The research juggernaut: anti-tobacco funding makes campus go non-smoking

The University of Texas at Austin is set to ban smoking throughout its 350-acre site. This is a new condition of the Cancer Prevention Institute of Texas, a significant research donor.

The ban on smoking is inconvenient (and it is hard to imagine it being effectively enforced in any event), but the message this curtailment sends out about the funders' research agenda is incontrovertible. A major funder can insist that all recipients force its students to forgo tobacco on campus – if you think this makes for an atmosphere that can foster an open scientific criticism of ideas (especially those critical of the anti-smoker agenda), I have a bridge I would like to sell you.

At least it's out in the open. The bias has always been there, but the research institutions are now powerful enough to flex their muscles and enforce behaviour change as a condition of receiving funding.