Funding “independent” research is a long-standing tobacco industry strategy used to sow doubt, offer ineffective “solutions” to industry-caused problems, and legitimize industry efforts to engage in public health policymaking.
This research is often funded via third-parties, deliberately established to obscure tobacco industry involvement. Results are then used to obstruct effective public health policy adoption and implementation, prevent or defend against litigation, and maximize tobacco consumption (and thereby increase industry profits). These underhand tactics contribute to large-scale tobacco-caused death and disease that are entirely preventable.
Litigation against the tobacco industry in the US identified the malign influence of these efforts, forced the dissolution of major tobacco industry third-party funders of research and precluded participating companies from reconstituting similar industry wide organisations.
This, however, left a loophole for companies not directly involved in the litigation. Given the history of the tobacco industry utilizing “independent” research to undermine public health, Cohen et al. proposed criteria that would need to be met for a tobacco company to support research in a manner that might be acceptable to the research community; those criteria included transparency and an independent research agenda.
For technical reasons Philip Morris International (PMI) was not party to that US litigation (although its parent company was), and in 2017 was therefore able to establish the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World (‘the Foundation’) with a stated goal of funding and conducting scientific research. The Foundation’s President claimed that its Certificate of Incorporation and Bylaws embody Cohen et al’s. criteria and stated the Foundation was fully independent from its corporate sponsor. However, public health experts including Cohen herself did not agree.
Joanna E. Cohen Et Al. – The BMJ Opinion – 2021-08-10.
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