Originally published 7 October 1996
Should scientists studying the health effects of nicotine accept funding from the tobacco industry?
The question became a hot topic in Britain this summer when two researchers in public institutions acknowledged that their work was supported by British American Tobacco Industries (BAT), owners of the tobacco giant Brown and Williamson.
Jim Edwardson, head of the Medical Research Council’s Neurochemical Pathology Unit, received $225,000 for a study of the potential effects of nicotine on Alzheimer’s disease.
Susan Wonnacott, of the University of Bath’s School of Biology, received $155,000 for a study of the effects of nicotine on the brain.
Both researchers took a licking from editorial writers, anti-smoking groups, and fellow scientists. Comments ranged from “surprised” and “disappointed” to “unthinkable” and “abhorrent.”
But the two scientists got a powerful endorsement from the editors of the prestigious science journal Nature, who judged their actions appropriate. Both scientists have funding contracts with no strings attached. Edwardson’s contract even prevents the tobacco company from using the results of his work without his permission.
Said Nature’s editors: “The responsibility for deciding which research funds to accept — and under what conditions — should be left primarily to the judgment of individual researchers, under guidelines from their employers that take the experience and interests of their institutions into account but which avoid prohibitive political correctness.”
The editors rightly understood that the vehemence of the anti- smoking lobby’s wrath could spill over into broader arguments about other sources of funding.
Should a geologist accept money from a petroleum company with a poor environmental record? Should an AIDS researcher take money from the Playboy Foundation? Should a physicist studying lasers welcome support from an industry that manufactures and distributes arms to Third World countries?
The tobacco industry is a particularly egregious purveyor of human harm. Yet Edwardson or Wonnacott could reasonably argue that their studies, independently performed and reported, might serve to weaken the industry that provided their funding. The crucial consideration is the objectivity of their research.
In a recent issue of Nature, British philosopher of science John Ziman asked whether scientists can produce objective knowledge in a world where research is increasingly directed towards making money or meeting social needs.
There are several issues here. The first: Who sets the research agenda?
In the past, academic scientists took pride in choosing their own topics of study. However, research has become hugely expensive. A large part of the funding available for research is in the hands of government agencies that are susceptible to political pressure, and of industries with an eye on profit. Occasionally these groups coincide, as when tobacco-supported California legislators sought to block funding for Stanton Glantz, a medical researcher at the University of California at San Francisco who made public damaging documents from the tobacco industry.
A second issue: How is research evaluated?
Traditionally, scientific research is submitted to peer evaluation and the rigorous scrutiny of organized skepticism. Today, there is growing public pressure to evaluate research by the way it contributes to a particular social agenda. For example, a study of potentially useful effects of nicotine for Alzheimer’s sufferers might be opposed by pressure groups on the grounds that the tobacco industry could exploit a positive result.
Ziman worries that the gravest threat to the reliability of scientific knowledge could be obsessive concern for the practical utility and social acceptability of research, at the expense of systematic intellectual criticism of the results.
A third issue is the distinction between public knowledge and private property.
Traditionally, the fruits of academic research belong to everyone, without regard to institution of origin or national boundaries. In some ways, the Internet has reinforced this sense of public ownership. But boundaries between academia and industry are blurring, causing much primary research to be withheld from public dissemination except on a for-profit basis.
The privatization of knowledge diminishes opportunities for peer review and skeptical evaluation.
It is perhaps a good thing that the public, through elected representatives, should have more of a say in setting the agenda for research supported by public funds, and it is certainly true that scientists should question the social implications of their research. But this must happen without compromising the independence of science. Free choice of research topic, rigorous peer evaluation, and public dissemination of results have been pillars of our confidence in scientific knowledge.
John Ziman writes: “The complex fabric of democratic society is held together by trust in this objectivity, exercised openly by scientific experts. Without science as an independent arbiter, many social conflicts could be resolved only by reference to political authority or by a direct appeal to force.”
This summer’s brouhaha in Britain over research funding by the tobacco industry illustrates the difficult judgments scientists will have to make in future if they are to preserve public confidence in the reliability of scientific knowledge.
