John Luik

John C. Luik was a senior fellow of the Democracy Institute in 2008-2010. and before that an "associate" at the Niagara Institute in Ontario. He has worked as a corporate lobbyist (mainly for the tobacco industry) for most of his life, usually from a base in Canada.

His many (and variable) claims to educational attainment have been disputed, and he has been dismissed from two educational institutions for having misrepresented his credentials.

He claims to have been a Rhodes Scholar attached to Hertford College at the UK's University of Oxford, where he obtained a BA and MA in Philosophy. This is most likely correct because he has circulated his dissertation on Kant.

He briefly taught at University of Manitoba, and then at the Nazarene College in Winnipeg between 1977 and 1985. He was dismissed from the college this year when it transpired that he did not have the PhD he claimed from the University of Sydney.

It appears that he then returned to Oxford in 1986 to complete his PhD, and was subsequently hired by Brock University to teach "Applied and Professional Ethics." They also dismissed him a few years later for fudging his credentials. The tobacco industry then became his main employer while he operated as a Senior Associate of the Niagara Institute (an affiliate of the Conference Board of Canada) with responsibility for (claim!) "its work in public policy and its Values and Organizational Development programmes."

At various times he claimed to be "Director of the Janus Learning Centre" and also both a "Principal of Graymatters Consulting" and also "Grey Matters Press" [two words]. [1] He lists fellowships or associations with the Fraser Institute, the (Australian) Institute of Public Affairs [2] [3], and FOREST (the smoker's rights organisation run by the Institute of Economic Affairs in London) All have published some of the tobacco industry booklet he has written or co-authored. [4]

He is a prolific writer and he can obviously churn out articles and scientific reports on any required subject from the harmlessness of tobacco, to the value of advertising, the claimed infringements on human rights (smoking bans), and contrarian views about food processing problems and obesity. There is so much misrepresentation in various published biographies that it is only possible to be certain that he taught philosophy and ethics at two Canadian universities, but was dismissed from each (in 1985 and 1990) for misrepresenting his academic credentials.

He work on behalf of the tobacco industry (amongst others) made him a prominent critic of the evidence linking passive smoking and cancer. He became one of the world's most widely-utilized tobacco consultants and was promoted by the industry as an expert on cigarette advertising ('bans don't work')[5], the claimed non-addictive nature of nicotine, [6], the health benefits of 'mild' cigarettes,[7] and on moves to block plain packaging of cigarettes.[8]

His latest writing partner at the Discovery Institute, Patrick Basham, was the Director, Social Affairs Center, the Fraser Institute in April 1999 when he was funding Luik's attack on the EPA. [9] [10]

Career

1971-1977

Period when he was possibly a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University in the UK. He claimed to have both an MA and BA in Philosophy.

1977–1985

Luik taught philosophy at Canadian Nazarene College in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada from 1977 to 1985. He was dismissed in 1985 because, at the time of his appointment, he had not been awarded the University of Sydney Ph.D. that he had claimed. .

1985-1990

As a former Rhodes Scholar (back in 1971), he returned to Oxford and was awarded his PhD in 1986. He was subsequently hired by Brock University in St. Catharine's, Ontario where he taught applied and professional ethics. Brock University was fully aware of Luik's earlier misrepresentation.

In the late 1980s, Luik was a spokesman for "Coalition 51", a tobacco industry front group created to oppose Bill C-51, the Tobacco Products Control Act. Later he testified on the tobacco industry's behalf on Federal Bills C-71, S-13, and C-42. However his paper Passive Smoke fails to acknowledge the authors' tobacco industry connection. [11]

Brock dismissed Luik in 1990 when it transpired that he had gained his position "on the basis of a further padded CV claiming teaching experience and publications that he did not have."

What caused concern and led to Luik's dismissal from Brock was "not any single misrepresentation ... so much as the apparently uniform pattern of representations engaged in since 1977" (Marsden 2001: A12)."

The then Dean of Humanities at Brock, Cecil Abrahams, later told CBC Television "I certainly would not trust anything John Luik says because he must be the worst case of fraud that I have come across and I've been an administrator at universities for a long period of time, both in North America and in Africa, and I think he's by far the worst case of fraudulent behaviour".

1990 onwards

He became an "Associate" at the Niagara Institute in Ontario which is a pseudo-think-tank established by the Conference Board of Canada to house corporate lobbyists and give them a patina of academic independence.

In 1993 Luik wrote Pandora's box: the dangers of politically corrupted science for democratic public policy, in response to the United States Environmental Protection Agency report which classified environmental tobacco smoke as a human carcinogen. This is his 'Trumpian masterpiece' ... claiming that corruption of science was evident in the EPA rather than in his clients, the tobacco industry. [12] The Pandora's box paper was changed, upgraded and republished a number of times by the UK tobacco industry lobby (TMA). [13]

Documents later made public as a result of the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement showed that "Luik had corresponded regularly with John Lepere, chairman of the Confederation of European Community Cigarette Manufacturers (CECCM) on the content of the paper and where it should be published." [14] [15] [16]

Luik became a Senior Fellow at the Democracy Institute, where amongst other subjects he continued to work on tobacco. A 2006 paper titled "Why Graphic Warnings Don't Work" was acknowledged as being "made possible by funding provided by Imperial Tobacco Group PLC".

Books

• Unintended Consequences of Health Fascism, Institute of Economic Affairs, 2011
• Diet Nation: Exposing the Obesity Crusade, by John Luik, Patrick Basham, and Gio Gori. Social Affairs Unit, December 2006.
• Passive Smoke: The EPA's Betrayal of Science and Policy, by John Luik and Gio Gori. Fraser Institute, January 1999.
• Advertising and Markets: A Collection of Seminal Papers, by M.J. Waterson and John C. Luik (eds), NTC Publications, 1996
• Smokescreen: 'passive smoking' and public policy, Institute of Public Affairs, 1996
• The Question of Humanism: Challenges and Possibilities by David Goicoechea, John Luik, and Tim Madigan (eds). Prometheus Books, 1991

Selected papers

• Luik, J.C. and Basham, P., (2008), "Is the obesity epidemic exaggerated? Yes", British Medical Journal
• Luik, J.C. (1996), "I can't help myself: Addiction as Ideology", Human Psychopharmacology
• Luik, J.C. (1993), "Tobacco advertising bans and the dark face of government paternalism", International journal of advertising, 12, pp303 – 324.
• Luik, J.C. (1991), "Government Paternalism and Citizen Rationality. The Justifiability of Banning Tobacco Advertising"

References

See tobacco industry deposition of witnesses [17]

External links

• Patrick Basham and John Luik, Daily Telegraph, 26 November 2006, Four big, fat myths
• Profile at Sourcewatch
• "The Consultant", CBC News, 21 June 2001, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-BRwhWW8pY
• SourceWatch listing https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/John_Luik