J. Matthew Gallman responds to Jon Wiener's tobacco exposé

J. MATTHEW GALLMAN

I read this article with interest because I have been on the periphery of some of the events Jon Wiener describes. I would like to take this opportunity to correct the record on a few points.

In April 2008 Dr. Gregg Michel, an historian from Texas, contacted me in my capacity as graduate coordinator in the history department at the University of Florida. He was working for a law firm representing one of the tobacco companies, and he was looking for some advanced students to do microfilm research. He e-mailed me a short ad, offering $20 an hour for part-time research. I passed it on to the graduate students. I believe that he interviewed and hired two students at the time, and added two more some time later.

I later learned that the graduate students were assigned to read specific Florida newspapers for specific years. They were to look for and copy any stories that pertained to tobacco and health. Their instructions were quite clear: they were not to make any decisions about whether the stories supported or contradicted the arguments made by Big Tobacco. They were to identify everything remotely relevant and pass it on to Michel....

JON WIENER

More than 400,000 Americans die every year from smoking-related diseases; forty historians have worked as expert witnesses in court, defending the tobacco companies; but Matt Gallman seems to think the big story here is four grad students at the University of Florida who worked as research assistants on one case. It's a footnote to a footnote, but his letter raises some interesting points.

The historians who testify for Big Tobacco often don't do their own research but rely on students. That's what Gregg Michel did; he's a historian at the University of Texas-San Antonio. For my piece, I wanted to ask Greg Michel what he had told the students he hired. Did he tell them they would be working for tobacco attorneys, who would use their research to argue in court that the companies shouldn't have to pay a smoker because it was her own fault she was dying of cancer? But Gregg Michel declined to answer. The"two recent newspaper stories on this case" don't quote Michel either. He's not talking.

I would have asked the students what they had been told, but the tobacco attorneys who employed the students had already made it abundantly clear that asking the students would be regarded as"harassment."...