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| SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY |
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Tobacco giant’s war on science
Trends THIS UNIVERSE |
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Tobacco giant’s war on science The demands from the tobacco company, made using the UK’s Freedom of Information law, have coincided with an internet hate campaign targeted at university researchers involved in smoking studies. One of the academics has received anonymous abusive phone calls at her home at night. She believes they are prompted by an organised campaign by the tobacco industry to discredit her work, although there is no evidence that the cigarette companies are directly responsible. Philip Morris says it has a “legitimate interest” in the information, but researchers at Stirling University say that handing over highly sensitive data would be a gross breach of confidence that could jeopardise future studies. The researchers also believe that the requests are having a chilling effect on co-operation with other academics who fear that sharing their own unpublished data with Stirling will lead to it being handed over to the tobacco industry. Philip Morris International made its Freedom of Information (FOI) request anonymously through a London law firm in September 2009. It was denied. Philip Morris then put in two further FOI requests under its own name. “They wanted everything we had ever done on this,” said
Professor Gerard Hastings, the institute’s director. “These are confidential comments about how youngsters feel about tobacco marketing. This is the sort of research that would get a tobacco company into trouble if it did it itself.” Professor Hastings added: “What is more, these kids have been reassured that only bona fide researchers will have access to their data. No way can Philip Morris fit into that definition.” The information is anonymised and cannot be traced back to the interviewees. Philip Morris told The Independent that it is not seeking private information on named individuals. “As provided by the FOI Act, confidential and private information concerning individuals should not be disclosed,” said Anne Edwards, director of external communications at Philip Morris. “We made the request in order to understand more about a research project conducted by the University of Stirling on plain packaging for cigarettes.” Stirling University is part of the UK Centre for Tobacco Control Studies, a network of nine universities, and is considered one of the premier research institutes for investigating smoking behaviour. Its Institute for Social Marketing receives funding from the Department of Health as well as leading charities and its research findings have been used as evidence to support anti-smoking legislation. Cancer Research UK funded the Stirling research into the smoking behaviour of British teenagers in order to answer basic questions about why 85 per cent of adult smokers started smoking when they were children. The researchers at Stirling have built up an extensive database of interviews with 5,500 teenagers to analyse their attitudes to cigarette marketing, packaging and shop displays. “It is a big dataset now because we’ve been in the field several times talking to between 1,000 and 2,000 young people each time — going down to the age of 11 and up to the age of 16,” Professor Hastings said. “These kids are often saying things they don’t want their parents to know. It’s very sensitive.” Asked what would happen if he lost the fight against Philip Morris, Professor Hastings said: “It would be catastrophic. I don’t think that’s an outcome I would like to contemplate. It is morally repugnant to give data confidentially shared with us by children to an industry that is so rapacious.” Linda Bauld, professor of socio-management at Stirling, said that other universities in Britain and abroad are following the case with trepidation: “Our colleagues in the community... will not be willing necessarily to hand over information.” Stirling’s Institute for Social Marketing consists of 15 full-time researchers and operates with an annual staff budget of £650,000. Philip Morris International employs 78,000 people and has an annual turnover of £27.2bn. Professor Hastings said that Philip Morris’s demands have taken up large amounts of time and resources, diverting his department’s attention from its primary role of investigating smoking behaviour. “We have spent a lot of time on this. A research unit like ours simply can’t afford this,” he said. “But for me the crux is the trust we have with young people. How easy will it be for us to get co-operation from young people in the future? “Our funders will have to think carefully about the further funding of our research. I don’t think for one moment a cancer charity is going to take kindly to paying us hundreds of thousands of pounds to give aid and succour to a multinational tobacco corporation.” The researchers: Academics find that research into smoking can seriously damage their peace of mind. Academics studying the smoking behaviour of British teenagers and adults have found themselves to be the targets of vitriolic attacks by the pro-smoking lobby. University researchers have been sent hate emails and some have even received anonymous phone calls, which usually come after a series of blogs posted on pro-smoking websites, including at least one which is linked to the tobacco industry. Linda Bauld, professor of socio-management at Stirling University’s Institute for Social Marketing, says she was unprepared for the scale of the personal attacks aimed at discrediting her work on smoking behaviour and anti-smoking legislation. “I’ve had a series of anonymous calls starting about a year ago,” Professor Bauld said. “These are phone calls in the evening when I’m at home with my children. It’s an unpleasant experience. “They don’t leave their name, they just say things like ‘Keep taking the money’, and ‘Who are you to try to intervene in other peoples’ lives’, using a couple of profanities.” Professor Bauld has not reported the calls to the police but intends to be more discreet about the availability of her number. Her report for the Department of Health last March on the smoking ban in England found that there had been positive benefits to health and no evidence of any obvious negative impact on the hospitality industry, as the tobacco industry has repeatedly claimed. Imperial Tobacco, the biggest cigarette company in Britain and makers of the best-selling Lambert & Butler brand, responded to Professor Bauld’s report with its own review, called The Bauld Truth. This report, which took just a few weeks to write, claimed that Professor Bauld’s study, conducted over three years, was “lazy and deliberately selective”. It claimed that she used “flawed evidence and failed to validate her findings”. Professor Bauld said such personalised attacks were nothing new. Big Tobacco has a long history of aggressively dismissing scientific evidence linking smoking to ill health, she said. “These... are heavily peer-reviewed at every stage. Their methods are robust, whereas the evidence [the tobacco companies] draw on are not well-conducted studies,” Professor Bauld said.
— The Independent |
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Graphene finding could lead to super-fast Internet LONDON: British scientists have devised a way of using graphene, the thinnest material in the world, to capture and convert more light than previously, paving the way for advances in high-speed Internet and other optical communications. In a study in the journal Nature Communication, the team-which included last year’s Nobel Prize-winning scientists Andre Geim and Kostya Novoselov-found that by combining graphene with metallic nanostructures, there was a 20-fold enhancement in the amount of light the graphene could harvest and convert into electrical power. Cancer-fighting virus shown to target tumours alone LOS ANGELES: Researchers have shown for the first time that a single intravenous infusion of a genetically engineered virus can home in on cancer, killing tumour cells in patients without harming healthy tissue. Scientists have been intrigued for decades with the idea of using viruses to alert the immune system to seek and destroy cancerous cells. That interest has taken off in recent years as advances in genetic engineering allow them to customize viruses that target tumours. Oyster gardeners aim to revive ailing Chesapeake Bay NORFOLK, Va:
After 10 years of cultivating oysters in the waters off his backyard dock, Kendall Osborne has developed something of a salt thumb. He began gardening oysters as a way of bonding with his two daughters and, like other Virginians, to help bring the ailing Chesapeake Bay back to life and rid it of dead zones where no sea creatures can survive.
— Reuters
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THIS UNIVERSE We are looking for life on other planets. Could it be possible there is already an extraterrestrial life on this very planet? We cannot rule out that life on our plant was seeded from outside the planet long, long ago. But we have not so far found any example of a living thing which is not based on the principles of biology and biochemistry we encounter in the life we do know about. I hate to make this assertion, because it might be possible to give an exotic definition of what we could call living. Are mountains and oceans living? What about volcanoes that sleep for decades and then wake up? When our TV is not connected with a cable, why do we see black and white dots? Low energy level radio waves (electromagnetic radiation) is present in our environment. This might be from distant transmitters, leaking circuits in our house or even lightening in skies far away. This will be random and below threshold for detection as cogent signals, and would come in only as noise. Yet another such signal that is universally present is whisper of the cosmic microwave background that had its origin at the time of creation of the universe. It is amazing and romantic to recognise that some of the random dots on our TV screens not properly connected to a cable might represent that whisper, the remnant, of the Big Bang! It is true that the black hole is an anti-matter? What does it consist of? A black hole is not made of anti-matter. It is just a body whose mass is so great, and force of gravity so strong that any light emitted by it would be bent around and unable to escape it. Black hole result when stars heavier than a few solar masses stop producing thermonuclear energy and the outward radiation pressure cannot support the inward gravitational force. Even the strength of molecules and atoms is not strong enough to resist wiping out their identity.
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Philip Morris International, the maker of Marlboro cigarettes, is seeking to force a British university to reveal full details of its research involving confidential interviews with thousands of children aged between 11 and 16 about their attitudes towards smoking and cigarette packaging.