Better to be looked over than overlooked: 50 years of public health research and advocacy

Abstract

Simon Chapman AO is emeritus professor of public health in the School of Public Health. He retired from the University in 2016 but has since continued his contributions publishing three books with Sydney University Press (available open access in this repository), several highly cited research papers, many articles for The Conversation, and a blog.

Starting from the very earliest beginnings of his career in the 1970s, this memoir of his 50 years as a highly influential public researcher and advocate highlights work he did on four major issues to which he contributed most:

• tobacco control • gun control • discrediting attacks on wind farms, mobile phones and transmission towers, and exposing the non-disease of electrosensitivity • his pioneering teaching, writing and practice of public health advocacy and a large amount of related research into the ways that public health issues are reported and framed in news media which both contribute to and diminish public and political understanding of these issues.

Intersecting with these topic-focussed emphases were two enduring themes:

Public health scepticism and myth-busting. A lengthy chapter looks at his sceptical contributions to public health since the earliest days of his career. These include: • challenging government messaging that ‘everyone’ was at risk of acquiring HIV • criticism of the enduring effort to convince smokers that they should not try to quit unaided, when that it is exactly how the great majority of ex-smokers have always quit • challenging the ethics of outdoor smoking bans • questioning proposals that employers should be able to not employ smokers • questioning those who want to see all movies showing smoking given R (18+) classifications • challenging argument that eliciting fear in health messaging is often unethical • questioning calls for all men to be screened for prostate cancer and • looking at the evidence for the extent to which public health intervention research is taken up in ‘real world’ settings after being shown to ‘work’ in research projects

Confronting corporate, ideological and special interest disease vectors

• the tobacco industry • the gun lobby • the sunbed industry • hard right libertarians ideologically opposed to state regulation Many of the interest groups Chapman spotlighted as endangering public health sought to discredit him and diminish his impact. A final chapter in the memoir Growing rhino hide, covers attacks on him and his responses.