EFF Scraps ACTA Lawsuit > Go Figure

From Wikipedia:
The Institute has been a source of controversy from the beginning. Some charge that Michael Walker, an economist from the University of Western Ontario, helped set up the institute after he received financial backing from forestry giant MacMillan-Bloedel, largely to counter British Columbia's NDP government.[4] then led by Premier Dave Barrett. The relationship, though, was short-lived as MacMillian-Bloedel broke ties with the Institute when it published a book opposing wage and price controls. The CEO of MacMillian-Bloedel at the time supported wage and price controls.

Critics of the Institute and other similar agenda-driven think tanks have claimed the Fraser Institute's reports, studies and surveys are usually not subject to standard academic peer review or the scholarly method. Institute supporters claims their research is peer-reviewed both by internal and external experts.[5] The Institute's Environmental Indicators (6th Ed) has an academic article devoted to its flaws: McKenzie and Rees (2007), "An analysis of a brownlash report", Ecological Economics 61(2-3), pp505-515.

In 2002, a study by Neil Brooks of the left-wing Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives claimed the Institute's widely promoted Tax Freedom Day, described as the date each year when the average Canadian's income no longer goes to paying government taxes, included flawed accounting. The Brooks study stated that the Institute's methods of accounting excluded several important forms of income and inflated tax figures, moving the date nearly two months later in the year.[6] The Institute counters that Professor Brooks confuses the aggregate tax burden with the tax burden borne by those who actually pay tax.[citation needed]

In 1999, the Fraser Institute was attacked by health professionals and scientists[citation needed] for sponsoring two conferences on the tobacco industry entitled "Junk Science, Junk Policy? Managing Risk and Regulation" and "Should government butt out? The pros and cons of tobacco regulation." Critics charged the Institute was associating itself with the tobacco industry's many attempts to discredit authentic scientific work.

In 2004, the Institute published a Crime & Drug Policy paper suggesting the prohibition on marijuana cannot be sustained with the present technology of production and enforcement.