Last week I was sitting in one of San Francisco's blissfully smoke-free cafes and found a discarded copy of the Los Angeles Times. (We don't often see that fine paper here in our much more refined city.) So I leafed through it and came upon a story titled: "A smoldering controversy at UCLA; The school accepts money from tobacco giant Philip Morris in its three-year study of nicotine addiction. Teenagers and monkeys are part of the research" (Los Angeles Times, Feb. 9).

As an otherwise proud graduate of the UCLA School of Public Health and longtime anti-tobacco advocate, that headline certainly caught my attention. The well-written article focused not only on the controversy over Philip Morris funding but also on "animal rights" protests and issues, as activists had targeted the researcher's house. That's very unfortunate. As someone who has been "stalked" by self-proclaimed activists who have opposed my work on abortion and yes, drug abuse topics, I do know how that feels - unnerving, at a minimum. So I feel for Edythe London, a respected professor of psychiatry and pharmacology. Violence and vandalism are indefensible.

But I must also respectfully observe that London, presumably something of an expert on the human brain and emotions, may be participating in a strong bit of willful denial about her own work. Philip Morris awarded her and UCLA $6 million for her research, and UCLA officials admit "the idea for the study of teenagers and monkeys originated with Philip Morris."

Then comes this astounding quote: "Roberto Peccei, vice chancellor for research at UCLA, said the company's motives were immaterial. 'I have no idea why Philip Morris decides to fund this anti-smoking research, but they do,' he said. 'As long as we do not feel that we are interfered with and that the research is done with the highest intentions, what's in the mind of the funder is irrelevant'."

Well. Such a statement could have been made with some validity - due to lack of information - a generation or so ago. Now we know, from decades of research and disclosure of tobacco industry documents, that the source of funding and motives make a huge difference - not just with regard to tobacco but in other arenas as well, such as pharmaceuticals, industrial chemicals, and more. The differences come in terms of outcome of the actual research, behavior of clinicians and others who read and are influenced by it, marketing activities of the profit-motivated funders, and more.

These influences are found even when there is no outright mention of the funder's name - that's one of the funny little mysteries of human motivation and the altering of it, and the tobacco and other industries seem to know as much or more about that than anyone else.

This is why, after numerous embarrassments, most leading scientific and medical journals have adopted much stricter "conflict of interest" disclosure policies, with source of funding for research being the main reason for that.

It's also why a rapidly growing number of professional schools and entire universities also have stricter policies, including many banning such funding outright. Major medical organizations such as Kaiser Permanente ban pharmaceutical sales representatives and funding as they recognize even the "educational" and "research" efforts of industry as just what it is - marketing.

Thus, knowledgeable readers of the journals almost wholly discount papers published where the funder in question has a clear conlfict - and as a reviewer for such journals, and editor of one, I vote to not even publish such tainted research, at least not without prominent disclaimers and even cautionary commentary. That's a shame where, as in this case, "clean" research might well have yielded some important and even life-saving information. As things now stand, if this research looks promising, it's likely somebody with higher ethical standards will have to replicate it in order for it to be more widely accepted.

Philip Morris "has no intention of using the results or teenagers' brain scans to develop more addictive cigarettes", according to their spokesman in the LA Times story. "We would never do that," he said. Long and lethal evidence proves otherwise. UCLA researchers and officials should know this, and act accordingly.

But as the evidence shows, money can buy just about anything, including denial. I well recall how Philip Morris "research" was used to fight our pioneering effort to ban smoking in the very types of café where I came across the newspaper that contained this sad, disturbing story.