Prominent Australian professors have been caught out making false statements in the tobacco wars started by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. Alan Austin reports. SEVERAL ACADEMICS used by the Murdoch-owned newspaper The Australian have been seriously singed in the last week. They include Professor Judith Sloan from Melbourne University, Wollongong University’s Professor Henry Ergas and Professor Sinclair Davidson from RMIT. This saga shows, intriguingly, how The Australian is following the malicious Murdoch modus operandum in Britain. The current saga began with The Australian’s front page ‘exclusive’ on June 6 by Christian Kerr announcing that cigarette plain packaging has caused an increase in sales. That story quoted discredited industry sources, made several false claims and omitted significant vital information. This went largely unremarked in Australia, presumably because The Australian is notorious for these failures. Only economist Stephen Koukoulas in his blog The Kouk publicly challenged the story. His blog provides an excellent blow by blow dismantling of The Australian’s mendacious campaign. In Britain, however, where debate on plain packaging is raging, Murdoch’s newspapers and others gleefully regurgitated the story. This was a huge boost for the tobacco industry, which bitterly opposes the reform. Then last Monday, two things happened…