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Wondering why chemical exposures, mold and damp buildings are rampant - with no action by the health authorities? This book explains how industry impacts government to hold back on protecting us from its dangers.
As long as we assume we are being protected, this scenario will remain (SMH).
Doubt Is Their Product
David Michaels
By Bill Walsh, Executive Director
Healthy Building Network
May 7, 2008
http://www.healthybuilding.net/news/080507read-this-book.html
“… manufacturers of dangerous products tout “sound science” . . . . Only the truly naive (if there are any of these folks left) will be surprised to learn that the sound science movement was the brainchild of Big Tobacco.” --DOUBT IS THEIR PRODUCT, David Michaels, Oxford University Press
“ … how pervasive, effective and stealthy this science-for-hire is—as masterfully documented by David Michaels—will shock anyone . . . .” --Newsweek, May 12, 2008 issue
For nearly a decade, the chemical, plastics and timber industries have been attacking efforts by the US Green Building Council to establish LEED™ credits that would discourage the use of materials such as vinyl and unsustainably harvested timber. If you think this is because there are strong scientific arguments in support of their positions, a new book will change your perspective on these enduring controversies.
In Doubt Is Their Product, Dr. David Michaels, a former Assistant Secretary of Energy for Environment, Safety and Health under President Clinton, exhaustively documents the rise of the “product defense industry” and its strategy of using scientific discipline to establish controversies (i.e., starting something that is intended to continue or be permanent[1]), rather than establish facts (i.e., investigating something to confirm its truth or validity[2]) as a means of frustrating efforts to address public health risks from asbestos, benzene, aspirin (Reye’s syndrome in children), global warming and, of course, vinyl.
“Doubt is our product,” wrote a Brown and Williamson[3] executive in 1969, three years after the iconic warning label first appeared on cigarette packs, “since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ that exists in the minds of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy.”[4]
The business of establishing controversies in the 1960’s and 70’s fathered the contemporary “sound science” movement, which was born on December 13, 1993, according to an ignoble birth certificate Michaels locates among the infamous “tobacco papers,” Document No. 2046988980/8982. It’s a press release from The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (TASSC) dedicating itself “to ensuring the use of sound science in public policy decisions” and according to Michaels, the “the first entity to carry the official ‘sound science’ flag.”[5] The TASSC was actually a tobacco industry front group.[6]
The success of TASSC[7], now defunct, spawned a network[8] of “specialty boutiques run by scientists” that “go through the motions we expect of the scientific enterprise” and “play by the rules of the discipline,” but whose “work has one overriding motivation: advocacy for the sponsor’s position. . . .”[9] An essential part of these operations are deceptively named “public policy” think tanks and peer-review journals which sound neutral, e.g., the Journal of Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, but which are dependent upon industry funding and routinely salt the scientific literature with controversial industry-funded studies.[10]
Michaels concentrates his reporting on his considerable first-hand experiences where, he writes, “I had the opportunity to witness what is going on at close range.”[11] He bears witness for 256 pages and backs up his observations with an additional 119 pages of endnotes, many of these referencing original documents that can be accessed through his website, www.defendingscience.org.
One of his first-hand experiences involves polyvinyl chloride plastic, also known as PVC or vinyl. The story of the vinyl industry’s cover-up of rare cancers among its workers in the mid-1970’s has been well documented elsewhere[12], including the documentary Blue Vinyl and the PBS investigative report Trade Secrets. Michaels connects the dots, documenting how, in 1974, the same public relations firm that created the “selling doubt” strategy for the tobacco industry would “establish uncertainty” about the risks of vinyl chloride for the PVC industry. They're still at it.
Doubt Is Their Product concludes with a chapter offering “a dozen ways to improve our regulatory system.” Many of these could be adapted by green building policy makers such as the LEED™ Steering Committee, or by anyone interested in testing whether an industry stakeholder is interested in establishing the facts, or just establishing a perpetual controversy.[13] It will most certainly cast a new light on the arguments being advanced today by the chemical, plastics and timber industries to water down green building policies like LEED™.[14]
Support HBN and receive a copy of Doubt Is Their Product.
Footnotes
[1] Encarta® World English Dictionary ©1999 Microsoft Corporation.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Brown & Williamson was an American tobacco company and subsidiary of the giant British American Tobacco, that produced several popular cigarette brands including: Kool, Lucky Strike, Pall Mall and Viceroy. It became infamous as the focus of investigations for chemically enhancing the addictiveness of cigarettes. Its former vice-president of research and development, Jeffrey Wigand, was the whistleblower in an investigation conducted by the highly respected CBS news program 60 Minutes, an event that was dramatized in the film The Insider. Wigand claimed that B&W had introduced chemicals such as ammonia into cigarettes to increase nicotine delivery and increase addictiveness. Brown & Williamson had its headquarters at Louisville, Kentucky until July 30, 2004, when the U.S. operations of Brown & Williamson merged with R.J. Reynolds, creating a new publicly traded parent company, Reynolds American Inc. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_and_Williamson.
[4] Doubt Is Their Product, p. 11, footnote 43, document available at http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/nvs40f00.
[5] Doubt Is Their Product, p. 58.
[6] TASSC was established by APCO Associates, a public relations firm spun off from the Washington DC law firm Arnold and Porter.
[7] Federal regulatory initiatives were underway to target second-hand smoke based upon emerging science about its hazards and growing public support for precautionary measures. TASSC’s mission was to beat those initiatives back. The gradual success of state-level public smoking restrictions often obscures the fact that TASCC in fact succeeded in frustrating efforts to regulate second-hand smoke by OSHA, EPA and the FDA. See, Doubt Is Their Product, p. 90.
[8] These include, among others: ChemRisk, Exponent, Inc. the Weinberg Group. “In field after field, year after year, this same handful . . . . comes up again and again.” Doubt Is Their Product, p. 46.
[9] Doubt Is Their Product, p. 46-47.
[10] Sometimes the connection between industry and a journal or organization is deliberately hidden, see, e.g., the tobacco industry-financed journal Indoor and Built Environment. Doubt Is Their Product, p. 53.
[11] Doubt Is Their Product, Introduction, p. x.
[12] See, e.g. Deceit and Denial: The Deadly Politics of Industrial Pollution. Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner. University of California Press, 2002. See also Toxic Sludge is Good For You and Trust Us We're Experts, both by John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, and The Republican War on Science, by Chris Mooney.
[13] These include e.g., (#1) Require full disclosures of any and all sponsor involvement in scientific studies; (#3) Manufacturers must disclose what they know about the toxicity of their products; (#5) Hold real people accountable for the accuracy—and completeness – of statements of corporations and trade groups.
[14] See, e.g., “sound science” policies statements by the Vinyl Institute, p. 16, https://www.usgbc.org/Docs/LEED_tsac/PVC - Vinyl Institute - Nov20-2000.pdf and most recently at http://www.vinylinfo.org/HealthCare/VIResponsetoLEEDHC.aspx and http://www.vinylinfo.org/HealthCare/VIResponsetoLEEDHC/Question2.aspx : “PBT reduction strategies based on sound science have already been widely and effectively implemented . . . .”; see also, “sound science” policy of Weyerhaeuser timber company at p.16) http://www.weyerhaeuser.com/pdfs/Sustainability/Weyerhaeuser_LookForProof.
076.0: Tuesday, November 06, 2007 - 10:30 AM
Abstract #165822
Doubt is their product
http://apha.confex.com/apha/135am/techprogram/paper_165822.htm
Audio (mp3) recording http://apha.confex.com/apha/135am/recordingredirect.cgi/id/20269
Slides (pdf) or Handout http://apha.confex.com/apha/135am/recordingredirect.cgi/id/18910
Multimedia recording http://apha.confex.com/apha/135am/recordingredirect.cgi/id/21977
David Michaels, PhD, MPH, Project on Scientific Knowledge and Public Policy, The George Washington University School of Public Health & Health Services, 2100 M Street NW, Suite 203, Washington, DC 20037, 202.994-2461,
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
This talk's title comes from a tobacco executive's memo: "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. It is also the means of establishing a controversy.” Although Big Tobacco manufactured more uncertainty over a longer period and more effectively than any other industry, the strategy of “manufacturing uncertainty” has been used with great success by numerous polluters and manufacturers of dangerous products to oppose public health and environmental regulation. It is central to the debate on global warming, and arises often in considering the safety of drugs and medical devices, and of consumer products. The approach is now so common that it is unusual for an industry not to challenge the science behind any regulation it faces.
Manufacturing uncertainty has become a business in itself; numerous technical consulting firms advertise “product defense” or “litigation support.” The firms, and the scientists who own and operate them, sell not just their scientific expertise, but their knowledge of and access to regulatory agencies. The financial success of these firms depends on their ability to help their clients avoid increased regulation. Not surprisingly, it is rare for these firms to produce a study whose results conflict with the needs of the study sponsor. It follows that these scientists' financial conflicts of interest are so severe that they should be barred from serving on federal science advisory panels that inform public health policy.
Learning Objectives:
To understand the strategy known as “manufactured uncertainty” and its implications for public health science and policy.
To recognize the application of the “manufactured uncertainty” strategy.
To understand and identify conflict of interests associated with employment by a product defense consulting firm.
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Any relevant financial relationships? No
Money Changes Everything: Insulating Public Health Research From Conflicts of Interest http://apha.confex.com/apha/135am/techprogram/session_21709.htm
The 135th APHA Annual Meeting & Exposition (November 3-7, 2007) of APHA http://apha.confex.com/apha/135am/techprogram/meeting.htm
Doubt is Their Product
Review by DefendingScience.org
http://www.defendingscience.org/Doubt_is_Their_Product.cfm
Click here to read an excerpt, here for the first reviews, here for complete references, and here for more on the "smoking gun" documents behind the book.
"Doubt is our product," a cigarette executive once observed, "since it is the best means of competing with the 'body of fact' that exists in the minds of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy."
In this eye-opening exposé, David Michaels reveals how the tobacco industry's duplicitous tactics spawned a multimillion dollar industry that is dismantling public health safeguards. Product defense consultants, he argues, have increasingly skewed the scientific literature, manufactured and magnified scientific uncertainty, and influenced policy decisions to the advantage of polluters and the manufacturers of dangerous products. To keep the public confused about the hazards posed by global warming, second-hand smoke, asbestos, lead, plastics, and many other toxic materials, industry executives have hired unscrupulous scientists and lobbyists to dispute scientific evidence about health risks. In doing so, they have not only delayed action on specific hazards, but they have constructed barriers to make it harder for lawmakers, government agencies, and courts to respond to future threats.
The Orwellian strategy of dismissing research conducted by the scientific community as "junk science" and elevating science conducted by product defense specialists to "sound science" status also creates confusion about the very nature of scientific inquiry and undermines the public's confidence in science's ability to address public health and environmental concerns Such reckless practices have long existed, but Michaels argues that the Bush administration deepened the dysfunction by virtually handing over regulatory agencies to the very corporate powers whose products and behavior they are charged with overseeing.
In Doubt Is Their Product Michaels proves, beyond a doubt, that our regulatory system has been broken. He offers concrete, workable suggestions for how it can be restored by taking the politics out of science and ensuring that concern for public safety, rather than private profits, guides our regulatory policy.
Doubt is Their Product will be published by Oxford University Press in May 2008, and is available for pre-order from Amazon.com and Powells.com.
Next: The "smoking gun" documents behind the book
Advance Praise for Doubt is their Product:
“What a perfect title, ‘Industry's Assault on Science.’ It’s happening. It’s real.”
- Erin Brockovich
“This well-researched book by someone who truly knows the system is a must read for anyone who wants to understand the cozy relationship between industry and regulatory agencies on matters that affect the health and safety of our families and neighbors. The cited examples illustrate how, with the help of irresponsible members of Congress and other public officials, corporate greed can trump any sense of ethics, morality, and human compassion.”
- Neal Lane, former Science Advisor to the President and former Director of the National Science Foundation
“This brave, shocking book exposes the abuse of science by government and industry in ways that endanger the workplace, the home, the water supply, the air quality—in fact, our planet as a whole. David Michaels speaks authoritatively from his firsthand experience as a champion of occupational safety and health. He tells a terrific story.”
- Dava Sobel, author of Longitude and Galileo’s Daughter
“In Doubt Is Their Product, David Michaels gives a lively and convincing history of how clever public relations has blocked one public health protection after another. The techniques first used to reassure us about tobacco were adapted to reassure us about asbestos, lead, vinyl chloride—and risks to nuclear facilities workers, where Dr. Michaels’ experience as the relevant Assistant Secretary of Energy gave him an inside view. And if you’re worried about climate change, keep worrying, because the same program is underway there.”
- Donald Kennedy, Editor-in-Chief, Science
“We live in an age of unprecedented disinformation, misinformation, and outright lying by those in power. This important book shows who profits by misleading the public—and who ultimately pays with their health.”
- Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation
The Pump Handle
A water cooler for the public health crowd
http://thepumphandle.wordpress.com/2008/05/05/newsweek-on-doubt-is-their-product/
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Newsweek on Doubt is Their Product
May 5, 2008 in Doubt is Their Product, Manufacturing Uncertainty, Uncategorized by Liz Borkowski
The May 12th issue of Newsweek contains Sharon Begley’s excellent review of Doubt is Their Product (which should now be available in your local bookstore). Naturally, we like it because it says nice things about David’s book, but we also think Begley does a terrific job describing the kinds of abuses the book chronicles. It’s not surprising to see her giving a pithy summary of how polluters manufacture uncertainty, since she wrote last year’s Newsweek cover story “Global-Warming Deniers: A Well-Funded Machine,” which provides one of the best overviews of the global warming denial movement I’ve seen.
The review is well worth a read; here’s a taste:
If anyone remakes “Erin Brockovich,” this is a scene I want to see. A scientist launches a study to determine the toxicity of hexavalent chromium, the drinking-water contaminant at the center of the lawsuits Brockovich spearheaded. The study will be a meta-analysis, combining existing individual studies to, he says, produce more-authoritative conclusions. Some of the earlier studies measured rates of lung cancer among pigment-factory workers exposed to airborne chromium, so it makes sense to include them. But the scientist is working for industry, so he chooses his other studies carefully: he includes those that assessed all forms of cancer among residents who drank chromium-laced water. Only the workers, not the residents, had increased rates of lung cancer. No surprise there: only inhaled—not ingested—chromium can cause lung cancer. Since there are many more residents than factory workers, the data showing no rise in lung cancer swamp the large numbers of lung cancers in the workers. Thanks to this sleight of hand, the study—which happened in real life, not a movie—concludes that chromium “is only weakly carcinogenic for the lungs,” giving the chemical a nice coat of whitewash.
That science can be bought is hardly news to anyone who knows about tobacco “scientists.” But how pervasive, effective and stealthy this science-for-hire is—as masterfully documented by David Michaels of George Washington University in his new book, “Doubt Is Their Product: How Industry’s Assault on Science Threatens Your Health”—will shock anyone who still believes that “science” and “integrity” are soulmates. In studies of how toxic chemicals affect human health, Michaels told me, “It’s quite easy to take a positive result [showing harmful effects] and turn it falsely negative. This epidemiological alchemy is used widely.”
How many of Doubt’s readers will be shocked? It depends who picks up the book. The reactions I’ve heard so far tend to praise it for exposing just how widespread and insidious manufactured uncertainty is, but these readers seem to have picked it up because they know the problem exists and want to learn more about it. How many people are there who don’t know that companies and industries manufacture “scientific controversies” in order to guard their products against regulation or falling sales? Begley’s global-warming denier piece contained one possible answer: “39 percent of those asked [in a 2007 Newsweek poll] say there is “a lot of disagreement among climate scientists” on the basic question of whether the planet is warming; 42 percent say there is a lot of disagreement that human activities are a major cause of global warming.”
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