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Several journals will no longer publish research supported by the tobacco industry. Ginny Barbour, the chief editor of one PLoS Medicine, one of the journals to refuse tobacco-funded studies, explains why.

What made you decide to stop accepting papers reporting research funded by tobacco companies?

Last year decided to prioritise research about conditions and risk factors that cause the greatest burden of disease. Tobacco is certainly one: it directly kills over 4 million people a year worldwide, and more indirectly. We didn’t want our policy to attract a flood of industry-funded tobacco research; we feel the tobacco industry has no reason to fund research aimed at improving public health. If they wanted to do that, they could just shut down. Its main reason for publishing research about tobacco is to downplay the harm it causes, in order to sell products: it has a long history of that. It also funds research unrelated to tobacco, but that is still a form of advertising.

Is it a medical journal’s job to try and stop that?

Journals cannot just be passive conduits for papers. We have a duty to promote human health. Banning tobacco-funded papers can help researchers who are under pressure to accept funding: the next time a tobacco company offers them money, they can say “No thanks, that would limit where we can publish.” Besides us and our colleagues at and , the and the American Thoracic Society journals have also banned tobacco-funded research.

Tests of new drugs are usually funded by drug companies, and some studies have found that company-funded trials are more likely to get results favouring the company. Why single out tobacco?

There is a huge problem with all corporate funding of clinical trials: it’s like asking the coach of the football team to referee the game. But unlike pharmaceuticals, the tobacco industry’s products are never useful, they only harm human health. And there has been that the industry’s research is problematic; one of our editors opposed banning research funded by tobacco companies as a restriction on free speech, but changed his mind because of that.

The industry is developing “safer cigarettes” and will need them to be tested in clinical trials. Shouldn’t the results be published in peer-reviewed journals?

If tobacco companies fund these trials it will be hard to have confidence in the outcome. But in any case, even a so-called safer cigarette will not contribute to public health. The only reason the industry has for developing one is to promote smoking.

Wouldn’t that reduce the harm caused by tobacco?

There is one simple way to reduce the harm caused by tobacco: stop it being sold. I don’t accept that it will help even if you can make a slightly safer cigarette. That research is just advertising. Medical journals and the public health community must take a strong stand and say it isn’t acceptable to publish research that only seeks to legitimise tobacco.