Seeking to be seen as legitimate members of the scientific community? An analysis of British American Tobacco and Philip Morris International's involvement in scientific events

Britta Katharina Matthes; Alice Fabbri; Sarah Dance; Louis Laurence; Karin Silver; Anna B Gilmore

doi:10.1136/tc-2022-057809

Seeking to be seen as legitimate members of the scientific community? An analysis of British American Tobacco and Philip Morris International's involvement in scientific events

Tob Control. 2024 Feb 14:tc-2022-057809. doi: 10.1136/tc-2022-057809. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Britta Katharina Matthes¹, Alice Fabbri², Sarah Dance³, Louis Laurence², Karin Silver², Anna B Gilmore²

Affiliations

¹ Department for Health, University of Bath, Bath, UK bkm28@bath.ac.uk.
² Department for Health, University of Bath, Bath, UK.
³ Department of Psychology, University of Bath, Bath, UK.

PMID: 36737249
DOI: 10.1136/tc-2022-057809

Abstract

Introduction: For decades, tobacco companies manipulated and misused science. They funded and disseminated favourable research and suppressed research that showed the harms of their products, deliberately generating misinformation. While previous work has examined many of the practices involved, their engagement in scientific events has so far not been systematically studied. Here, we examine the involvement of British American Tobacco (BAT) and Philip Morris International (PMI) in scientific events, including conferences, symposia and workshops.

Methods: Our analysis involved two steps. First, we collected all available data PMI and BAT provided on their websites to identify events. Second, we extracted information about the nature of tobacco industry involvement from event websites and materials.

Results: We identified 213 scientific events that BAT and/or PMI representatives attended between April 2012 and September 2021. Most events took place in high-income countries in Europe and North America. They covered a diverse range of fields, including toxicology (n=60, 28.1%), medicine (n=25, 11.7%), biology (n=24, 11.3%), chemistry (n=23, 10.8%) and aerosol science (n=18, 8.5%), as well as dentistry (n=9, 4.2%), pharmaceutical science (n=8, 3.8%) and computing (n=8, 3.8%). We identified 356 posters provided by BAT and PMI that linked to 118 events (55.4%) as well as 77 presentations from 65 events (30.5%). Industry involvement through sponsorship (nine events), exhibition (three events) or organising committee (one event) was rare.

Conclusion: BAT and PMI representatives attended a large number and wide range of scientific events. Given that scientific events could be a crucial platform for building connections in the scientific sphere and disseminating industry's messages, this work highlights the importance of denormalising the tobacco industry's involvement in scientific events.

Keywords: denormalization; global health; tobacco industry.