Tobacco industry influences research

At a tobacco industry meeting in 1987 to consider how to ‘improve the industry’s position’on passive smoking, one of the strategies proposed by Philip Morris USA was to ‘establish a genuine scientific journal on indoor air quality’. In 1989 the International Society of the Built Environment, was established. The journal Indoor and Built Environment was first published in January 1992.

Simon Chapman (University of Sydney, Australia) and colleagues reviewed 484 papers up to February 2004. They analysed tobacco industry documents searching for industry links with the Society’s executive, the journal’s editorial board and the extent to which the papers published on environmental tobacco smoke might be perceived to be favourable by the tobacco industry.

They found that paid consultants to the tobacco industry dominated the society’s executive:

All six members in 1992 and seven of eight members in 2002 had financial associations through industry lawyers.

Of the 66 papers published in the journal during the study period

relating to environmental tobacco smoke 40 of them (61%) reached conclusions that might be seen as’ industry-positive’. Of these, 90% had at least one author with a history of some association with the tobacco industry.

Professor Chapman concludes:

“On the basis of evidence presented in this paper, there is a serious concern that the tobacco industry may have been unduly influential on the content of this journal”.