Dick Puddlecote traces a tobacco control lie (this is what conflict of interest looks like)

by Carl V Phillips

Sometimes just tweeting something is not enough.  Thus an entire post to tell you to go read Audit Trail Of A Public Health Lie at the Dick Puddlecote blog.  It is an excellent quick investigative report in which he shows how an anti-tobacco researcher promised an anti-tobacco funder a particular result from a research study and (surprise!) delivered it.

This is the level of ethics that dominates anti-tobacco (including anti-THR) “research”.

I often note that the worst financial conflicts of interest are not — contrary to the ANTZ’s ad hominems — sources of grant funding.  Rather, they are being salaried by an organization that has a particular political opinion or, comparatively rarely, owning IP that will become more valuable as a result of the study.  (Ideological conflicts of interest, which are generally ignored, are worse than even these.)  But when I put those at the top of the list I am setting aside the clearly worse absurd extreme scenarios, like someone is holding a researcher’s family hostage to force her to get a particular result or, say, the funder demands a particular message and the “researcher” promises to provide it.

The latter descries the role in society of marketers, not scientists.  Well, that is, unless we are talking about tobacco control industry “scientists”.