This is Chapter 9 of my new book, working title “The Industry Playbook: Corporate Cartels, Corruption and Crimes Against Humanity” that is being published online chapter by chapter.
This chapter is different than most. It covers an area I’ve never really seen covered in discussions of the industry playbook. Yes, it is well known that science can and will bend the knee to industry. But how does it happen? I’m guessing there are some sociopaths in science that are there just for power and money. But these can’t be the majority. Not by a long shot.
People are great at rationalizing their behaviors. Tobacco executives didn’t think of what they were doing as evil. No tobacco friendly research scientist thought that they were killing people. The truth was that their PR was not just external but internal. At least early on, they honestly convinced themselves that there was no link between health and smoking.
This chapter explores what it means to have other rigidly held beliefs that would stop someone from seeing such a link because of underlying assumptions. That some “fact” was assumed true regardless of actual validity and independent of observation.
We can see this ideological positioning clearly in an early survey. In 1955, a survey of doctors found that for heavy smokers only 31% agreed with “Heavy smoking may lead to lung cancer.” For non-smokers, more than 65% agreed with this statement.
Those that smoked didn’t want to believe it was bad for them because they’d have to own up to their behavior. This would unconsciously change how they viewed evidence, whose side they would take, which arguments they would find more appealing. This is human nature, and it affects authority figures like doctors and scientists just as well as laymen. Perhaps even more so because of their believing in the superiority of their rationality!
Evarts Graham wrote in 1954, “it has not been universally accepted and there are still many cigarette addicts among the medical profession who demand absolute proof…The obstinacy of many of them in refusing to accept the existing evidence compels me to conclude that it is their own addiction to this drug habit which blinds them. They have eyes to see but they see not because of their unwillingness or inability to give up smoking…I have never encountered any non-smoker who makes light of the evidence or is skeptical of the association between excessive smoking and lung cancer.”
In essence, this position boiled down to “I smoke, therefore it can’t be harmful.”
As the scientific evidence of dangers began to mount, there were opponents. Two of these were Joseph Berkson, head of Biometry and Medical Statistics of the Mayo Clinic and Sir Ronald Fisher, leading biometrician and geneticist at University College London and Cambridge University. These two were skeptics of the tobacco-cancer link.
Brandt writes, “While Fisher and Berkson raised important questions, their critiques were no match for the overwhelming evidence of repeated studies. Nonethelesss, the industry broadcast and rebroadcast these attacks and ultimately hired both Fisher and Berkson as paid consultants. Although both men identified themselves as ‘independent’ skeptics, they brought both a priori assumptions and, later, conflicts of interest to their unrelenting critiques.”
These men didn’t believe that smoking could cause cancer. They believed this because they had other beliefs about health and how the world worked, that essentially didn’t give room for this possibility. Big Tobacco found willing allies here. And that relationship only strengthened when money began to flow towards it.
This reminds me of Upton Sinclair saying, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”
Of course, this wasn’t everyone. Many scientists started off skeptical of the link. But based on the mounting evidence some changed their positions. Some of these scientists quit smoking in light of the evidence. This is how science ideally works, if you’re not paid to look the other way or wrapped up in ideology.
We’ll now turn to Dr. Clarence Cook Little who was elected to head the Scientific Advisory Board of the TIRC.
“Little’s personal commitments and a priori assumptions about cancer causality made him the ideal proponent of the industry’s singular goal of maintaining a ‘controversy’ regarding smoking and health.,” writes Brandt. “His scientific beliefs about cancer corresponded directly to his belief in the importance of heredity for understanding the causes of disease. From his earliest scientific training, Little had been deeply committed to hereditarian notions of cancer and society. In 1936, as president of the American Birth Control League, he decried the ‘ill-advised and unsound policies of economic relief employed in this country,’ which he maintained would only lead to the further propagation of the unfit, and he offered gratitude to ‘the gentlemen who rule Italy, Japan, and Germany for demonstrating that a program of stimulating population is a program of war.” Little’s eugenic science was closely tied to his politics. ‘Our political and sociological premise in America is based on the false premise that all persons are born free and equal. This is an absolute absurdity,’ he wrote in 1936. ‘We must segregate men according to their standing.’ Little also became a founding director of the National Society for the Legalization of Euthanasia and the Race Betterment Congress. He vigorously defended compulsory sterilization, urging the expansion of legislation mandating such policies.”
While few people call themselves eugenicists today, these ideas have only slightly changed among many scientists. For many decades all health was attributed to genetics. The Human Genome Project promised to end all disease, and we’re still waiting. That genetics would solve all health problems is always on the horizon, even now using CRISPR, machine learning, gene therapies and more.
These assumptions about what causes disease and what does not, are very helpful to any industry that wants to point the blame away from their cancer and other disease-causing products.
Brandt continues, “Given Little’s personal rigidities and conceit, no epidemiological findings could possibly unsettle such deeply held convictions…Once Little became the scientific director of the TIRC, he demonstrated a complete unwillingness to be swayed from the positions he took in 1954. No new evidence ever convinced him of the relationship of smoking to disease. Little had no respect for clinical and field observations. He brought these unbending views to his work for the industry and structured its research program accordingly.”
Understand what this means. No amount of evidence would ever convince Little. Why? Because it wasn’t just about cigarettes causing cancer. For that to be admitted, his entire worldview would have to shift. His beliefs about race, economics, politics, heredity, health and more would all have to significantly change for him to see that cigarettes caused cancer. Therefore, it was all of these other things that ultimately held that single belief in place. It was the foundation on which his world view was built.
The ideal scientist is one who is dispassionately observing facts and brings no belief to the table to simply observe what is. But scientists are human. And deeply held beliefs, and a priori assumptions, are not always easy to observe.
Brandt concludes, “Was Little disingenuous in his skepticism? Did he dissemble on behalf of his employer? The evidence on this question remains indeterminate. What we do know is that Little, by self-proclamation deeply committed to science and rationality, lost all capacity to evaluate his own biases as he assessed the question. Fiercely independent throughout his career, he failed to comprehend the corrosive social and psychological mechanisms of conflicts of interest. Colleagues and friends came to question his judgment and rectitude: he had sold his science to industry.”
Clarence Little said as late as 1969, “There is no demonstrated causal relationship between smoking or any disease. The gaps in knowledge are so great that those who dogmatically assert otherwise – whether they state that there is or is not such a causal relationship – are premature in judgment. If anything, the pure biological evidence is pointing away from, not toward, the causal hypothesis.” He retired from the Scientific Advisory Board that year. A smoker himself, he died in 1971 of a heart attack.
Yes, there are scientists that have their price. But more often than not, the best industry strategy is finding ideological allies, those that already believe what you want believed for any other reason.
And while we focused on scientists here, ideology is certainly not exclusive to them. Journalists, politicians, lawyers, regulators and more can all become allied in the same way.
Key Takeaways on Ideological Allies
- The ideal of science is to objectively look at the data and form beliefs solely based on that. Many people confuse this ideal with what happens in scientific reality.
- Science in practice is done by human beings which bring a priori assumptions, beliefs and values to their experiments and their viewing of data. This can and does skew opinions. Like with Dr. Little, no evidence of smoking causing cancer could ever shift his worldview of cancer being solely hereditary.
- For industry it is best to find those people that have underlying assumptions about what causes disease and what does not that are friendly to your products and position. You don’t need to convince them, for one reason or another they’re already convinced.
- In addition to ideological positions, financial conflicts of interest can further sway scientists and other allies. Often one step leads to the next.
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Links to all published chapters of The Industry Playbook can be found here.
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