Kessler Slams RJR ETS Witness on “Blatant” Fraud
March 16, 2005 7:02 pm by Gene BorioWashington, DC., Wed., Mar 16, 2005, 7:15 PM
RJR Principal Scientist Dr. Michael Ogden is a good witness–Butler (1999) case lawyers even said his testimony on actual levels of secondhand smoke exposure was “instrumental in the outcome of the verdict.”
The Defense has apparently had a good string of witnesses recently–Dr. Bradley on the faulty use of statistics in secondhand smoke studies, and Dr. Wecker on the faulty use of statistics on compensation and lung cancer risk trends which supposedly indicate no benefits from low-yield cigarettes. Their testimonies seem to have survived DOJ’s attacks, though Judge Kessler made clear that they are being accepted only as to their very narrow levels of expertise.
But Dr. Ogden, a major figure in RJR’s real-world ETS exposure studies, appears to have stumbled very badly today.
He claimed that everything done in the field was done for the pure science of it, and certainly had little to do with the industry’s battle against smoking restrictions.
But in glossing over or pretending to ignore even the possibility of the obvious and potentially shady motives accented by DOJ attorney Gregg Schwind, he seemed increasingly on thin ice. For example, when asked about RJR’s 1987 position on smoking bans in airplanes when the company was actually in them measuring ETS exposure levels, he said, “I can’t say there was a company position at this time.”
Mr. Schwind’s relentless questioning was meant to show that RJR’s development of methodologies, apparatuses and conduct of studies of ETS exposure levels in airplanes, offices and restaurants were 1) designed by lawyers, 2) given pilots to make sure their results would fall into place with company positions, 3) conducted to the desired results, and 4) deployed by RJR and others in the industry in the fight against smoking restrictions.
By the end of the day, Dr. Ogden’s answers were getting increasingly coy–and irritating, in fact.
One example:
In his prepared Written Direct Testimony, Dr. Ogden was asked about some scientific papers,
Q: Did those publications reflect the authors’ affiliation with Reynolds?
A: Yes.
Mr. Schwind asked Dr. Ogden why, in the scientific field, it was important to cite authors’ affiliations. Dr. Ogden said you have to have contact information. It’s a general practice, the affiliation is listed so you would recognize people, and know who published the paper. “For identity purposes,” he said.
The pile grew even higher when Mr. Schwind introduced internal documents showing clearly that certain scientific articles had acutally been ghostwritten by industry scientists. Dr. Ogden, in defense of ghostwriting in general, said, well, we have ghostwriters that write procedure manuals, etc., that’s what we hire them for.
One of the documents Mr. Schwind pointed to seemed to be a cross-company project: “Measurements for certain Environmental Tobacco Smoke Components on Long-Range Flights” by a John Drake and Dallas E. Johnson, published in Aviation Space & Environmental Medicine. Mr. Schwind’s document said that “ghostwriters include” Dr. Fenner of Philip Morris, and Ms. M.E. Ward [a previous witness] and Dr. G.B. Oldaker from RJR.
Then Mr. Schwind introduced a document citing Dr. Oldaker, who at the time was Dr. Ogden’s boss, as ghostwriter of a paper titled “Results from Survey of Environmental Tobacco Smoke in Offices in Ottawa, Ontario.” Then he showed the same paper as published in the journal Environmental Technology Letters (9: 501-508, 1988).
When Mr. Schwind asked Dr. Ogden if he knew that the paper had been ghostwritten by his boss, Dr. Ogden said, that “sitting here today, I don’t remember, I don’t have a specific recollection.”
This seemed a distillation of where Dr. Ogden’s testimony was going. He had seemed very cool most of the time, but now his answers seemed to be getting increasingly disingenuous, and here especially, it was clear that if such a practice were in any way reprehensible, outrageous or unethical to Dr. Ogden, then, as a singular event, he would certainly remember it. Unless, of course, he didn’t remember because he was so inured to the practice, beause it happened so routinely…
I think Judge Kessler finally snapped exactly where I did–when we were shown the study’s “Acknowledgments” section, wherein the reputed authors thank the real author –Dr. Oldaker–for “help and comments.”
This is, roughly, the exchange:
JUDGE KESSLER: Do you have any doubt in your mind that this is a blatant example of scientific fraud? Or are you telling me that this is done routinely in the scientific world?
DR. OGDEN: I wouldn’t say fraud
JUDGE KESSLER: You wouldn’t say fraud when a person pretends they wrote an article someone else wrote??
DR. OGDEN: No
JUDGE KESSLER: We must have a different definition of fraud.
DR. OGDEN: I know they participated in the study. If they disagreed with the article, that’s fraud. If they agree with it, I’m not sure I’d call it fraud.
JUDGE KESSLER: You don’t agree that when someone says they wrote a paper and didn’t, that’s fraud?
DR. OGDEN: If they said they were the authors, yes
JUDGE KESSLER: Isn’t that what they mean when they are listed as author??
DR. OGDEN: That would be my interpretation.
Mr. Schwind has yet to dispute the actual science of RJR’s “Personal Monitoring Systems.” His cross continues tomorrow, Thursday.
March 16th, 2005 at 8:24 pm
JUDGE KESSLER: You don’t agree that when someone says they wrote a paper and didn’t, that’s fraud?
DR. OGDEN: If they said they were the authors, yes
JUDGE KESSLER: Isn’t that what they mean when they are listed as author??
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I’m not sure a proper understanding of what constitutes appropriate scientific authorship has come out here. Just to clarify:
When it comes to writing scientific papers, its not at all uncommon for persons who have contributed *ZERO* to the actual writing of a text to be listed as authors. In fact, this is routine practice in many fields, particularly in medicine where important publications routinely list a dozen authors.
The requirement is that the person listed as an author made a substantial contribution to the work described in the paper, not that they are the one who actually sat down at the keyboard and wrote the text. While there are scientists who like to write, there are also plenty of good senior scientists who organize projects, see that they get carried out, and then have other people (grad students, or even professional technical writers) actually write the words. In some cases, professional technical writers doing the actual writing don’t even get listed as authors, since they contributed nothing to the underlying research effort. (These people will generally get acknowledgements in the paper).
Now, if the lead scientist, or a major contributor, were to claim that they were an author of the paper in question even though they didnt write any of the words that would NOT be fraud. Nor should it be considered such. I’d hazard a guess that most of the expert witnesses on both sides of this case are listed as authors of papers they didn’t actually write themselves. That’s what happens when you have a narrow technical expertise and work as a collaborator.
I don’t know what the specifics of the paper in question were. If Dr. Oldaker performed research, personally wrote a complete paper describing the results, and handed it off to two third parties, who them published it under their name without making any other contribution to the work, that’s disgraceful. It doesn’t necessarily invalidate the contents of the paper itself as fraudulent, but it certainly calls into serious question the motivations of the participants.
March 17th, 2005 at 12:44 am
Ah yes, that tobacco industry “outside research”. Quotes used advisedly.
One of my favorite examples is found in the OSHA hearings on secondhand smoke, January 5, 1995. R. J. Reynolds funds ETS “outside research” that finds no big whoop on secondhand smoke.
So how outside was this?
RJR’s marketing research firm Bellomy designs the initial questionnaire; through subcontractors they recruit field subjects; they assist with field operations; they make choices of locations and cities; they code subject demographic data.
Why did the outside researcher use Bellomy? “Bellomy Research was suggested to us by the Center” (CIAR).
I think you could conclude that RJR ran the project, got the results it wanted, dressed up as outside research.
From the OSHA hearings:
MR. HOPPER: Okay. So you had Bellomy, who did the market research end of this…
DR. JENKINS: Yes.
MR. HOPPER: …whom you testified, who largely has represented and done work for R.J. Reynolds and the tobacco industry based in Winston-Salem. Correct?
DR. JENKINS: Yes.
MR. HOPPER: And you have R.J. Reynolds, who is doing the analysis on this. You have CIAR who is providing the grant, the contract, with a Board of tobacco companies, and Mr. Guerin on their Advisory Board.
I just have one question for you: Did it ever occur to you at any point that it might possibly affect the outcome of this study when it has that much involvement by the tobacco industry, who has a financial stake in the outcome of these proceedings?
The full testimony is at:
http://www.tobacco.org/Documents/osha/950105osha.html
Another nuggest from RJR’s outside “researcher”:
MR. HOPPER: Well, now, you’re a tobacco chemist, and we’re talking about ETS and you’re very knowledgeable about nicotine. Do you believe nicotine’s addictive?
DR. JENKINS: I do not have the… I don’t have the professional expertise to comment.