Editors of The BMJ, Heart, Thorax, and BMJ Open have said that they will no longer consider for publication any study that is partly or wholly funded by the tobacco industry.
Writing on bmj.com, the editors said that the new policy is consistent with those of many other journals and demonstrates their commitment to ensuring that - as far as possible - their journals publish honest work that advances knowledge about health and disease.
Critics may argue that publishing such research does not constitute endorsing its findings, but the editors believe this view "ignores the growing body of evidence that biases and research misconduct are often impossible to detect, and that the source of funding can influence the outcomes of studies in invisible ways."
They argue that, far from advancing knowledge, the tobacco industry "has used research to deliberately produce ignorance and to advance its ultimate goal of selling its deadly products while shoring up its damaged legitimacy."
They point to extensive research drawing on the tobacco industry's own internal documents, that shows for decades the industry sought to create both scientific and popular ignorance or "doubt" – at first around the fact that smoking caused lung cancer and later to the harmful effects of second-hand smoke on non-smokers and the true effects of using so called light or reduced tar cigarettes on smokers' health.
The editors acknowledge that journals "unwittingly played a role in producing and sustaining this ignorance."
Some believe that new tobacco products could represent potential public health gains, and company sponsored research may be the first to identify those gains. But the editors say that, however promising any other products might be, tobacco companies are still in the business of marketing cigarettes. The tobacco industry has not changed in any fundamental way, and the cigarette - the single most deadly consumer product ever made - remains widely available and aggressively marketed, they argue.
They recall that, back in 2003, the editor of the BMJ defended publication of a study with tobacco industry funding saying "The BMJ is passionately anti-tobacco, but we are also passionately prodebate and proscience. A ban would be anti-science." But they now believe it is "time to cease supporting the now discredited notion that tobacco industry funded research is just like any other research."
