Pro-tobacco industry bias in the journal Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology

Clayton Velicer, Gideon St. Helen, and I just published “Tobacco papers and tobacco industry ties in Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology” in the Journal of Public Health Policy.   RTP  is one of the journals that the tobacco and other industries use to publish their work.  We show a strong pro-tobacco industry orientation in the editors and conclusions in the papers published there.  Scientists and regulators need to be aware of these biases. 
 
Here is the abstract
 
We examined the relationship between the tobacco industry and the journal Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology (RTP) using the Truth Tobacco Industry Documents Library and internet sources. We determined the funding relationships, and categorised the conclusions of all 52 RTP papers on tobacco or nicotine between January 2013 and June 2015, as "positive", "negative" or "neutral" for the tobacco industry. RTP's editor, 57% (4/7) of associate editors and 37% (14/38) of editorial board members had worked or consulted for tobacco companies. Almost all (96%, 50/52) of the papers had authors with tobacco industry ties. Seventy-six percent (38/50) of these papers drew conclusions positive for industry; none drew negative conclusions. The two papers by authors not related to the tobacco industry reached conclusions negative to the industry (p  
The full citation is Velicer C, St Helen G, Glantz SA.  Tobacco papers and tobacco industry ties in Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology.  J Public Health Policy. 2017 Nov 7. doi: 10.1057/s41271-017-0096-6. [Epub ahead of print].  It is available here.