Scientists to sue over funding claims
Clive Bates is the director of Counterfactual Consulting and the former director of Action on Smoking and Health (U.K.).
A group of scientists and public health experts are to take legal action against The Times newspaper after it reported claims from a leading charity that they were in the pay of the tobacco industry, according to a story by Alexandra Topping for The Guardian.
The Times’s story reported that Cancer Research UK had criticised scientists who “accepted thousands of pounds from tobacco companies to carry out research into e-cigarettes”. The scientists deny they did so.
The Times has published an apology to one of the experts cited, Clive Bates, the former head of Action on Smoking and Health. The correction stated that he had funded his own travel and accommodation costs at an industry-sponsored tobacco and nicotine forum in Brussels (Tobacco Reporter’s 2016 Global Tobacco and Nicotine Forum) and had not received any funding from tobacco or nicotine companies.
But other scientists say that the same apology was not extended to them.
The Guardian reported that Lewis Silkin, a legal firm specialising in libel, will be acting on behalf of five scientists.
The Guardian story is at: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/oct/23/anti-smoking-experts-to-sue-times-for-claims-of-tobacco-payouts