I understand your counterpoints. And I'd like to thank you for taking the time to research and cite all of this -- I truly had no idea of the private money behind some of this research.
However, after further consideration I don't think the tobacco-cancer example was a particularly good one for me to bring up. It was highly controversial in the epi/stats community for many years, mainly because RA Fischer (the father of applied statistics) never believed in the validity of the tests. While I'm sure we could each pick studies that backed the public/private side of things, the truth is that there just wasn't a consensus (about cigarettes) until Congress started investigating. So it's probably not the best topic for me to have brought up.
However, after further consideration I don't think the tobacco-cancer example was a particularly good one for me to bring up. It was highly controversial in the epi/stats community for many years, mainly because RA Fischer (the father of applied statistics) never believed in the validity of the tests. While I'm sure we could each pick studies that backed the public/private side of things, the truth is that there just wasn't a consensus (about cigarettes) until Congress started investigating. So it's probably not the best topic for me to have brought up.