Abstract

Much has been discussed and written about the purposes, outcomes, and ethics related to tobacco industry funding of research.e.g., 1-9 The issue is controversial because of tobacco industry funding mechanisms that have been used by the tobacco industry to gain credibility and to advance the industry’s interests which may come at the expense of public health;e.g., 6 at the same time others have argued that, given the scarcity of funding from other sources, tobacco industry support may be defensible, at least under some circumstances.e.g., 10 These concerns raise the question of whether there could be a model of tobacco company funding that would be acceptable to the tobacco control research community. This paper presents a set of criteria for evaluating funding models and applies them to four diverse models.