Tobacco Industry Masters at 'Manufacturing Uncertainty'July 22, 2005
Research Summary
The tobacco industry has been the undisputed master of a tactic known as 'manufacturing uncertainty' -- questioning the science underlying government regulations or public-health recommendations in order to undermine policies that threatens corporate interests, a pair of George Washington University researchers say.Researchers David Michaels and Celeste Monforton write in the most recent issue of the American Journal of Public Health that while manufactured uncertainty is used by many interests and industries, no one has done it longer or better than the tobacco industry.
"For almost half a century, the tobacco companies hired scientists to dispute first, that smokers were at greater risk of dying of lung cancer; second, the role of tobacco use in heart disease and other illnesses; and finally, the evidence that environmental tobacco smoke increased disease risk in nonsmokers," they wrote. "In each case, the scientific community eventually reached the consensus that tobacco smoke caused these conditions. Despite the overwhelming scientific evidence and the smoking-related deaths of millions of smokers, the tobacco industry was able to wage a campaign that successfully delayed regulation and victim compensation for decades."
The authors called the strategy of manufactured uncertainty "antithetical to the public-health principle that decisions be made using the best evidence available," and lamented that policymakers often fail to distinguish between legitimate research and studies bought and paid for by industry, thus allowing putative "conflicting research" to stall or derail decisionmaking. "In our current regulatory system, debate over science has become a substitute for debate over policy," the article noted.
The report appears in the July 2005 issue of the American Journal of Public Health.
Boston University School of Public Health 
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