A world-famous British scientist failed to disclose that he held a paid consultancy with a chemical company for more than 20 years while investigating cancer risks in the industry. Sir Richard Doll, the celebrated epidemiologist, was receiving a consultancy fee of $1,500 a day in the mid-1980s from chemical multinational Monsanto. Doll continued to play down the occupational and environmental contribution to cancer causation throughout his career, with his low and now discredited estimate of this contribution in a paper co-authored in 1981 with Richard Peto dominating the literature for over two decades. Hazards magazine says the use of this estimate by health and safety regulators stymied preventive efforts.
