Smoking controversy clouds convocation
Jessica Johnston, News Editor

The namesake of the Sterling Award for Controversy could become eligible for his own award.

Retired SFU professor Theodor Sterling, who endows an award at SFU for controversial research, is currently involved in a controversy of his own.

To the outrage of anti-smoking groups, and disappointment of many students, Sterling will be receiving an honourary degree at this week's convocation, despite his background as a paid researcher for tobacco companies.

Sterling is receiving the honourary degree for his contributions to the university, including his founding of SFU's computing science department, and while the university stands by Sterling's award, the decision to honour a man whose research has been used to refute the dangers of smoking has come under fire from activist groups and raised questions surrounding SFU's academic integrity.

The timing of his award has also been questioned, as Betty Fox, Terry Fox's mother, is receiving an honourary degree this year for her work to help fight cancer.

The anti-smoking group, Airspace, asked the university to revoke Sterling's degree.

"[The tobacco industry] has covered up and denied the truth when it did not serve their bottom line, without due regard to public health and safety," wrote Heather Mackenzie, president of Airspace, in a letter to SFU President Michael Stevenson and the SFU Senate.

"This is an industry for which Dr. Sterling has worked. What sort of message does an award to Dr. Sterling send about academic integrity?"

Gregg Macdonald, executive director with SFU's president's office, defends the decision to honour Sterling, stating that the university supports its faculty's research regardless of where the funding comes from.

"The university is prepared to support the research interests of its faculty on certain conditions, and the fundamental conditions are that the research is not secret, that it's available for peer review, and that it's publishable," says Macdonald.

"The university's point of view on a subject such as this, is that as long as the research is undertaken with those fundamental principles recognised, then the source of the funding doesn't really matter."

Sterling received an estimated $5 million dollars from tobacco companies between 1973 and 1990 to study the health effects of tobacco smoke, and his research has been used by tobacco companies to dispute the relationship between tobacco smoke and disease.

According to Airspace, nearly 50,000 Canadians die each year from smoking-related illness.

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