Tobacco firms funded quality research to distract from smoking’s causal role

Evidence

“It is less well known, but tobacco companies also spent large amounts subsidising good quality biomedical research in fields such as virology, genetics and immunology. They funded the work of several Nobel prize winners,” Proctor says. “But they only encouraged this research to serve as a distraction. The idea was to build up a corpus of work on possible causes of diseases which could not be attributed to cigarette-smoking. In court cases involving the industry, its lawyers always highlighted viral risks, the pre-disposition of certain families and so on to play down tobacco-related risks.” — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 631

Categorization

• DEFINE: Concretely defines agnotology as funding legitimate research to expand the palette of explanations while downplaying the damning subset of causes.
• XREF: Directly anticipates the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac red herring strategy Mirowski analyzes later; also connects to Naomi Klein’s disaster-capitalism frameworks. — connects to: Tobacco companies deliberately suppressed their own addictive-product research to evade legal liability — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 1691; The tobacco industry manufactured public doubt as its primary defense strategy — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 1658; Industry-funded television research suppressed unfavorable findings and used straw-man tests (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Tobacco companies deliberately suppressed their own addictive-product research to evade legal liability #corroborates (0.82) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1691
• The tobacco industry manufactured public doubt as its primary defense strategy #corroborates (0.78) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1658
• Industry-funded television research suppressed unfavorable findings and used straw-man tests #corroborates (0.75)