Appropriating the Literature: Alcohol Industry Actors' Interventions in Scientific Journals

Objective: One research group has recently published three articles on the ways in which alcohol companies and industry social aspects organizations (SAOs) communicate with public. These show how information produced by works to produce doubt uncertainty. Replies from SAOs were respective scientific journals. This article examines these “moments of controversy,” asking what ways, grounds, do contest claims made about them? Method: Three moments controversy examined, prompted SAO cancer, use Twitter, pregnancy fertility. The (n = 3), responses 8), replies authors Petticrew colleagues 4), analyzed, identifying rhetorical repertoires at work. Results: two main strategies: 1. Posing narrow questions accuracy rather than engaging overall findings context framing information; 2. Making normative it is good science, suggesting that their are not. second strategy very legitimacy examining SAOs. credibility being literature affords themselves a function, resource for later signal Conclusions: interventions generate controversies. Furthermore, traces they leave enhance SAOs’ ability make credible original controversial.