Having served as a scientist in the Finnish Alcohol Monopoly for 15 years, after receiving individual tax-free grants from the same source for several years, I feel perplexed to read the recommendation that '. . . it should be recognized from the information reviewed in this paper that under most circumstances collaboration [of researchers] with the alcoholic beverage industry is neither warranted nor advisable'. The Finnish monopoly, which capped not only retail but also wholesale, importation and production (of a wide range of goods) in its orb, had other constraints besides grinding money to the state; but it, too, had interests, not least of them getting rid of us. For the businessmen we were simply useless. Our research rarely troubled them enough to incite any attempts to interfere, even when we proposed and in fact convinced the alcohol policy circle for a short while that limiting the growth of the overall consumption, i.e. the business of our funding source, is a good idea [1].
Stenius & Babor have provided an important service to the research community by mapping out systematically the risks and hazards involved in receiving funding from private sources and in listing altogether 24 recommendations to all participants as how to avoid them [2]. Nevertheless, their perspective is very Nordic. If the alcohol industries were not to fund any research there would be practically none in France, Italy and probably many other countries. The original source of international alcohol consumption statistics was the Dutch distilling industry. Even in countries where alcohol research is funded formally from governments, the money is often raised from the drinks business. Their advice would stop most of the gambling research in the whole world. Applied to research on dangerous consumption or otherwise controversial social issues, the conclusion becomes even more confusing: think of the Volkswagen foundation, the Wellcome Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation and thousands of other sources that fund research not only on alcohol and drug policy relevant topics, but also on other issues that involve conflicting interests. If anyone who makes money on a product would not be allowed to use it for research [3], the profits might be smaller but also many people would be less well and die earlier. . . . .
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