Journal editor: Tobacco-funded studies are bad for us

[n2doc]

05 March 2010 by Debora MacKenzie
Several journals will no longer publish research supported by the tobacco industry. Ginny Barbour, the chief editor of one PLoS Medicine, one of the journals to refuse tobacco-funded studies, explains why.

What made you decide to stop accepting papers reporting research funded by tobacco companies?

Last year PLoS Medicine decided to prioritise research about conditions and risk factors that cause the greatest burden of disease. Tobacco is certainly one: it directly kills over 4 million people a year worldwide, and more indirectly. We didn't want our policy to attract a flood of industry-funded tobacco research; we feel the tobacco industry has no reason to fund research aimed at improving public health. If they wanted to do that, they could just shut down. Its main reason for publishing research about tobacco is to downplay the harm it causes, in order to sell products: it has a long history of that. It also funds research unrelated to tobacco, but that is still a form of advertising.

Is it a medical journal's job to try and stop that?

Journals cannot just be passive conduits for papers. We have a duty to promote human health. Banning tobacco-funded papers can help researchers who are under pressure to accept funding: the next time a tobacco company offers them money, they can say "No thanks, that would limit where we can publish." Besides us and our colleagues at PLoS ONE and PLoS Biology, the British Journal of Cancer and the American Thoracic Society journals have also banned tobacco-funded research.

more:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527506.000-journal-editor-tobaccofunded-studies-are-bad-for-us.html