PLoS Medicine, an open-access journal published by the Public Library of Science, will no longer accept papers “where support, in whole or in part, for the study or the researchers come from a tobacco company,” the journal’s editorial board has decided. In a strongly worded editorial published online today, the editors acknowledge that their stance might be criticized as moralistic, unscientific, and biased, but they add: “Like the two other PLoS journals that have recently adopted this policy, PLoS Biology and PLoS ONE, we feel that any potential criticisms and risks are preferable to supporting the tobacco industry’s efforts to deflect attention from the harms of its products.”
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4 Responses to ‘PLoS Medicine’ Bans Research Financed by Tobacco Companies
lexalexander - February 24, 2010 at 8:23 am
The tobacco industry has a long history of misusing and misrepresenting science. If they want to publish propaganda, let them buy advertising.Or, they could embark on a campaign of responsible science in an attempt to win the trust of the scientific community.OK, that last part was just kidding.
dank48 - February 24, 2010 at 1:35 pm
How about research financed by the alcohol companies? By the pharmaceutical companies? Apparently it’s okay to promote booze, so long as you suggest that it be drunk responsibly, which fortunately always works, not to mention what used to be called ethical pharmaceuticals, in print and on television, but heaven forbid anyone be so much as shown smoking a cigarette in movies or on television, unless of course the intent is to signal that this is A Bad Person. (A small number of exceptions means rather little, it seems to me.) More serious, it also seems to me, is the truly insidious marketing of drugs directly to the patient or would-be patient or perhaps could-be patient. “Ask your doctor if NewNostrum is right for you.” “Be sure and tell your doctor what other medications you’re taking.” This is obscene and insane. Never mind toleration for the legal activity of smoking; anything more positive than veiled contempt would probably confuse us. The blatant hawking of legal medications as an expensive but doubtless federally subsidized alternative to other, less profitable drugs is just nuts. “Two out of three patients being treated for depression still have some symptoms.” Yeah. Would one expect not to still have a symptom or two? Is this somehow the equivalent of nonimprovement? Does this justify the deliberate attempt to get the patient actively involved in concocting the medical cocktail used in treatment?We’re nuts. I’m nuts to smoke, no doubt about it. Nobody should trust research tainted by tobacco money. The problem is that ostracizing the tobacco companies doesn’t take care of all that’s tainted.
lexalexander - February 24, 2010 at 5:26 pm
dank48: When alcohol and pharmaceutical companies combined are killing anywhere near as many people (~400,000/yr in U.S.) prematurely as tobacco does, AND when they’ve amassed the same long record of publicly reporting “research” findings — on matters of life and death — that their own researchers have found to be untrue, then we can talk.Big PhrMA in particular does not have clean hands w/r/t to the uses and abuses of research, but in terms of amount and extent of abuse, Big Tobacco is a universe of one.
goxewu - February 27, 2010 at 2:52 pm
One sees occasional reports of legit research saying that a drink or two a day, especially of red wine, is beneficial to one’s health. I’ve never seen anything that says a ciggie or two a day provides any benefits other than a slower death than a pack or two a day does. There’s no equivalent of second-hand smoke with drinking.There’s no video of the CEOs of alcoholic beverage companies standing up as one at a Congressional hearing and swearing that (they were not aware that) drinking alcohol is, per se, harmful to one’s health.Nicotine is a far more addictive drug than alcohol.The harmful effects of drinking alcohol come from “abuse” of drinking it; no such “abuse” is necessary with tobacco.”Ostracizing the tobacco companies doesn’t take care of all that’s tainted.” Getting a job won’t cure all of one’s financial problems; going to the gym won’t cure all of one’s health problems; reading books won’t tell you everything about everything, and so on and so on. The perfect should not be the enemy of the good.Growing grapes or wheat or corn doesn’t ruin the soil as quickly as growing tobacco does.