Total Ban On GM Corn in France Follows Popular Opposition

[bananas]

168. sirc.org is an industry front group (Social Issues Research Centre)

"Do your PR initiatives sometimes look too much like PR initiatives?" asked MCM's website in a straightforward boast of its ability to deceive the public.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Social_Issues_Research_Centre

This article is part of the Center for Media & Democracy's spotlight on front groups and corporate spin.

Social Issues Research Centre

The Social Issues Research Centre (SIRC) is a UK-based think tank arm of the public relations firm MCM Research

SIRC claims to be "an independent, non-profit organisation founded to conduct research on social and lifestyle issues, monitor and assess global sociocultural trends and provide new insights on human behaviour and social relations".

Its primary act as an organisation has been the formulation of a Code of Practice on Science and Health Communication. In this, the SIRC has worked closely with the British goverment, the Royal Society, and the Royal Institute.

The SIRC also produces and circulates literature criticising the environmentalist agenda (mainly GM, junk food), and alcohol-related topics (see sponsors, below).

It provides funding for Sense about Science.

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According to SIRC, journalists were too sceptical of reporting commercially funded studies. <snip> Certainly, the SIRC itself saw no problem in producing a report on the benefits of HRT for a group funded by the pharmaceutical industry, without indicating the funding sources (see "Jubilee Report", below).

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On its website SIRC states that funding for its work on the reporting guidelines "is provided by sponsors who share SIRC's basic interest in promoting better understanding of health and social issues. SIRC maintains complete freedom to conduct and publish research in pursuit of these aims, and does not promote the products, brands or commercial interests of sponsors". However it does not disclose who has funding the project but explained that it is "seeking funding for the support measures". These measure are "the development of resources for journalists such as an independent expert-contacts database, and a series of workshops bringing together doctors, scientists and journalists to discuss ways of improving communication on health and science issues'.

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MCM Research

According the the SIRC, MCM Research is a "sister organisation".

MCM Research claims to apply "social science" to solving the problems of its clients, which includes major companies in the food, liquor and restaurant industries.

"Do your PR initiatives sometimes look too much like PR initiatives?" asked MCM's website in a straightforward boast of its ability to deceive the public. "MCM conducts social/psychological research on the positive aspects of your business," the website continued. "The results do not read like PR literature, or like market research data. Our reports are credible, interesting and entertaining in their own right. This is why they capture the imagination of the media and your customers." [ADD REFERENCE]

However, writing in the British Medical Journal, Annabel Ferriman queried the role of SIRC given its overlap with MCM Research. "Both organisations are based at 28 St Clements, Oxford, and both have social anthropologist Kate Fox and psychologist Dr Peter Marsh as directors, and Joe McCann as a research and training manager," Ferriman wrote.

Asked by Ferriman whether they considered there was a conflict of interest given the overlap of the two organisations, Fox disagreed: "No, I don't think so. The kinds of work we have done at MCM have been fairly worthy things like designing management training programmes to reduce violence in pubs. They are fairly uncontroversial." [3]

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Jubilee Report

While SIRC was busy developing guidelines for reporting potentially controversial science issues, they were also undertaking work for a group established in 2000 called HRT Aware. Jocalyn Clark, writing in the British Medical Journal, HRT Aware hired the London-based PR company, RED consultancy to promote the benefits of hormone replacement therapy.

"What is not so well known is that HRT Aware was an industry group comprised of oestrogen product manufacturers Janssen-Cilag, Wyeth, Solvay, Servier, Organon, and Novo Nordisk," she wrote. [4].

"HRT Aware also commissioned the Social Issues Research Centre to produce a Jubilee Report (named to coincide with the Queen's Jubilee celebrations), which last month won a Communiqué award from the magazine Pharmaceutical Marketing in the public relations and medical education category. SIRC's research linked the improved lives of modern day postmenopausal women to HRT. It introduced a new elite group of 50+ women, dubbed the "HRHs" (hormone-rich and happy), who were said to have better careers, relationships, health, wellbeing, and sex lives than those not taking HRT. The Jubilee Report received widespread--and supportive--media coverage in the UK, virtually none of which mentioned that the pharmaceutical industry fashioned the campaign", Clark wrote.

Funding

According to the SIRC website the group is a non-profit organisation, "funded partly by income from our sister organisation MCM Research, which specialises in applying social science to problems faced in both the commercial and public sectors". [5]

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