Healthy Skepticism Library item: 15964

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: Journal Article

Michaels D.
Addressing conflict in strategic literature reviews: disclosure is not enough: How could disclosure of interests work better in medicine, epidemiology and public health?
J Epidemiol Community Health 2009; 63:599-600
http://jech.bmj.com/cgi/content/extract/63/8/599?etoc

Abstract:

The success of the tobacco industry’s multi-decade campaign to delay regulation by manufacturing uncertainty about the studies linking cigarette smoking to lung cancer and other diseases is well documented.1 2 A less well-known consequence of this campaign is the appearance of a new, lucrative application of scientific expertise: product defence. Consulting firms working for producers of toxic chemicals are using the same approaches, and even the same scientists, that the tobacco industry relied on to forestall regulation of cigarettes. Today, these firms aim to impede public health regulation by questioning studies that have identified hazardous properties of asbestos, beryllium, chromium, lead and a host of other toxic chemicals.3

Defending hazardous chemicals has become lucrative business. It is increasingly common for scientific studies to be commissioned in order to be deployed in regulatory or legal proceedings. Companies involved in the welding industry paid more than US$12 million to scientists who published papers . . .