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Jump to full article: British Medical Journal, 2003-05-18
Intro: Clive D Bates . . .
Publication in the BMJ is 'capture' of one of the major fortresses of evidence-based practice by the tobacco industry and its lobbyists - and it will serve them very well all around the world for many years. How careful was the BMJ and its reviewers when they handed them this trophy? If the understanding of the facts on second hand smoke had indeed changed then the tobacco control community needs to be prepared to rethink. But it doesn't look like the facts have changed at all, just that the BMJ has let a shoddy study assume the status of 'facts'.
The second point is about what the BMJ did to frame the story for the media.I would like to invite the BMJ to post on the web site: 1. The press release 2. The peer reviewers' comments (anonymously)
My hunch is that the BMJ is being challenged for the wrong things... conflicts of interest are important, but they are less important when there is rigorous peer review and careful reporting of the findings.
We intend publishing details of the paper's peer review next week.
Competing interests: I am employed by the BMJ, which published the study.
Richard Smith: . . . Not long ago I was something of a hero of the antitobacco movement-- because I resigned my professorship at Nottingham University when it accepted money from British American Tobacco. I felt somewhat embarrassed by the whole episode. I was no hero. But now I'm a pariah for publishing a piece of research funded by the tobacco industry. Because of some sort of personality defect that is common among editors I'm more attracted to being a pariah than a hero, but I don't think that I deserve to be a pariah. . . .
We are planning to post on our website all the comments of the reviewers, our statistician, and the hanging committee. I hope that they will be up soon after the weekend.
We judged this paper to be a useful contribution to an important debate. We may be wrong, as we are are with many papers. That's science. But I remain convinced that it would have been wrong to reject the study simply because it was funded by the tobacco industry.
How ironic that the BMJ accepts without comment a letter from someone who declares "no competing interests" but is a "Board member of Forces International"?
Does no one at the BMJ know anything about this tobacco-industry advocacy group? Is it possible that you are so naive you do not understand how sophisticated the tobacco industry's advocates are?
Deborah Arnott Director, ASH (Action on Smoking and Health)
. . .
Publication of the report has given rise to media headlines such as “Passive Smoking ‘Not so deadly’” and “Passive smoking may not damage your Health”. And the tobacco industry is already misusing its findings.
It appears that in this case the BMJ’s desire for publicity and controversy may have undermined its professional standards to an unacceptable degree. We call on the editor of the BMJ to publicly retract the article and publish the American Cancer Society’s detailed criticisms in the next edition.
Simon Chapman:
The major concerns about the authors' industry affiliations remain. However, if the credibility of the study is to be challenged on the basis of its methods and findings, it would seem that further information should be provided by the authors on the data they used to support their statement about the "direct relation" of domestic ETS exposure with total ETS exposure. Given the ubiquity of smoking in workplaces and indoor leisure venues in the 1960s and most of the 1970s and 1980s, I am struggling to conceive of a hypothesis which would suggest that non- smoking couples would have avoided significant ETS exposure.
Competing interests: I am editor of Tobacco Control,
Gio B. Gori: . . .
Bully for the BMJ Editors, probably the only fearless editorial crew left in the world. Were they suborned by Big Tobacco? Spin scoundrels likely will ventilate as such, but who is Big Tobacco anyway? . . .
The author was director of the Smoking and Health Program of the US National Cancer Institute, for which he received the US Public Health Service Superior Service Award. In becoming a critic of official allegations, he received occasional support from the tobacco industry. In matters of tobacco and health he has sought in vain other support that might equally come without strings attached.
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