So Many Questions About Glantz

So ...

Following swiftly on from Chapman being excoriated in the Aussie parliament, let's talk about Mad Stan the aircraft mechanic. Because he's in a bit of a pickle, it seems.

A former UC San Francisco doctoral researcher Wednesday filed a lawsuit alleging sexual harassment by a prominent tobacco control activist and tenured UCSF professor Stanton Glantz that spanned nearly two years. 

The lawsuit also alleges that Glantz retaliated against his former mentee, Eunice Neeley, after she complained about him to the university’s administration by removing Neeley’s name from a research paper. 

Neeley accused Glantz of consistent inappropriate behavior that included staring at her body, making comments directed at Neeley referencing sex, making sexual remarks about other women to Neeley while at the workplace, and making racist remarks about Neeley, who is black. 

Pretty grubby stuff, huh? But this was the kicker for me.

Neeley purports that Glantz used his tenure to intimidate his students from reporting his sexual harassment and emotional abuse. According to the lawsuit, Glantz was known to have told multiple students that as a tenured professor, “You can rape the vice chancellor’s daughter and still have a job.”

Using a position of power to deter complaints about behaviour is quite shocking. If this turns out to be true (and it's important to note that Glantz has denied the charges) it's Harvey Weinstein and the #MeToo stuff on steroids!

I suppose only time will reveal more, but I'd like to ask a question. Considering that Kevin Spacey was quickly removed from a film and Netflix cancelled House of Cards at the whiff of impropriety, what will the FDA make of the fact they shovelled Glantz $20m recently?

UC San Francisco will receive a five-year, $20 million grant as part of a first-of-its-kind tobacco science regulatory program by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). 

The overall aim is to conduct programs of multidisciplinary research that will inform the FDA’s regulation of the manufacture, distribution and marketing of tobacco products to protect public health. 

The UCSF principal investigator is Stanton A. Glantz, PhD, director of the UCSF Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education. 

“We have identified serious problems in the way that the FDA has done cost-benefit analysis of major tobacco regulations, most notably warning labels on cigarette packages,” Glantz said. “In particular, the FDA underestimated the immediate benefits of smoking prevention and cessation, and based its behavioral assumptions on outmoded ideas. 

“By combining cutting-edge economic research with modern behavior studies, and studies of the immediate effects of smoke exposure on the cardiovascular and pulmonary systems, we hope to help the FDA develop more realistic cost-benefit models that will better support sensible regulation.”

It was a grant for a five year project which takes it up to 2018. Neeley was recuited in 2015. Now it's quite feasible that the FDA helped pay her wages while she was allegedly being mistreated in her time there.

But even if not, how can the FDA square giving millions of dollars to Glantz and his team when this might have been going on? Should they not be investigating the affair themselves considering taxpayer funds are tied up in it? Surely they would be ashamed if their funds were being used to indirectly facilitate abuse? If nothing else, their investment surely requires public comment? And what about Amazon? Will they pull his books, of which there are many?

Most importantly, if the allegations are eventually proven true, how can anyone trust the 'science' of someone who has been so manipulative and dishonest in his working life?

It's one to watch, isn't it?