Commercial Influences on health and science

This event is part of a series of Psychology seminars that regularly occurs during the Autumn and Spring terms.

One of the key strategies of commercial actors is to influence and distort the evidence base relating to the harms of their products. This is done through funding misleading industry-friendly science; it is also done through the promotion of misinformation to the public, policymakers and other decisionmakers. This is most well documented in relation to the tobacco industry, and its long-term denial that smoking causes cancer and cardiovascular disease.

One strategy which the tobacco industry used (and uses) is the promotion of uncertainty.  This involves the promotion of mistrust about evidence, scientific and other experts, causality, and science in general. This is part of a wider “playbook” used by industries such as the tobacco, alcohol, gambling, food and other industries, and also increasingly used by political actors.

This talk will explore these issues using the example of how the tobacco industry helped develop and promote the concept of ‘Type A’ behaviour, and how it funded research on stress-related illness more generally. It will also show how the alcohol and other industries use similar approaches to undermine science and dispute the evidence around product harms.