British American Tobacco ghost-wrote reports on tobacco advertising bans by the International Advertising Association and J J Boddewyn

R M Davis

doi:10.1136/tc.2008.025148

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British American Tobacco ghost-wrote reports on tobacco advertising bans by the International Advertising Association and J J Boddewyn

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A Reply from R.M. Davis to JJ Boddwyn
Ronald M. Davis
Published on: 13 May 2016
A Reply from JJ Boddwyn to R.M. Davis
Jean J Boddewyn
Published on: 13 May 2016

Published on: 13 May 2016
A Reply from R.M. Davis to JJ Boddwyn
- Ronald M. Davis, Physician
Professor Boddewyn’s reply is interesting for what it admits and omits.
He admits that the International Advertising Association (IAA) reports published in 1983 and 1986 were based on his editing of “the draft paper written by Paul Bingham [of British American Tobacco].” To my knowledge, there has been no such public admission previously by Professor Boddewyn, BAT, or IAA in the 20+ years since publication of tho...
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Professor Boddewyn’s reply is interesting for what it admits and omits.
He admits that the International Advertising Association (IAA) reports published in 1983 and 1986 were based on his editing of “the draft paper written by Paul Bingham [of British American Tobacco].” To my knowledge, there has been no such public admission previously by Professor Boddewyn, BAT, or IAA in the 20+ years since publication of those reports.
However, Boddewyn omits an explanation as to why his name appeared prominently on the cover of the IAA reports (see the image of the 1983 cover in my paper in Tobacco Control) and as the author of the “Editor’s Introduction,” but Bingham’s name was nowhere to be seen in the entirety of both documents.
He explains that “I did reveal from the start that my 1983 and 1986 reports were ‘prepared by and from industry sources, using data from official and trade organizations.’” I acknowledged that disclosure in my paper, but I added the following:
“However, the report provides no further information on who conducted the analyses and wrote the text. Thus, the IAA publication links the 16–country study to the IAA itself, to Boddewyn and to ‘industry sources’, but it is unclear whether ‘industry’ refers to the advertising or tobacco industry.”
Boddewyn continues to obscure or ignore Bingham’s role in ghost–writing the reports when he refers to “MY 1983 and 1986 reports” (emphasis added).
Boddewyn claims that “MY reports on the impact of advertising bans on tobacco consumption ... provided much needed information about this issue at the time” (emphasis added). He omits any response to the comments in my paper about a key flaw in the analyses by IAA/Bingham—specifically, the failure to take into account other controls on tobacco demand (besides advertising) such as tobacco price or income. Because of that flaw, it would be correct to state that the reports provided misinformation or disinformation much needed by the tobacco industry.
Ronald M. Davis, MD
Director
Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention
Henry Ford Health System
Detroit, Michigan, USA
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Conflict of Interest:
None declared.
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Published on: 13 May 2016
A Reply from JJ Boddwyn to R.M. Davis
- Jean J Boddewyn, Professor Emeritus
What a pleasure to be cited for something I published 25 years ago! It is, of course, less pleasant to be implicitly incriminated as being some sort of a “paid hack” for the tobacco industry. Besides, the intended harm has been done since the Editor did not have the academic courtesy of asking me to reply to this personal attack in the same issue where the article by R.M. Davis has appeared.
In answering this ch...
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What a pleasure to be cited for something I published 25 years ago! It is, of course, less pleasant to be implicitly incriminated as being some sort of a “paid hack” for the tobacco industry. Besides, the intended harm has been done since the Editor did not have the academic courtesy of asking me to reply to this personal attack in the same issue where the article by R.M. Davis has appeared.
In answering this charge, I must mostly rely on my memory because moving to a new school building in 2001 and my retirement later on led me to get rid of some 40 filing drawers of manuscripts and correspondence.
It appears to me that the whole issue of “ghost-writing” revolves around what an editor does since Ronald Davis correctly states that I wrote the Introduction and “edited” the 1983 and 1986 editions of Tobacco Advertising Bans and Consumption in 16 Countries, that were published by the International Advertising Association. I know editing very well since I served 35 years as Editor of International Studies of Management & Organization. In such a position of responsibility, you check the texts that will get your imprimatur in terms of the facts used, the quality of the arguments, the clarity and flow of the logic as well as the causal argumentation or, at least, the plausibility and convincingness of the conclusion.
Was I qualified to do this job at the time? I think so because I majored in Marketing as well as Business & Its Environment (the precursor field to Business & Society) at the University of Washington where I wrote my doctoral dissertation in 1964 on a topic combining political science and marketing. Since then, I have extensively published on business-government relations and public affairs, both domestically and internationally.
That is why the International Advertising Association (IAA) asked me in the late 1960s and again in the 1970s and 1980s to conduct some 15 studies of the regulation and self-regulation of advertising around the world on such topics as advertising to children, food advertisings, decency and sexism in advertisements, and pharmaceutical advertising. The latter study was good enough to have the World Health Organization – no less – to ask me to replicate it in 1987 (“Report on the WHO Survey on Ethical Criteria for Drug Promotion”) shortly after my 1986 second report on tobacco-advertising bans. The WHO must not have thought badly of me at that time! This is a very good proof of independent research credibility, is it not?
In any case, when the IAA asked me to edit the draft paper written by Paul Bingham (who claimed to have “ghost-written” the whole report), I did what a competent editor should do – namely, meeting with Paul Bingham in London in order to check on the credibility of his sources which were almost exclusively government reports based on the national collections of excise taxes and other records which everybody has used in tobacco-control studies. I also corresponded with tobacco-industry market researchers and legal experts in the United States, Sweden and Switzerland in order to verify or understand various data, statistical techniques and legal points – hence, for example, my correspondence with Jean Besques of Philip Morris in Lausanne.
I will add that I found these exchanges with tobacco-industry people very valuable in understanding their business-government and public- affairs philosophy, strategies and tactics – one of my predominant research interests since 1964 (see above).
I did reveal from the start that my 1983 and 1986 reports were “prepared by and from industry sources, using data from official and trade organizations.” I was compensated for my time or reimbursed for my expenses by tobacco firms and associations but most tobacco-control researchers or their employers are and have to be subsidized one way or another by somebody. Twenty-five years ago, “Competing Interests” notes such as the one by Ronald Davis (who received released time which is as good as money) at the end of his article were unknown. However, I did acknowledge this industry support in my written statement to Congress in 1987 and 1989.
Mr. Davis appears to be incensed that my reports on the impact of advertising bans on tobacco consumption were given and did receive ample publicity but this happened because they provided much needed information about this issue at the time. Of course, many factors bear on smoking initiation, habits and consumption but his criticism of my work fails to report that tobacco-advertising bans were heavily promoted by antismoking champions in the early 1980s – otherwise, why would congressional bodies in the United States, Canada and New Zealand (among other countries) have held special hearings on tobacco-advertising bans? It was not just a matter of determining their effects on smoking but also of testing the constitutionality of restrictions on the freedom of commercial speech.
If you do not believe me, read the pronouncements of a leading antismoking advocate at the time, Dr. K. Bjartveit, then Chairman of Norway’s National Council on Smoking and Health: “A cautious conclusion would be that the advertising ban [in Norway], with the concomitant publicity through the legislative process, had an impact on consumption and young people’s smoking and in combination with continued and increased educational efforts, was a causal factor in the new trend (Results and Conclusion. Paper presented at the Seventh World Conference on Smoking and Health. Perth, Australia: 3 April 1990, p. 8).
Getting my research on tobacco-advertising bans published took some interesting twists. I first submitted my article that appeared in the British Journal of Addiction to a leading journal in public-health management (its exact title escapes me because of my now missing files). It was promptly returned to me as “unsuitable” but, at the time, I could have sworn I knew who (Michael Pertschuck?) wrote the rejection letter because of the similarities of the Editor’s arguments to what he had written or testified against me and other researchers not of his persuasion. So much for airing controversial views in antismoking publications!
This situation led me to write an article for the Journal of Advertising in 1993 (22,4, pp. 105-107) on “Where Should Articles on the Link Between Tobacco Advertising and Consumption Be Published?” For example, why did the famous study of how young kids could remember Joe Camel ads appear in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) – of all places! – rather than in the Journal of Advertising or the Journal of Advertising Research where reviewers would have been competent to handle a fairly straightforward proposition about advertising effects on young people? We could as well have medical articles appear in the Journal of Marketing!
Altogether, I do not have any regret to have edited these IAA reports because they forced antismoking researchers to acknowledge (as I did) that factors other than tobacco-advertising bans – their bˆte noire at the time – were at play. Ultimately, they had to urge that everything related to tobacco production, distribution and consumption be regulated, with tobacco-advertising bans relegated to a complementary role.
Those were the not-so-strawmen against whom the IAA reports I introduced and edited had to challenge. In the spirit of free inquiry, this was a do-able and respectable endeavor for which no apology is needed.
Jean J. Boddewyn Emeritus Professor of Marketing & International Business Baruch College (CUNY) 9 April 2008
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Conflict of Interest:
None declared.
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