Doubt is Their Product: How Industry’s Assault on Science Threatens Your Health
Doubt is Their Product: How Industry’s Assault on Science Threatens Your Health Books
- ISBN13: 9780195300673
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- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
“Doubt is our product,” a cigarette executive once experimental, “since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ that exists in the minds of the general broadcast. It is also the means of establishing a controversy.”
In this eye-opening expose, David Michaels reveals how the tobacco industry’s duplicitous tactics spawned a multimillion dough industry that is dismantling broadcast 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 perilous products. To keep the broadcast 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 answer 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 makes confusion about the very nature of scientific inquiry and undermines the broadcast’s confidence in science’s ability to address broadcast health and environmental concerns Such reckless practices have long existed, but Michaels argues that the Bush administration deepened the dysfunction by effectively handing over regulatory agencies to the very corporate powers whose products and behavior they are charged with administration.
In Doubt Is Their Product Michaels proves, beyond a doubt, that our regulatory system has been kaput. He offers concrete, workable suggestions for how it can be restored by taking the politics out of science and ensuring that concern for broadcast safety, rather than private profits, guides our regulatory policy.
Named one of the best Sci-Tech books of 2008 by Library Journal!
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Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/RTRHV6LUR1IEE Hi, this is Joanne, a bioengineering instructor at the University of Illinois. I read science books and review them. See more at my youtube site http://www.youtube.com/user/joannelovesscience
Joanne discusses this vital and infuriating book about how industry manipulates scientific data for their own interests.
Rating: 5 / 5
I agree with others that this is dense and long, but I reckon it is well worth reading, even if you skip parts of chapters.
I would especially suggest study of:
Chapter 13: Daubert: the Most Influential Supreme Court Ruling You’ve Never Heard Of
Chapter 14: The Institutionalization of Uncertainty
[The Data Access Act (Shelby) and the Data Quality Act]
Because:
a) The behaviors of some corporations, PR agencies, product defense organizations can get to some extent redundant. Hill & Knowlton made the tactics 50+ years ago and they’ve been widely employed.
b) But the legal issues in these two Chapters represent relatively recent changes in the law with profound effects. They (especially the Data Access Act) are now widely being used to harass climate scientists, for example.
Rating: 5 / 5
Michaels shows that the same techniques used to successfully delay legislation and regulatory action on cigarettes have since been used on any number of other broadcast-health problems, including today’s major global warming concerns. A growing trend disingenuously demands proof over precaution, everlastingly disputing conclusions that might support regulation because industry has learned that debating the science is much simpler and more effective than debating the policy. It also avoids being simply branded as ‘anti-environmental,’ etc.
Michaels material shows instances proving the hazards of working with some chemicals was well known long before lawsuits arose. For example, as early as 1918 life insurers declined asbestos workers. Certain dye components were found to cause 100% of bladder cancer in the original DuPont workers back in 1947 – again, before major suits. Reducing lead in paint and gasoline was accomplished relatively easily, despite industry efforts – thanks mainly to the EPA and the effect lead had on catalytic converters, adding auto-makers to those demanding lead’s elimination from gasoline.
Industry obstructionists (often led by the broadcast relations firm Hill and Knowlton) repeatedly use a strategy of insisting on proof – hard to accomplish because one seldom finds 100% affliction from toxins, even cigarette smoke. The author instead recommends a ‘Sarbanes-Oxley’ approach to science and toxins. 1)Require full disclosure of any sponsor involvement in scientific studies. 2)Manufacturers must tell what they know regarding the toxicity of their products and the chemicals used. 3)Rigged data reanalysis should be stopped – makes fake findings. 4)Hold people accountable. 5)Protect the independence of federal scientists and science advisory committees – eg. stop asking applicants who they voted for, using panel members with conflicts of interest. 6)Embrace ‘as low as reasonably achievable’ standards instead of apt embroiled in endless debates over safe levels.
Bottom Line: “Doubt Is their Product” provides excellent documentation of industry’s non-stop reactionary foot-dragging to any profit impediment vs. broadcast health. But, that scientists can be bought (‘fake science’) is hardly news to anyone who has followed the global warming debate. Thus, Michaels should have made his book considerably shorter.
Rating: 4 / 5
Dr. Michaels’ book reveals the motivations and follow-up actions of many industries who strive to protect their profits regardless of the impact on the nation’s health. His tale tells of the various industries’ scientific and technical “whores” who sell their expertise to either make doubt about, or directly challenge the legitimate science that is produced for science sake – not profit.
But, the underlying tale is far more onerous than the title expresses. It is not much of a stretch to know that the nature of science is being sincerely subverted. Science builds upon itself. All future work in the medical sciences will have to be cautious when using data produced by these charlatans. Some of that data will, in fact, be really fake.
If this is allowed to continue, science will one day buy the reputation now now reserved for used-car salesmen, and streetwalkers. The problem is far greater than any of us want to reckon about. Bravo Dr. Michaels.
Rating: 5 / 5
“Doubt is Their Product” is a well researched and scholarly book. It is also tells a very sad tale. The government we trust to keep us safe has place the foxes in payment of the henhouses. OSHA, for example, has been so intimidated that it has quit trying to protect us. The nuclear weapons industry has contaminated the countryside and used wellbeing as an excuse to hide the fact. The FDA has small to no funding to protect us from drugs with serious side effects. If you vote, you must read this book. If you work near chemicals, you would be an idiot not to read it.
Ralph Hermansen 02/28/09
Rating: 5 / 5