Research

"Doubt is our product, since it is the best means of competing with the 'body of fact' that exists in the mind of the general public."

Confidential memo from Brow & Williamson Company, 1969.

Research

Diversion Research (joined with Yann Bramoullé and Charles Figuières)

Between 1954 and 1998, the tobacco industry funded more than 1,900 research projects at a total cost of $355 million, on topics such as the roles of heredity and nutrition in cancer. Even though legitimate, this research was intended to divert attention from the harmful effects of tobacco. We provide the first formal analysis of such diversion research. We show that special interests may have strong incentives to affect the scientific agenda, even when the research itself is unbiased. This form of scientific lobbying yields large welfare losses and raises concerns about the private funding of research.Submitted

Presented at: 4th International Conference on Environmental Economics (LEO), 6th QMUL Economics and Finance Workshop (Queen Mary University of London), 9th Mediterranean Workshop in Economic Theory (ESC Rennes School of Business), 5th AMSE Summer School (AMSE), 23rd Louis-André Gérard-Varet (AMSE), 17th Meeting of the Society for Social Choice and Welfare (PSE), 75th European meeting of the Econometric Society (Erasmus School of Economics), AMSE Ph.D. Seminar. (AMSE).

Smoke-Fueled Science: How the Tobacco Industry Shaped Scientific Research

Between 1954 and 1998, tobacco companies deployed $355 million in research funding to manufacture doubt about smoking's health effects. I provide the first empirical analysis of this funding and its consequences. By linking internal tobacco documents with bibliometric data, I build a novel database tracking researchers who applied—successfully or not—for tobacco grants over their scientific careers. I assemble comparable data for NIH-funded researchers. As scientific consensus about tobacco’s harmfulness strengthened, the industry increasingly shifted toward diversion research. Comparing funded applicants to near-winners, I find that tobacco grants increase tobacco-related publications only when the funded project itself concerns tobacco. This effect is driven almost entirely by research posing questions unlikely to generate evidence harmful to the industry. By contrast, relative to NIH funding, tobacco grants are associated with a lower likelihood of publishing on tobacco in the post-award period. These findings suggest that the tobacco industry’s doubt-manufacturing campaign may have successfully delayed scrutiny of research directly relevant to regulation and consumer behavior.In progress

Presented at: 2025 MAER-Net Colloquium (Univerisity of Ottawa), BPER Lab Meeting (UC Berkeley Haas).

Public Outreach

Scheduled for March 17th, from 1:30 PM to 3:00 PM, at the Bibliothèque de l'Alcazar in Marseille.

Conférence Sciences Echos : Comment les lobbies industriels fabriquent le doute ?

For more details and registration, please follow this link.

Visiting

2025- University of Ottawa, hosted by Abel Brodeur.

2026- University of California, Berkeley, Haas School of Business, hosted by Matilde Bombardini.

Seminars & conferences

2024

4th International Conference on Environmental Economics (LEO), 6th QMUL Economics and Finance Workshop (Queen Mary University of London), 9th Mediterranean Workshop in Economic Theory (ESC Rennes School of Business), 5th AMSE Summer School (AMSE), 23rd Louis-André Gérard-Varet (AMSE), 17th Meeting of the Society for Social Choice and Welfare (PSE), 75th European meeting of the Econometric Society (Erasmus School of Economics).

2025

2025 MAER-Net Colloquium (Univerisity of Ottawa).

2026

BPER Lab Meeting (UC Berkeley Haas).