The heads of five of Britain’s most respected scientific institutions last night defended an iconic cancer researcher against charges that his work was compromised by links with industry.

Accusations that the late Sir Richard Doll, who established that smoking caused lung cancer, was influenced by payments from chemical companies were dismissed as a baseless smear on his reputation.

A report published yesterday in The Guardian claimed that Sir Richard, who died last year aged 92, had failed to declare paid consultancies for chemical companies while investigating whether some of their products were linked to cancer.

While the newspaper said that the revelations would dismay scientists, senior figures in medical research said that they were in fact outraged by the suggestion that Sir Richard had covered up financial interests that prejudiced his conclusions.

“It is with dismay that we now hear allegations against him that he cannot rebut for himself,” they wrote in an open letter. “We feel it is our duty to defend Sir Richard’s reputation and to recognise his extraordinary contribution to global health.”

The letter was signed by Professor Colin Blakemore, chief executive of the Medical Research Council; Lord Rees of Ludlow, president of the Royal Society; Professor John Bell, chief executive of the Academy of Medical Sciences; Professor Mark Walport, director of the Wellcome Trust; and Professor Alex Markham, chief executive of Cancer Research UK.

Sir Richard, they said, never made any secret of his consultancies. The contracts he signed were part of a collection of private papers that he donated to a public archive, the Wellcome Library. His income from these arrangements was used to make charitable donations, principally to Green College, Oxford, and he did not profit personally.

While his industry links were not declared in his publications, this was not standard practice in the 1970s and 1980s. Sir Richard welcomed later moves to make such disclosure compulsory. He was ahead of his time in ensuring that he was open about such consultancy work, the scientists said.

Many of his supporters say that they suspect a smear campaign organised by researchers who claim that exposure to environmental chemicals is one of the leading causes of cancer. Sir Richard’s work found little evidence of this.

A document from his public papers in the Wellcome Library showed that he agreed a contract with Monsanto in 1986, in which a fee of $1,500 a day was to be paid for consultancy services. This was to help the company to investigate how it should monitor the long-term health effects of its products.

The Guardian implied that this might have influenced his scientific advice to an Australian inquiry into Agent Orange, a Monsanto herbicide, in which he said there was no evidence that it was linked to cancer.

Other documents show that Sir Richard was paid £15,000 to review the safety of vinyl chloride by the Chemical Manufacturers’ Association and two other companies, Dow Chemicals and ICI. His conclusion that the chemical could cause liver cancer, but that evidence linking it to brain tumours was inconclusive, was upheld recently by a significant review of research in the field.

Professor Walport said that Sir Richard had not been afraid to take on industrial interests when evidence showed a health hazard.

“He had enormous personal integrity,” he said. “There is no question that his research was in any way traduced by money.”

Sir Richard is widely considered to be among the greatest epidemiologists, whose work was critical to uncovering how lifestyle and environmental factors contributed to disease.

His seminal work with Sir Austin Bradford Hill in the 1950s showed that cigarette smoking was linked to lung cancer, and later research brought important insights into stomach ulcers, breast cancer, heart disease and radiotherapy and chemotherapy for cancer. He made important contributions to the development of randomised placebo-controlled clinical trials, now the gold standard for evaluating new medical treatments, and to the science of epidemiology.

“He identified some of the major threats to human health and, in doing so, saved countless lives,” the letter said.

Explore UK News

• Crime News

• Education News

• Health News

• Science News

• Scotland News

Times Recommends

• Donor organ allowed child’s own heart to heal
• Michael Jackson: Not the final chapter
• Brüno toned down for 15 rating