{"id":970,"date":"2012-12-28T09:05:47","date_gmt":"2012-12-28T16:05:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/?p=970"},"modified":"2012-12-28T09:05:47","modified_gmt":"2012-12-28T16:05:47","slug":"the-casualties-in-industrys-assault-on-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/?p=970","title":{"rendered":"The casualties in industry’s assault on science"},"content":{"rendered":"

The book Denis DuBay reviews here was published in 2008, but it is, unfortunately, just as relevant today as it was then.<\/p>\n

By Denis DuBay.<\/p>\n

\u00a0DOUBT IS THEIR PRODUCT: HOW INDUSTRY’S ASSAULT ON SCIENCE THREATENS YOUR HEALTH. By David Michaels. Oxford University Press, 2008. \u00a0384 pages. $29.95.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\"\"<\/a>Once upon a time, seemingly in another galaxy far away, scientists received nearly universal respect for their knowledge and skills, at least in their chosen field.\u00a0 How rapidly things can change.\u00a0 Witness now a leading climate scientist receiving a subpoena from a state attorney general angry with his findings and being compared to a child molester by a national magazine, and other climate scientists harassed for simply doing their job.<\/p>\n

David Michaels, a former chief safety officer for the nation’s nuclear weapon’s facilities under the Clinton administration, helps make some sense of this unbelievable turnabout in his 2008 book, Doubt Is Their Product<\/em>.\u00a0 The title of the book came from the blunt statement of a cigarette executive: “Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ that exists in the minds of the general public.”<\/p>\n

In the case of the tobacco industry, that body of fact considered cigarette smoke to cause lung cancer and heart disease.\u00a0 The longer industry leaders could create at least the semblance of controversy about the hazards of tobacco, the more money they could make selling tobacco.\u00a0 Here industry learned that “debating science<\/em> is much easier and more effective than debating the policy<\/em>.”<\/p>\n

And the science is epidemiology, defined by Encarta World English Dictionary as “… the scientific and medical study of the causes and transmission of disease within a population.\u201d Here is an entire field of science that arose in part because one cannot ethically conduct an experiment to test whether a substance causes cancer on real live human beings.\u00a0 A gross oversimplification, but you get the idea.<\/p>\n

In order to determine whether certain substances or practices do harm humans, scientists must either do the experiments on biologically similar animals, or conduct elaborate correlational studies that need to control for the host of extraneous variables such as age, gender and occupation that can confound any results.\u00a0 Either of these two alternatives, but especially the latter one, often involves elaborate employment of, oh my, statistics.<\/p>\n

In Chapter 6, Tricks of the Trade: How Mercenary Scientists Mislead You<\/em>, Michaels describes all the ways a so-called “product defense scientist” can use the complexities of epidemiology to deceive.\u00a0 A favorite technique finds the affected industry kicking into high gear when a new study comes out with unfavorable results.\u00a0 The industry demands the raw data from the study, then sets its hired guns to work reanalyzing that data.\u00a0 With a little massaging here and cherry-picking there to “improve” the study, voila, the unfavorable results turn out to be a mirage.\u00a0 Product goldfinger is safe after all.\u00a0 Of course it is.<\/p>\n

The “product defense industry” takes its orders, and more important, its money, from companies and industries with products to sell.\u00a0 Its objective, as it appeared in a 1972 letter from a Tobacco Institute staffer, “…creating doubt about the health charge without actually denying it.”\u00a0 Industry does not have to win the science debate to win the policy debate.\u00a0 It only has to generate a bit of confusion surrounding the science.<\/p>\n

We see Michaels’ passion for this story beginning on page ix when he describes an especially offensive example of the model created by Big Tobacco.<\/p>\n

In 1980, 555 cases of Reye’s syndrome were reported, and one in three children diagnosed died.\u00a0 Today, thanks to a public education campaign and warning labels, nearly everyone is aware that children with a flu-like illness should not take aspirin because it increases their risk of developing Reye’s syndrome.\u00a0 But in 1980, few knew about the link.<\/p>\n

Faced with convincing evidence, aspirin manufacturers nevertheless delayed action alerting parents to the situation for several years, claiming flaws in studies, and asserting that: “We do<\/em> know that no<\/em> medication has been proven<\/em> to cause Reye’s.”\u00a0 Michaels points out that the italicized emphasis appeared in industry’s original public service announcement!<\/p>\n

And those italics are telling.\u00a0 Contrary to popular public understanding, science rarely is able to say it has “proven” something beyond the shadow of a doubt.\u00a0 Michaels describes the resulting delays to regulatory action as waiting for the body count before exercising precautions, the “bodies in the morgue” form of risk assessment.<\/p>\n

In the case of aspirin and Reye’s syndrome, it was 1986 before a lawsuit forced the Reagan Administration to act.\u00a0 As a result of the education campaign and warning labels, there are few Reye’s syndrome cases today, but no one knows how many children died in the early 1980s as a result of the doubt manufactured by an industry eager to make more money selling more aspirin.<\/p>\n

Michaels tells many tales of doubt manufactured on behalf of dangerous products whose industries followed the lead of Big Tobacco, including benzene, asbestos, lead, mercury, aromatic amines, diacetyl, beryllium, vinyl chloride, and among others, the drugs phenylpropanolamine (PPA), and Vioxx.<\/p>\n

The value to industry of creating doubt resides in the common misperception that absolute and direct proof is the gold standard in science.\u00a0 In fact, science proceeds based on the weight of the available evidence.\u00a0 When that weight is balanced between two opposing viewpoints, further study is required.\u00a0 However, when the preponderance of the evidence comes down on one side of the argument, science accepts the conclusion and moves ahead.\u00a0 Further data will likely strengthen the case, and perhaps modify it slightly, but will not often overturn it.<\/p>\n

Reading that someone demands “proof” of a connection between a product and potential danger should set off alarms that here stirs a product defense advocate wishing to sow confusion and inject delay into the regulatory process.<\/p>\n

And if that industry reanalysis is criticized for not appearing in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, no problem, the product defense industry has “captured” journals ready to provide that peer-review imprimatur!\u00a0 Michaels suggests viewing with some caution articles found in certain publications, for example, Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology<\/em>, Indoor and Built Environment<\/em>, and the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine<\/em>.<\/p>\n

What can be done about these illegitimate tactics that threaten public and environmental health?\u00a0 Michaels suggests keeping an eye on the “funding effect.”\u00a0 Follow the money, discover who paid for the research, and you can predict the results with amazing accuracy.<\/p>\n

Michaels’ solution: eliminate conflicts of interest.\u00a0 Today’s mantra says manage conflicts of interest, so as not to remove too many qualified experts from contributing to an important process.\u00a0 Michaels would have none of it.\u00a0 If it looks like a duck, eliminate it.\u00a0 Managing conflicts of interest rather than eliminating them simply ensures that the funding effect will continue to work.<\/p>\n

So what of the relative lack of respect accorded to scientists today, especially those on the front lines of well-known issues such as climate change?\u00a0 How might David Michaels’ book explain this?\u00a0 Consider that for over three decades the public has been treated to special interests trotting out their captured scientists every time a bottom line is threatened. \u00a0Of course one’s view of the objectivity of scientists, and even of science as a way of knowing, would tarnish.<\/p>\n