... Or shouldn't: A ban would only undermine UC's mission

By William J. McCarthy

Money to do research is the researcher's lifeblood for scientific inquiry — without it, much less research gets done. But money, especially from commercial sources, comes with strings. In the case of tobacco industry money, the strings are freighted with a corporate history of flagrant misuse of science. Ordinarily, the University of California welcomes external support for faculty research. The UC Board of Regents is nonetheless considering a proposal to bar UC researchers from accepting tobacco industry funding. I agree that the tobacco industry cannot be trusted and that stringent conditions need to be attached to the acceptance of tobacco industry funding by UC researchers.

A complete ban on such funding, however, is overkill and undermines the university's mission. A more measured response is to charge higher overhead on research supported by the tobacco industry at UC and to require that recipients preface every presentation, every paper based on that funding, with a report of their personal history of tobacco industry funding.

The revenue from the increased overhead charge would allow the university to closely monitor adherence to the reporting standards required for all recipients of such funding. These are the same steps that universities took in response to pharmaceutical company misuse of science over the last decade.

For the record, I have never and will never accept tobacco industry funding for my research. I consider it immoral to work in public health and psychology and yet perform work to benefit an industry whose main product kills when used as intended.

In the late 1980s, I quit my membership in the American Psychological Association when it insisted that its popular magazine, Psychology Today, had to accept cigarette advertising in order to remain financially viable.

I have devoted 26 years to tobacco control. I testified twice before the U.S. Congress, urging government restrictions on tobacco product advertising. I have made countless appearances before municipalities (most recently the city of Santa Monica), urging ever-greater restrictions on smoking in public venues.

I nonetheless oppose a UC ban on tobacco funding because I think it begets censorship, the antithesis of the university's research mission. What other sources of funding might the UC regents consider banning: Biotech firms that do stem cell research? Islamist foundations with ties to "jihadists?" Cosmetics manufacturers who use animal testing of products? The list is potentially endless.

The tobacco industry has spent billions to misinform people, spent millions to undermine good science and lied under oath to Congress about the addictiveness of smoking. It has nonetheless rarely succeeded in preventing university researchers from testing hypotheses that cumulatively have demonstrated tobacco industry misuse of science.

By singling out tobacco industry funding for a universitywide ban, the regents would open a Pandora's box of requests by special interest groups to ban other sources of research funding. In any case, such action would have a chilling effect on investigating any hypothesis that could be interpreted as favoring the tobacco industry. This inclination toward censorship is inconsistent with the university's research mission.

McCarthy is adjunct associate professor of health services in the School of Public Health and adjunct associate professor of psychology.