Tobacco.org

Our stance on tobacco funding is a kind of poison to the industry, and I relish that. I relish how the poison is spreading through the system. Universities, major journals, foundations have now agreed to isolate the tobacco industry from the community of legitimate industries.

I know better than to accept industry funding now. I would stop being invited to important committees and special projects. The activists would judge me a "collaborator" in all bad senses of the word.

The hybrid societies that attract activists as well as scientists will become unsatisfying to everyone. The scientists say, "Here is what I have discovered" and the activists say, "Yes, but the tobacco industry paid for it". As if that were an argument—a substantive, trumping argument, rather than a footnote. The key to science is not who paid, but whether a finding replicates. Journals are forced to censor research—without evaluation—because of its origins, not its intrinsic merits. . . .

I have met with "anti" scientists, awkward and trepidatious in their blue blazers or cheap suits. They look down on me, but are polite. I am polite. They blame us for what happened 20 or 30 years ago, done by people we have never even met. They should get over it. We are one of the biggest, best connected businesses in the world. . . . Cigarettes are a legal product that will send my kids to college and me to a well funded retirement. . . .

I think of friends from graduate school who went the university route. Some got tenured jobs. Some didn’t, and are on soft money positions, dependent on grants to keep their jobs. These poor bastards are addicted to research funding. And when the government won’t fund you, be assured you would take industry money if it were the only way to pay the bills. It is easy for the antis to pontificate about funding—their jobs don’t depend on research funding.

I feel sorry for the scientists on the outside. I do.

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