoking-out-tobacco-industry-supported-research\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Journal of Medical Ethics blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2013-10-18T19:33:42+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2013-10-18T19:34:10+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"BMJ\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"BMJ\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"7 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/blogs.bmj.com\\\/medical-ethics\\\/2013\\\/10\\\/18\\\/smoking-out-tobacco-industry-supported-research\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/blogs.bmj.com\\\/medical-ethics\\\/2013\\\/10\\\/18\\\/smoking-out-tobacco-industry-supported-research\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"BMJ\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/blogs.bmj.com\\\/medical-ethics\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/ba3da426ed20e8f1d933ca367d8216fe\"},\"headline\":\"Smoking out Tobacco Industry-Supported Research\",\"datePublished\":\"2013-10-18T19:33:42+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2013-10-18T19:34:10+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/blogs.bmj.com\\\/medical-ethics\\\/2013\\\/10\\\/18\\\/smoking-out-tobacco-industry-supported-research\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":1373,\"commentCount\":37,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/blogs.bmj.com\\\/medical-ethics\\\/#organization\"},\"articleSection\":[\"BMJ\",\"In the Journals\",\"Research Ethics\",\"Thinking Aloud\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/blogs.bmj.com\\\/medical-ethics\\\/2013\\\/10\\\/18\\\/smoking-out-tobacco-industry-supported-research\\\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/blogs.bmj.com\\\/medical-ethics\\\/2013\\\/10\\\/18\\\/smoking-out-tobacco-industry-supported-research\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/blogs.bmj.com\\\/medical-ethics\\\/2013\\\/10\\\/18\\\/smoking-out-tobacco-industry-supported-research\\\/\",\"name\":\"Smoking out Tobacco Industry-Supported Research - 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