The Funding Statement for this article [1] states that the study received funding from the Smoking Research Foundation, which according to [2] has received financial support from the tobacco industry. In light of this issue the PLOS ONE article [1] does not comply with the journal’s policy on Funding from Tobacco Companies [3] which was implemented in 2010. Therefore, the PLOS ONE Editors issue this Expression of Concern.
We regret that this concern was not identified and addressed prior to the article’s [1] publication.
References
- 1.Maeyama J-i, Takatsuka H, Suzuki F, Kubota A, Horiguchi S, Komiya T, et al. (2014) A Palindromic CpG-Containing Phosphodiester Oligodeoxynucleotide as a Mucosal Adjuvant Stimulates Plasmacytoid Dendritic Cell-Mediated TH1 Immunity. PLoS ONE 9(2): e88846. 10.1371/journal.pone.0088846 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- 2.Iida K, Proctor RN. (2018) ‘The industry must be inconspicuous’: Japan Tobacco’s corruption of science and health policy via the Smoking Research Foundation. Tobacco Control 27:e3–e11. doi: 10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2017-053971 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- 3.https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/disclosure-of-funding-sources#loc-funding-from-tobacco-companies