Conflict Between Public Health Science and Markets: The Case of Tobacco Research – Illustrations from Tobacco and CO2

Studies of bias in science have conventionally sought their origins in such factors as ideological dispositions, careerism, groupthink, and parochial intellectual mindsets. In contract, the history of public health science points to the role of capital markets in the distortion of the growth of knowledge by key extra-scientific stakeholders including manufacturers, legal institutions, the media, and public relations firms in the management of scientific evidence of harm from legal, but potentially toxic, products. We examine evidence of the juxtaposition of public versus private interests, the cultivation of doubt, and the role of legal forces in the case of tobacco and its disastrous health consequences. We also examine the question of extending the analysis to CO2 emissions and fears of catastrophic climate change.