Science

After reviewing "two University of Chicago economists' findings about the political slant of American newspapers," reporter Chris Adams concludes that the study "has structural flaws." For instance, the study counted the Washington Post's mentions of "real estate tax" as "estate tax," a phrase identified as Democratic (as opposed to its Republican counterpart, "death tax").

The chief of the geriatric psychiatry branch of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), Pearson Sunderland III, has pleaded guilty to accepting approximately $300,000 in undisclosed fees and expenses from Pfizer between 1997 and 2004. The NIMH is a part of the U.S. government's National Institutes of Health (NIH), which conducts and funds medical research projects.

"Sir Richard Doll, the celebrated epidemiologist who established that smoking causes lung cancer, was receiving a consultancy fee of $1,500 a day in the mid-1980s from Monsanto," reports The Guardian. "While he was being paid by Monsanto, Sir Richard wrote to a royal Australian commission investigating the potential cancer-causing properties of Agent Orange, made by Monsanto and used by the US in the Vietnam war.

The Tobacco Manufacturers Association (TMA), a U.K.-based trade association, is lobbying against a European Union proposal to require companies to manufacture cigarettes that reduce the chances of causing a fire if not being smoked.