Involvement Of Lawyers In Research Design

One example of the way in which lawyers influenced the design of research projects is the Response Analysis Corporation project, which involved the measurement of environmental tobacco smoke (ETS). A November 10, 1976, letter from Donald K. Hoel of Shook, Hardy, and Bacon to the attorneys of five tobacco companies describes a meeting at which the Response Analysis Corporation's questionnaire for assessing annoyances in indoor air was discussed:

Concern was expressed that the questionnaire's list of annoyance items, which included several related to tobacco products, did not have a modern empirical foundation. ... In order to strengthen the study in the above regard, a two-step effort was proposed by the Response Analysis staff. First, a national sample of approximately 200 persons would be asked essentially to list items that they find annoying. Then a different national sample of 200 persons would be asked to rate the annoyances obtained in the first step as to their frequency of occurrence and intensity. {2006.03, pp. 1–2}

In a later letter to the attorneys, Hoel discusses the results obtained from this modified proposal:

[The results point to] a new and potentially profitable direction to pursue. Specifically, of the total of 852 annoyances or irritations reported by the 207 respondents, only 26 (about 3%) were annoyances related to cigarettes, smokers or tobacco smoke. In the judgment of those in the Public Smoking Research Group, if the above results were obtained from a national sample of approximately 750 respondents, its impact in the public smoking controversy would be substantial. {2006.05, p. 1}

The rest of the letter requests approval of the Response Analysis Corporation's request for money to conduct the larger survey. In this project a seemingly minor change in design—a switch from a closed questionnaire (better design) to an open-ended questionnaire (poorer design)—gave the tobacco industry the results it wanted. The project also shows that the tobacco industry's lawyers were aware of the importance of ETS as an issue long before the mainstream health community appreciated its importance.