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LETTER TO SCIENCE MAGAZINE

Critizing their "scientific" reporting of the smoking issue.

                                                       June 19, 1996

Mr. Steve Lapham
Letters to Editor
Science Magazine
1333 H St. NW
Washington, DC 20005

Dear Mr. Lapham,

Part of the American scientific community is excommunicating a
group of its members - ostensibly those who accept research money
from tobacco companies (Report, "Tobacco Money Lights up a
Debate",  Jon Cohen, Science, 26 April, 1996).  The anti-smoking
crusaders (ASC), led by Stanton Glantz, have won again.  In a
long and brilliantly effective campaign, the ASC have tranformed
the discussion of a public health issue into a holy war against
smoking.  To do this they have established 3 major dicta.  
     (1) Smoking kills 440,000 Americans annually.
     (2) Environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) kills 50,000 Americans
annually.
     (3) Anyone who questions the validity of (1) or (2) is a
tool of the tobacco industry.
Dictum (3) is necessary because serious scientists recognize that
(1) is questionable and (2) preposterous.

Good scientists encourage criticism of their results.  By honest
give and take they refine their theories and advance knowledge. 
The ASCs, unable to defend their often shoddy science, have
changed the subject to attacking the tobacco industry and
impugning the motives of scientists who accept its funding.  THE
REAL OR ALLEGED EVILDOING OF THE TOBACCO INDUSTRY IS IRRELEVANT
TO THE PUBLIC POLICY DISCUSSION OF THE DANGERS OF SMOKING.  No
money will corrupt an honest scientist, and Federal money 
(Stanton Glantz' specialty) will corrupt a dishonest scientist as
thoroughly as tobacco money. 
                                                                 
The war on smoking has obviously become part of political
correctness, or the American form of Lysenkoism.  Lysenkoism, the
subjugation of science to ideology, is named for 

Trofim Lysenko, Stalin's favorite scientist, who suppressed all
genetic research in the Soviet Union and damaged Soviet science
and agriculture for decades. It is easy to see why genetic
research should be anathema to Stalinists, but can anyone
enlighten me as to why smoking is the abomination of the
politically correct?

Russell Baker, in his Observer column on the anti-smoking crusade
(NY Times, May 31, 1994) noted that "crusades typically start by
being admirable, proceed by being foolish, and end by being
dangerous." In my opinion, the stages of the anti-tobacco crusade
were:
     (1) Admirable - demonstrating the relationship of primary
smoking to lung cancer.
     (2) Foolish - claiming that ETS is a serious health hazard.
     (3) Dangerous - stifling dissent by defaming the opposition.

Defaming one's critics is a durable technique of crusaders, from
Lysenko in the USSR to our own Salem witch hunters, Senator Joe
McCarthy, and now Stanton Glantz and his fellow ASCs.

If Glantz' lucrative and effective propaganda has been able to
harm the career of so distinguished an epidemiologist as Theodor
Sterling,  I can see why young scientists are afraid to protest. 
But where are the leaders of the AAAS, or other retirees, like
me, who are free speak out?  For 37 years I was proud to be
Federal government scientist, first at NBS (now NIST) and then
NIH.  The 1993 EPA report was merely embarrassing, but the
current surrender to Lysenkoism is shameful and frightening.

Rosalind B. Marimont is a retired mathematician and scientist, having done research and development for NIST (or the Bureau of Standards (NBS), as it was then) for 18 years, until 1960, and NIH for another 19, until her retirement in 1979. She started in electronics defense work during World War II at NBS, then went on to the logical design of the early digital computers during the fifties. In 1960, she moved to NIH, and there studied and published papers on human vision, speech, and other biomathematical subjects. Since her retirement she has been active in health policy issues - first, the treatment of chronic pain by integrated mind/body methods, and second, the dishonest war on smoking which has corrupted scientific research and gravely disorted the nation's health priorities.

For more than fifty years she has read and evaluated many kinds of scientific studies, and has sometimes served as a reviewer for scientific journals.