First IBM made sure an analysis of its own workforce cancer records was ruled inadmissible in court, after researchers claimed they showed a clear cancer excess (Risks 125). Now a major academic publisher is refusing to publish the analysis and is facing an embarrassing contributors boycott as a result. IBM says the paper is flawed but denies putting pressure on the publishing group Elsevier to stop the paper’s publication. Dr Joe LaDou of the University of California at San Francisco, the guest editor of a special issue of Clinics in Occupational and Environmental Medicine on microelectronic industry health and safety, has joined other contributors in the protest which has seen them all withdraw their papers until the contentious article is reinstated.

The Observer, 20 June 2004. Risks 162.