March 15, 2015

Stanton A. Glantz, PhD

James Enstrom is talking about filing an ethics complaint against me and other scientists in Merchants of Doubt

According to this post on a well-respected blog on global warming, http://www.desmogblog.com/2015/03/13/tobacco-gun-hire-james-enstrom-willie-soon-climate-change, James Enstrom, an epidemiologist with a long history of working for tobacco and other corporate interests, is urging people to file ethics complaints against me and other scientists who appear in the new movie "Merchants of Doubt" through our universities.
 
Enstrom filed such a complaint against me several years ago claiming I violated the Faculty Code of Conduct by criticising an industry-funded study he published that, not surprisingly, concluded that secondhand smoke did not cause cancer.  While the complaint was ultimately found to be without merit, the whole process took several months.  He was angry for, among other things, our paper exposing how he worked with the cigarette companies' lawyers to produce a paper claiming that secondhand smoke does not cause lung cancer.  As noted in the Desmogblog post, Federal Judge Gladys Kessler highlighted Enstrom's study in her ruling that the cigarette companies constituted an illegal enterprise to defraud the public under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act.
 
In this case, would be part of a much larger organized campaign.
 
Hopefully, if these threats materialize, the universities will consider the source (and political motivations) when considering these complaints.

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