Does Tobacco Money Taint Research?
The University of California receives more than $4 billion a year in grants and contracts for research. On Wednesday, the Board of Regents took the unusual move of focusing on the source of less than $2 million of that total — the tobacco industry. One regent, Lieut. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, has called on his colleagues to consider barring the university system from accepting grants or contracts from the tobacco industry. Under the regents’ rules, the issue could only be discussed Wednesday, so there was no vote — and it’s unclear that one could take place any time soon. But with the backing of anti-smoking groups and many professors, Bustamante has focused additional attention on the issue. The argument he is making isn’t that the smoking industry promotes harmful products (although he believes that), but that it uses university research to deceive the public to such an extent that the research harms the university system. “The tobacco companies use academic research to promote misunde
