Professor McCormick said: "I have never had a cheque from Philip Morris ... Petr may have done. I don't know if he did. We both knew there were people in the tobacco industry and elsewhere who thought our views were less inimical to their products than others." Robin Fox, editor of the Lancet from 1990-1995, said the journal was unaware that he was a consultant to a tobacco company. This hearsay received further coverage by New Scientist and in the BMJ.