Wind-up Doll?

It's emerged today that the well-respected epidemiologist, the late Professor Sir Richard Doll, was secretly in the pay of several large chemical companies. The Guardian reports that Doll received payments from Dow Chemical, ICI, the Chemical Manufacturers Association (CMA) and, most notably, Monsanto. In this latter case, it is reported that Doll received $1,500 for every day he worked as a consultant. It's also the case that, on various occasions during is career, Doll asserted that there was no evidence that Agent Orange, produced by Monsanto, causes cancer.  He was also paid £15,000 by the CMA, ICI and Dow for a review that largely cleared vinyl chloride of causing cancer.

The significance of this hinges on the issue of disclosure. Without disclosure of a pecuniary interest, how is one effectively to judge the credibility of a scientist's research? It is not enough to say simply that one can rely on the probity of scientists. Doll appears to have been perfectly aware of this in relation to his research into the effects of smoking. He was president of ASH (Action on Smoking and Health) and lent his name to its campaigns. According to one report, however, he had at times been 'reluctant to be too openly associated with ASH in any advocacy role, for the very reason that he feared this might weaken the perceived weight of his findings.' At least, in this case, his association with ASH was open, enabling people to accord it whatever weight they saw fit. Keeping such associations quiet, if they are subsequently revealed, can be far more damaging.

Of course, the problem of disclosure extends far further than this one high profile case. The wider question is the extent to which ‘impartial’ science is covertly in thrall to corporate, partisan interests. Unfortunately, the evidence suggests that it is all too common: since passing off favourable opinion as impartial or spontaneous is a standard Public Relations technique. The ‘Third Party Technique’ (TPT) as it is known has great value because,  as one PR textbook states, the

[a]rt of public relations is to have the appearance of disinterestedness. It stands to reason that the facts regarding the merits of any company or product are more readily believed if they are put forward with apparent spontaneity by a person or body not directly concerned with increasing its sales. (1)

Or, to put it another way, '[Y]ou do not tell the public that your new digital fish cleaner is the greatest invention since the dawn of the time... Your goal is to lead people to draw that same conclusion for themselves' (2).

One leading PR firm employed by Monsanto, the Bivings Group, used to have an article on its website, entitled 'Viral Marketing: How to Infect the World', which warned that

…there are some campaigns where it would be undesirable or even disastrous to let the audience know that your organization is directly involved … it simply is not an intelligent PR move. In cases such as this, it is important to first “listen” to what is being said online … Once you are plugged into this world, it is possible to make postings to these outlets that present your position as an uninvolved third party. ... Perhaps the greatest advantage of viral marketing is that your message is placed into a context where it is more likely to be considered seriously.

A couple of examples of the appropriation of science illustrate this value. Earlier this year, George Monbiot examined the activities of the 1990s health front group ‘Arise’ (Associates for Research into the Science of Enjoyment). Monbiot writes that ‘Arise, founded in 1988 and apparently active until 2004, described itself as “a worldwide association of eminent scientists who act as independent commentators”. Its purpose, these eminent scientists said, was to show how “everyday pleasures, such as eating chocolate, smoking, drinking tea, coffee and alcohol, contribute to the quality of life.”' One of Arise’s activities was to downplay the dangers of smoking. The apparent head of the group, Professor David Warburton of Reading University (a professor of pharmacology) has written ‘at least a dozen’ articles on nicotine claiming that 'nicotine improved both attention and memory'. Warburton has also promoted its calming effects and mocked the US Surgeon General’s finding that nicotine is addictive. As Monbiot recounts,

Arise received an astonishing amount of coverage. Between September 1993 and March 1994, for example, it generated 195 newspaper articles and radio and television interviews, in places such as the Wall Street Journal, the International Herald Tribune, the Independent, the Evening Standard, El País, La Repubblica, Rai and the BBC. Much of this coverage resulted from a Mori poll, called Naughty but Nice, that Arise claimed to have commissioned, into the guilty pleasures people enjoyed most.

The problem with this, as Monbiot discusses, is that in ‘hundreds of articles and transcripts covering its claims’ he found only one example of a journalist questioning ‘either Arise's science or the motivation of the scientists.’ Nor did they trouble themselves to discover that, during the year 1993-94, ‘Arise had received $373,400: $2,000 from Coca-Cola, $900 from other firms and the rest - over 99% - from Philip Morris, British American Tobacco, RJ Reynolds and Rothmans.’

More recently, residents of Boston, New York and Washington DC would have seen billboards reading ‘Hooked on Hype? Fishscam.com’, along with full page adverts in The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune and a radio advert informing listeners that

According to the latest study, you should not eat any fish… and according to the latest study, you are a fish-faced idiot with an IQ lower than a tuna fish sandwich who will swallow the latest study—hype, line, and sinker...

All these media messages are the product of the Center for Consumer Freedom (CFF), ‘a nonprofit coalition dedicated to promoting personal responsibility and protecting consumer choices.’ The CFF is registered as a non-profit (501(c)(3)) group and claims to be funded by ‘restaurants, food companies and more than 1,000 concerned individuals.’ The CFF's thrust is that the Food & Drug Administration’s warnings about the mercury content of fish are overblown and that a ‘growing cabal of environmental activist groups, public health researchers, and government bureaucrats are using junk science to needlessly frighten Americans about the fish they eat.’ Their website includes a 'Mercury Calculator' that, based on your body weight, purports to allow you to calculate how much fish you can safely eat. This figure, instead of being based upon the FDA’s reference dose, is based on their ‘Base Dose Lower Limit’ - the absolute minimum dosage of mercury found to possibly cause nerve damage. In other words, as Jean Halloran (director of food policy at the Consumers Union) states, ‘"What [the site] is essentially saying is that there's no need to have a margin of error. It's really extraordinary and extremely irresponsible…”’

What the site doesn’t tell you is that the executive director of the CFF is Rick Berman of the PR firm Berman & Co. While the funding for Fishscam.com is unclear (because of its ‘charitable’ status it doesn’t have to reveal much), according to a leak three years ago, the CFF has allegedly been funded by major interests such as Monsanto, Tyson Foods, and Coca-Cola. Naturally, they prefer to keep this involvement secret and the exact interests behind the Fishscam.com site are unknown.

The Doll case is, as the foregoing suggests, symptomatic of a much wider problem with 'science for hire' and the commercialisation of science in general. The ethical problem, in each case, lies in the corruption of 'independent' opinion. Opinion is offered while failing to disclose an interest. As the Swedish professor Lennart Hardell has said of the Doll case, 'It's OK for any scientist to be a consultant to anybody, but then this should be reported in the papers that you publish'. Without disclosure and transparency, the public is deprived of information necessary to judge correctly how much weight to give statements by scientists and other experts.

Officially, this corruption of independent opinion is frowned upon. Article 8 of the Code of Professional Standards for the Practice of Public Relations, adopted by the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), requires that

A member shall not use any individual or organization professing to serve or represent an announced cause, or professing to be independent or unbiased, but actually serving another or undisclosed interest (3).

Unfortunately, the TPT is common practice and has increased still further in recent years as journalists - even those who do want to verify the facts - have struggled with ever dwindling resources to do so. As the Economist recently put it, ‘a consequence of the proliferation of media is that original content becomes even more sought after. Hence crisply written or well-produced PR material can more easily get an airing.’ More worryingly, media commentators have noted how PR material is now being published by some local newspapers ‘virtually unedited and unchecked’.

In this environment, the work of journalists like George Monbiot, John Stauber, Sheldon Rampton, Sharon Beder and Andy Rowell - and groups like Sourcewatch, Lobbywatch and PRWatch – becomes all the more important. The pernicious effects of the commercialisation of science must be charted and countered. Richard Doll kept his secrets to the grave, leaving us now to only guess the damage that may have been done. With diligent work from specialists and a suitably sceptical approach from the public, it should be harder for such dubious associations to remain in the shadows. As individuals, we cannot investigate every scientific claim we hear. Nevertheless, we should try to ask the basic questions: who’s paying this person to tell me this? Who commissioned this research? Who does this ‘expert’ work for? And, most importantly, who benefits from me believing this? As ever, our best defences are our wits.

References.

(1) Jim Dunn (1999) "Public relations techniques that work," Hawksmere Plc, London, p. 7.

(2) Michael Levine (1993) "Guerilla PR," HarperBusiness, New York, p. 8.

(3) Reproduced in P. Lesly, (ed) (1998) "Lesly's handbook of public relations and communications, 5th edition, NTC/Contemporaty Publishing Company, Chicago, Illinois, p. 776

Comments

[ion]

Fascinating- thank you. Academic research is being more and more contaminated by industrial infiltration, where you know beforehand what the findings are supposed to be. Indeed, many industry research contracts make them owners of the research so that 'bad' results can be lost. Since most research staff are employed on soft money, there's increasing pressure on team leaders to bring in industrial money to keep the machine running, skills in the dept. and the staff employed. Until the government finance research and pay academic staff decent salaries, the whole system will become increasingly tainted. Incidentally, I'd no idea that Warburton had links with tobacco industry or Arise, and have previously quoted one of his papers on nicotine and performance. I need a shower now.

[Gerbil001]

Thank you Ion.

Regarding the ownership of data, you may be interested to know (if you do not already) that, in the early 1990s, Monsanto was alleged to have suppressed research at Sussex University that showed an abnormally high presence of somatic cells in milk produced by cows treated with its bovine growth hormone. The peer‑review panel of the Veterinary Record accepted the findings for publication but Monsanto stopped the publication because the data were proprietary and secret. Monsanto even refused to allow the findings to be published if the raw data were excised from the paper. Its grounds for refusal were that 'as the raw data are confidential all subsequent analyses are as well.'

There was an article discussing this in Nature in 1994, which is reproduced here: http://www.unsafescience.com/bgh.html

Greg Palast also covered it in an article called 'Dreaming In Monsanto' in 'Index on Censorship, 3/99 pp 62-66.

[andyB]

good article. i would add that there is a pretty big spectrum of impacts or influence that funding has - this is probably towards one extreme, but in general, across all sciences and all research, the interests of the funder are always borne fully in mind by those who have been commissioned or employed to deliver research or related services. organisations such as the one i work for and others, (mine is part of a UK University), which are regularly commissioned by government and international agencies to conduct policy-related research. whilst the integrity of the individuals is high, there is nevertheless an implicit sense in which the outputs must be tailored or spun to ensure they are met with a favourable response from the commissioning organisation (or often a specific subset within it). if unpopular results are obtained, then these must be carefully nuanced to ensure palatability. to me, there is a sense in which practically any organisation which commissions research (and i include ngos and pressure groups such as greenpeace etc) has certain expectations in terms of the results and the way in which they are presented. to put it bluntly, you could say that there is a purely economic side to these 'transactions' - often the commissioning agency has an agenda which is implicitly or otherwise understood by the research body, and certain conclusions flow from this - certain results are expected (or at least certain ones ruled out), or results areexpected to support or oppose certain other sets of information. i don't think you can get around this by simply having the government fund all research, as Ion suggests - the government is hardly a disinterested party in much research. To me, some sort of blind funding is required, where there is a mechanism to prevent researchers from knowing the source of their funds. this wouldnt work in all scenarios, but could be a starting point in others.

[ion]

That's a good point, AndyB- no way is government unbiased, and I like the idea of blinded funding. However, presumably academics would still have to apply for funding to known sources, making projects' sources knowable. The only way to blind effectively is to displace funding application to an outside agency with their own attendant biases. Oh dear!

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