France’s premier epidemiology institute
thought it had a strong candidate to become
its new director. Paolo Boffetta, an Italian epidemiologist, spent 18 years at the
International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), an authoritative World Health
Organization body
in Lyon, France. An
author on more than
900 papers, Boffetta
is now director of the
Institute for Translational Epidemiology
at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City.
He had already helped
develop a 5-year plan
for the French institute, the Center for
Research in Epidemiology and Population
Health (CESP) in Villejuif, which was submitted for an external review. But Boffetta
also has ties to industry that some of his colleagues view as routine—but others regard
as disqualifying him from the job.
Now, Boffettaís move from New York to
the Paris suburbs, planned for 2015, is off. In
stories in the French newspaper Le Monde
in December and January, colleagues
voiced concerns that Boffetta downplayed
cancer risks from several substances while
receiving money from industries that would
benefit from such conclusions. CESP
is run jointly by the French biomedical
research agency INSERM and UniversitÈ
Paris-Sud. Jacques Bittoun, the president
of that university, says that three out of
13 CESP team leaders had planned to leave
if Boffetta got the job. A French association
of asbestos victims had also protested the
impending appointment.
Boffetta does not deny that industry
funds some of his research; refusing that
income stream would be ìshort-sighted,î he
says. But he initially defended his candidacy.
ìTo suggest that I make up my conclusions
depending on the funding sources does
not only profoundly insult my scientific
integrity, but it goes against empirical
evidence,î he wrote in a 15 January note to
CESP staff that Science has seen. Catherine
Hill, a cancer epidemiologist at Institut
Gustave Roussy in Villejuif who worked
with Boffetta on a 2007 IARC assessment of
cancer causes in France, praises Boffettaís
ìseriousnessî and rejects the idea that
money could cloud his judgment.
But on 28 January, Boffetta wrote
INSERM and the university that he was
withdrawing his candidacy. ì The job was
more political than I expected,î Boffetta
says. ìIím happy to engage in discussion on
the scientiˇc aspects of my work, but not in
a mud ˇght.î
The controversy reflects wider dis-
agreements among epidemiologists on how
to deal with potential conˇicts of interest,
says Neil Pearce, an epidemiologist at the
London School of Hygiene & Tropical
Medicine and past-president of the
International Epidemiological Association.
ìIt seems that at least in France, if not in
Europe, itís not enough to declare conˇicts
of interests to be fully credible on subjects
as serious as the health effects of potentially
toxic products,î Bittoun says. ìIn fact, it is
preferable not to have any at all.î
Boffettaís work on diesel was one of
the flashpoints. In
June 2012, IARC
officially classified
diesel exhaust as
carcinogenic based
on a 700-page review
of the literature. That
same month, Boffetta
published a paper
online in Critical
Reviews in Toxicology
concluding that the
available studies
had methodological
weaknesses and that
as a result, ìthe weight of evidence is
considered inadequate to conˇrm the diesel-
lung cancer hypothesis.î
As he acknowledged in the paper,
Boffettaís study was supported by the Mining
Awareness Resource Group (MARG), a
group of mining companies and engine
manufacturers. MARG had tried to stop the
publication of two diesel studies in court for
years, a battle it eventually lost. Boffetta says
he didnít know about MARGís tactics at the CR
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Pulling out. Paolo Boffetta says he doesn’t want to
have a “mud fight” over his corporate funding.
Top Choice for French Post
Drops Out in Industry Flap
EPIDEMIOLOGY
“These epidemiological
studies support a causal
association between
exposure to diesel-engine
exhaust and lung cancer.”
IARC MONOGRAPH WORKING GROUP
IN THE LANCET ONCOLOG Y
“In sum, the weight of
evidence is considered
inadequate to confirm
the diesel-lung cancer
hypothesis.”
PAOLO BOFFETTA AND CO-AUTHORS
IN CRITICAL REVIEWS IN TOXICOLOGY
DUELING VIEWS ON DIESEL
NEWS & ANALYSIS
