Study: Public trust in tobacco industry's scientific discourse

A UK opinion poll explores public trust in the tobacco industry's involvement in science. The results show that respondents are not entirely distrustful of the tobacco industry, despite its proven involvement in scientific misinformation. Researchers say the data should encourage greater awareness of the tobacco industry's damaging role in science.

The researchers surveyed a representative sample of 1,337 people living in the UK aged 18 and over. All of them were asked to indicate their level of trust in three organisations: the manufacturer Philip Morris International, the Smoke-Free Foundation (officially presented as independent but entirely funded by the tobacco industry), and Cancer Research UK (completely independent of the tobacco industry).

Four criteria for assessing trust in the tobacco industry on science

The researchers first asked the general public about the trust of these three actors in science, according to four criteria: their competence, their benevolence, the degree of trust in the scientific results of these actors and finally on the ability of the actors to use the results of the research in the general interest. Each of the respondents was asked to give a score from 1 to 7 for each of these criteria, 7 being the most positive. An overall score was given to each of the actors, averaging all the scores obtained on the four criteria. For the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World, the respondents were asked to vote twice: before and after being informed that the organization is funded by the tobacco industry.

Limited level of distrust for the tobacco industry

Respondents gave Research UK the highest overall trust rating (5.79). Before learning about the Smoke-Free Foundation’s links to the tobacco industry, respondents gave the organisation an overall rating of 5.04, and 4.77 after learning about the conflict of interest. However, learning about the funding link did result in a slight increase in respondents’ trust in the organisation’s competence. For the other three criteria, respondents’ trust declined quite significantly, particularly on the issue of the ability of stakeholders to use research findings in a way that benefits the public interest. Although Philip Morris received the lowest overall trust rating, it was still relatively high (4.66), with no criterion scoring below 4.5 out of 7, despite the tobacco industry’s historical and ongoing involvement in scientific misinformation.

Confidence correlated with respondents' political opinion

The researchers also looked to see whether respondents’ results varied based on their political views. In this case, the data showed that conservative views were significantly correlated with trust in Philip Morris’s involvement in science. Similarly, while political views were not correlated with trust in the Smoke-Free World Foundation before the organization’s interests with the tobacco industry were known, they were correlated with changes in trust in the Foundation after respondents were told about the conflict of interest. In other words, the more conservative a respondent’s views were, the less their trust in the Foundation decreased when they learned that the organization was funded by tobacco companies.

Keywords: Massachusetts, tobacco-free generation, ban, youth, Boston, United States

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[1] Legg T, Bero L and Lewandowsky S (2024), The UK public's trust in tobacco industry involvement in science – an experimental survey. Forehead. Common. 9:1360277. doi: 10.3389/fcomm.2024.1360277