Inventing Conflicts of Interest: A History of Tobacco Industry Tactics

Abstract

Confronted by compelling peer-reviewed scientific evidence of the harms of smoking, the tobacco industry, beginning in the 1950s, used sophisticated public relations approaches to undermine and distort the emerging science. The industry campaign worked to create a scientific controversy through a program that depended on the creation of industry-academic conflicts of interest. This strategy of producing scientific uncertainty undercut public health efforts and regulatory interventions designed to reduce the harms of smoking. A number of industries have subsequently followed this approach to disrupting normative science. Claims of scientific uncertainty and lack of proof also lead to the assertion of individual responsibility for industrially produced health risks.

To Know or Better Not to

“…This was the launching point of the tobacco industry's denial campaign, in which the U.S. tobacco industry together with H&K would design and execute a strategy to counter scientifi c fi ndings against tobacco smoking. Oreskes and Conway (2010: 6) call it the tobacco strategy: "Its target was science, and so it relied heavily on scientists -with guidance from industry lawyers and public relations experts -willing to hold the rifl e and pull the trigger"; a strategy that has been widely acknowledged by the main scholars working on agnotology (Brandt, 2012;McGarity and Wagner, 2008;Michaels, 2008: 3-11;Mirowski and Nik-Khah, 2013: 282;Oreskes and Conway, 2010: 14-24;Proctor, 1995: 125-30;2012: 22, 290-92). The mechanisms implemented by the tobacco industry to deceive the North American public and to perpetuate doubt about the health hazards of tobacco show that agnogenesis is a social and institutional phenomenon that has required the restructuring of many industry and academic settings.…”

On the pitfalls of disclosure statements

“…Historian of science Allan M. Brandt (20) has argued that current industry-academic conflicts of interest stem from strategies developed by tobacco companies: The same 'playbook' comes to mind when reading about sceptics of climate change (21,22) . Comparisons with the food industry are also inevitable, and they bring to light some uncomfortable similarities between tobacco and food corporations' responses to threats to their profit margin (23) .…”

Addiction journals and the management of conflicts of interest

“…It is well documented how the tobacco industry for decades funded research aimed at producing uncertainty about the danger of smoking (e.g., Brandt, 2012). For alcohol, the transnational producers have invested resources in research that questions the relation between the total consumption and alcohol-related harms on a population level to prevent general regulations of the alcohol market (Adams, 2016).…”