The American public is concerned about the fact that many physicians and scientists have financial ties to the drug and device industries, and most people want the news media to do a better job disclosing these ties whenever experts are quoted. These results from a survey conducted by the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) led this advocacy group to convene a recent conference in Washington, DC, entitled, “Conflicted Science: Corporate Influence on Scientific Research and Science-Based Policy.” The speakers were primarily researchers and investigative journalists who have written articles about this topic which has become the focus of mounting concern for editors of medical journals.

Michael Jacobson, CSPI’s executive director, set the tone for the conference: “The corporate world seeks to influence science and science policy at many different levels, from the sponsorship and design of university research to the creation of scientific journals; from placing sympathetic scientists on federal and international advisory committees to generating publicity in the mass media; from influencing major health charities to creating their own friendly nonprofit organizations.” Jacobson said, as he turned the program over to the speakers, that he had asked them not just to express their concerns, but also to suggest remedies.

Passive smoking is one major area followed by Lisa A. Bero, PhD, Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education, University of California, San Francisco. “Researchers funded by the tobacco industry were nine times more likely to find no relationship between ill health and passive smoking,” she found. When a 1981 study showed a link between lung disease and nonsmoking women living with smokers, Dr. Bero said that the tobacco industry created its own study to refute it. For example, the industry funded studies that found ill effects of other sources of indoor air pollution to distract from the importance of secondhand smoke, reported Dr. Bero. Another tactic is to simply create doubt in the media about the studies that showed adverse health effects associated with smoking and to characterize such findings as “controversial.”