Alvan R Feinstein
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Alvan R Feinstein was an Professor of Medicine and epidemiology at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut who worked diligently for the tobacco industry for most of his lifetime. Researchers have show that he received at least $768,244 from their grant-making bodies between 1976 and 1990.
Associates
Documents & Timeline
1980 Jan 14 Ernest Pepples, the chief science-confounder at Brown & Williamson, has send his comments on scientists who are prospective candidates for scientific positions with the Council for Tobacco Research (CTR). None had then been approached and he wants the names of those who made the recommentations to remain anonymous. However he lists them as:
- Dr Martin J Cline at UCLA
- Dr David L Lacey at Washington Uni-St Louis
- Dr Gary Huber at Harvard
- Dr Arthur Furst at San Francisco
Thought will be given to the issue of how potential candidates will be approached. One possibility would be to commission trusted individuals with industry background to make initial inquiries and visits. Other options would include the use of "headhunter" organisations.
He wants lawyer Edwin Jacob or Leon Jacobsen to be used to make the initial approach to candidates. Alvan R Feinstein's name is scrawled on the page as a possible helper. and he is also included on the list. [2]
1981 Aug 28 Walter O Spitzer and Alvan Feinstein are jointly publishing in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) a criticism of the use of case-controlled studies: "Coffee and Pancreatic Cancer: The problems of etiologic science and epidemiologic case control researh."
Scientific Hypotheses and 'Fishing Expeditions,'
Most case-control studies are done to check the hypothesis that the target disease has been caused by a specified suspected agent, but after the cases and controls are assembled the investigators can also collect data about many other possible etiologic agents. The process of getting and analyzing data for these other agents is sometimes called a 'fishing expedition,' but the process seems entirely reasonable. If we do not know what causes a disease, we might as well check many different possibilities. On the other hand; when an unsuspected agent yields a positive result, so that the causal hypothesis is generated by the data rather than by the investigator, the results of the fishing expedition requires cautious interpretatation. Many scientists wouldi not even call the positive association a "hypothesis " until the work has been reproduced in another investigation.
The authors of this paper are credited with other publications.
- Drs Alvan R Feinstein and Ralph I Horwitz from the Robert,Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program; Yale University School of Medicine New Haven, Conn
- Dr Feinstein, also from the Cooperative Studies Program Support Center, Veterans Administration Hospital, West Haven, Conn
- Dr Walter O Spitzerthe McGill Cancer Center, McGill University.
- Drs Spitzer and Renaloo N Battista the Kellogg Center for Advanced Studies in. Primary Care, Montreal General Hospital, Montreal.
- [Horowitz and Feinstein had already published a number of articles on the same subject:]
- Feinstein AR Clinical biostististics: XLVIII. Efficacy of different research structures in preventing bias in the,analysis of causation. Clin Pharmacol Ther 1979
- Horwitz RI, Feinstein AR Methodologic standards and contradictory results in case-control research. Am J Med 1979
- Feinstein AR: Methodologic problems and standards in case-control research. J Chronie Dis 1979
- Horwitz RI„ Feinstein AR, Stewart KR Exclusion bias and the false relationship of reserpine/breast,cancer, abstracted. Clin Res 1981
- Horwitz RI, Feinstein AR, Stremlau JR Alternative data sources and discrepant results in case-control studies of estrogens and endometrial cancer. Am J Epidemiol 1980
- Horwitz RI, Feinstein AR The problem of 'protopathic bias in case-eontrol studies.; Am J Med
- [The Tobacco Institute prepared a major press release exploiting the Spitzer/Feinstein article. The tobacco industry hated case-controlled studies.] [4]
Court-declared list of scientists
Note: this is just a partial list of the scientists, academics and 'consultants' who were being paid via Special Project accounts. It deals only with the scientists known to the courts at the time it was compiled. Many other academics and professionals were paid via these accounts as revealed at later dates.
These are CTR Special Project grantees now known not to have been included in the above list: [8]
- SP#1 Kurt Enslein, Computers, Uni of Rochester NY
- SP#33 S H Friedall, Cancer Research Inst, New England Deaconness Hospital, Boston.
- SP#42 Doris L Herman, pathologist, Uni of Southern California, Los Angeles(worked with Lyman Brewer.
- SP#44 William H Alban, pathologist, Houston Dept of Public Heath/Baylor Uni (worked with Eleanor MacDonald
- SP#45/63 Douglas M Sprunt, pathologist, Golightly Found. + Uni of Tennessee, College of Medicine, Memphis
- SP#46, SP#24, SP#25, Marcus M Mason, research lab owner, Mason Research Institute, Worcester, Mass
- SP#48 William J Bair, animal inhalation exp., Battelle Memorial Inst, Richland, Washington
- SP#49 David M Kissen psychologist/psychosmatic, Uni of Glasgow, Scotland
- SP#52 Frederick J Stare, Nutrition Dept, Harvard Un (laundering payment for Carl C Seltzer
- SP#53 Travis W Winsor, Memorial Heart Res. Foundation, LA CA
- SP#54 A Clifford Barger, Prof.Emeritus, Harvard Medical School, Boston
- SP#55 Lars T Friberg Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden (Partner with Rune Cederlof)
- SP#57 Hans Selye, Institute of Exp. Med. and Surgery, Uni of Montreal, Canada
- SP#64 William L Dunn, Philip Morris executive.
- SP#66 Jerome Kleinerman, pathologist, St Lukes Hospital, Cleverland OH/Western Reserve Uni.
- SP#68 ]]H Hugh Fudenberg]], University of California, San Franciso. (Working with John V Wells
- SP#69 Claus B Bahnson, East PA Psychiatric Institute, Philadelphia