Viewpoint-30 March 2004 |
In addition the issue contains Peter Pockley's article "CSIRO in Bed with Tobacco Lobbyist".
Smokescreen on CSIRO Science |
"I do not think smoking is addictive on any reasonable definition… If it means that tobacco smokers would become physically dependent, like heroin users, then tobacco smokers are not addicted."
This sounds like something a tobacco executive might say, and indeed it is. What
is surprising is that the person who uttered these words to a Senate Community
Affairs References Committee has now been appointed as CSIRO's new
Communications Director.
Donna Staunton is a former lawyer who acted on behalf of the tobacco industry
before becoming Vice President of Corporate Affairs at Philip Morris and then
Chief Executive Officer of the Tobacco Institute of Australia. Since moving into
the PR game she has not publicly retracted her defence of tobacco.
Staunton takes on the CSIRO role after a 10-month search by recruitment
consultants had failed to find a suitable candidate, yet Staunton's only
previous experience in science has been to use it to outmanoeuvre health
authorities and tobacco litigants.
Her appointment must gall CSIRO scientists, particularly given the launch last
year of CSIRO's Preventative Health Flagship. The credibility of any research
emanating from P-Health will be diminished when its public communication is
orchestrated by a former tobacco executive who has actively thwarted
preventative health measures.
CSIRO's communications unit has lost a great deal of credibility since the
highly regarded National Awareness Program was axed almost 3 years ago. For
example, last October Australasian Science published an evaluation of CSIRO
media releases from the previous 12 months. While 30% promoted unpublished
technological claims that can only be substantiated in hindsight, only 4%
announced the publication of original research in peer-reviewed journals.
However, this trend is not limited to the merchants of spin. Professor Simon
Chapman of the University of Sydney recently followed up newspaper stories
published 10 years ago in the Sydney Morning Herald. His study, published in the
Medical Journal of Australia last December, asked cancer specialists to evaluate
whether the claims made at the time had lived up to the hype. He found that half
of all cancer "breakthroughs" reported had not been substantiated by further
research or refuted outright, and only one-quarter had been or soon would be
incorporated into medical practice.
None of this fares well for public trust in science. In the United Kingdom,
mismanagement of an outbreak of mad cow disease has fuelled mistrust of
information about genetically modified foods. The fallout from this continues to
spread worldwide. For example, a recent survey by Biotechnology Australia has
found that local acceptance of genetically modified foods and medicines
decreased between 2001 and 2003.
The public's mistrust of science in the UK has led to special investigations
there by the House of Lords and the Royal Society. The Lords concluded that
public trust in science could only be fostered if communication is characterised
by dialogue, not monologue, with decisions on science-related issues reached
through open and transparent processes.
This is the antithesis of the tobacco industry's modus operandi, which has now
been recruited into CSIRO with Staunton's appointment as its Communications
Director. It's unlikely that trust in science can improve in Australia when
public comment from its premier scientific research organisation is filtered by
a manager who has used science to put corporate interests ahead of community
health.
Guy Nolch is Editor of Australasian Science (www.control.com.au).