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REVEALING internal documents from cigarette company British American Tobacco will go on a public website, after scientists got fed up with fighting the firm to see them.

BAT was forced by a US legal settlement in 1998 to allow public access to 8 million pages of documents, which it placed in an archive in Guildford, UK. But researchers from the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota and elsewhere claim the firm has hindered people’s efforts to view the files, and used questionable surveillance methods on visitors (The Lancet, vol 363, p 2004).

Alleged tactics include using video cameras and recording details…

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