Background: Tight connections exist between scientific methods and ethics, including for epidemiology. These range from permissible research questions to acceptable study dissemination. Epidemiology's mandate is to use science to inform policy in ways that protect health, well-being and, indeed, civilization. However, many powerful interests erode epidemiological capacity for this. Objectives: To review the literature on how scientific integrity may be compromised by powerful interests, and how professional organizations have attempted to counter this to defend the public interest. Well-known examples include tobacco, asbestos, chemical pollution, and climate change. Beyond these, might powerful interests obscure limits to growth, and thus exacerbate risks to civilization - and thus public health? Methods: Available literature exposing influences on science is reviewed, including oppression, suppression, and repression biases. The philosophical context for science to flourish through refutation serves as the basis for this analysis. Results: Since at least 1952, increasingly abundant evidence exists of influence, in both science and public policy, of the fomentation of doubt as an essential tool to hinder healthy policy. Strategies to influence government to delay tobacco reform policies have been extended to asbestos and cell phones, and also to deny climate change, population pressures, and increasing resource scarcity. These strategies include the erosion of academic freedom by the infiltration of university governance by moneyed interests. Conclusions: Global change requires impartial applied sciences, integrated over many disciplines, if solutions are to be found that move humanity from a path seemingly destined to collapse to one that can endure with equity and ecological integrity. Increased vigilance and transparency by journals, professional organizations and university boards are also essential if applied sciences are to effectively promote the public good.
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