PLoS bans tobacco-sponsored research

[Genomic Repairman]

No one has posted anything up new in a while so I figured I would throw out something for a little debate. I read this morning that PLoS Medicine, PLos Biology, and PLoS ONE are banning any publication of any research that is sponsored by the tobacco industry. Below is there stance on the issue and a link to the story.

First, tobacco is indisputably bad for health. … Tobacco interests in research cannot have a health aim—if they did, tobacco companies would be better off shutting down business—and therefore health research sponsored by tobacco companies is essentially advertising.

Second, we remain concerned about the industry’s long-standing attempts to distort the science of and deflect attention away from the harmful effects of smoking. … we do not wish to provide a forum for companies’ attempts to manipulate the science on tobacco’s harms.

http://writedit.wordpress.com/2010/02/24/plos-tobacco-ban/

How do you guys feel about this?

[bhmlurker]

No one has posted anything up new in a while so I figured I would throw out something for a little debate. I read this morning that PLoS Medicine, PLos Biology, and PLoS ONE are banning any publication of any research that is sponsored by the tobacco industry. Below is there stance on the issue and a link to the story.

First, tobacco is indisputably bad for health. … Tobacco interests in research cannot have a health aim—if they did, tobacco companies would be better off shutting down business—and therefore health research sponsored by tobacco companies is essentially advertising.

Second, we remain concerned about the industry’s long-standing attempts to distort the science of and deflect attention away from the harmful effects of smoking. … we do not wish to provide a forum for companies’ attempts to manipulate the science on tobacco’s harms.

http://writedit.word...os-tobacco-ban/

How do you guys feel about this?

As a former PhD student in a lab with a side project which was tobacco company funded, my take on this is that PLOS' policy errs on the side of caution but paints with too broad of a stroke, so to speak.

As far as I've seen, there are plenty of tobacco company-funded research which appears to be equally well-designed and controlled experiments as any other. I've seen this both first-hand and through Pubmed. Plenty of studies showing that second-hand tobacco smoke exposure impacting the pulmonary and cardiovascular systems. No punches were pulled. In my lab's case, the company gave out the money each year and basically had no hand in anything we did.

By this logic, every paper published by a person convicted of academic misconduct, fraud, and falsifying data should be retracted. However in almost every case, we would see that the person only perpetrated fraud in some of the published articles. If the fraud him/herself isn't even tainted 100% of the time, why would external research funded by an evil entity be assumed to also be evil 100% or the majority of the time? The logic doesn't hold.

There's definitely tobacco company-funded research which are iffy, and in my opinion those are typically restricted to epidemiology or controlled exposure human studies. When it comes to basic science/mechanism level work, it's pretty clean for the most part. If I design an experiment to expose macaques to 1 part per billion or 1 ug/m^3 second-hand tobacco smoke for 1 hour and found that to have no effect on lung cancer induction, it should be obvious that the negative result is due to the ridiculously low treatment dose and duration, and unlikely due to me being a fraud. If anything, the failure of some individuals to see the logic here should be enough cause for the scientific community to examine their work for breakdown in logic.

[Genomic Repairman]

I'm kind of with you on this, its a really slippery slope. If you ban this then why not ban any research sponsored by big pharma, or food research sponsored by food companies. It feels a little too heavy handed and downright preachy to me. If the science is good and it makes it through the review process then I am fine with whatever. And these studies are probably shouldering extra scrutiny because of who they are funded by.

[Genomic Repairman]

Based upon the links in your signature me doth think you art a troll Kellyy?

[waddle]

Based upon the links in your signature me doth think you art a troll Kellyy?

Just spam, reported accordingly. Good day!