• 3/2/2005
  • Ivanhoe Newswire (www.ivanhoe.com)

A new report in this week’s issue of The Lancet offers more evidence that the tobacco industry tried to influence research on the effects of secondhand tobacco smoke.

According to the authors, cigarette companies teamed up in the late 1980s to support the establishment of a new organization called the International Society of the Built Environment. One of the chief purposes of the new organization was to publish a journal, Indoor and Built Environment, aimed at investigating indoor air quality. Over the years, the organization’s executive officers and the journal’s editorial board have been dominated by paid consultants to the tobacco industry.

A study of 484 papers published in the journal from January 1992 through February 2004 reveals 40 out of the 66 articles that dealt with the issue of environmental tobacco smoke reached conclusions considered favorable to the tobacco industry. Among this group, 90 percent were authored by at least one scientist with a history of ties to cigarette companies.

The authors conclude, “On the basis of the evidence presented in this paper, there is a serious concern the tobacco industry may have been unduly influential on the content of the journal.”

Failing to declare these ties to the industry, continue the investigators, constitutes a clear breach of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors guidelines.

Source: The Lancet, 2005;365:804-809