Between the writing and publication of Doubt is Their Product, in 2008, and the publication of this similarly-themed book, the American epidemiologist and academic at George Washington University author worked for seven years as assistant secretary of Labor for the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Association in the Obama administration
The tobacco and alcohol industries, DuPont and Dow Chemical’s “forever chemicals” used to produce Teflon among other dubious products, NFL deniers of chronic traumatic brain injuries in most players, diesel emissions assessment cheaters, opioids producers denying their addictive properties, the silica industry deniers of harm in the form of silicosis and asbestosis, Volkswagen’s cheating hierarchy, climate crisis deniers, and the sweets industry all come in for careful well-documented criticism. The product defence industry is huge but the same group of lobbyists, pseudo-scientists-for-hire, industrial organizations, lawyers, and front associations appear again and again to rework the findings of dedicated scientists and epidemiologists who assess consumer products for safety and usefulness. Post hoc data dredging to cast the products found to be harmful as safe or at least safer at the behest of their producers, often without revealing their source of funding, is a lucrative business for these unscrupulous organizations, often failing to disclose their conflicts of interest.
Michaels acknowledges that at least some of these individuals honestly believe the foregone conclusions they provide for their employers, being blinded by political ideology. To quote Sinclair Upton: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” But others are blatant liars available (for a hefty fee) to spout their lies. Media outlets without expertise, with their penchant for hearing both sides of an argument, help in spreading doubt and confusion.
The chapter on silica exposure in the construction industry is most instructive about the complicated, slow, and challenging process of getting any new standards through the maze of Washington bureaucracy.
I can relate to the difficult decisions about conflict of interest having participated in many clinical trials sponsored by pharmaceutical companies; I refused to participate in some if the publication of results was restricted a priori by the sponsors. But I have retrospectively concluded that the design of some studies was such that the conclusion the company wanted was all but assured.
The writing is dry and humourless but factual and richly referenced with thirty pages of references and notes. Endless acronyms for government agencies, lobby groups, and industrial associations disguising their aims with ingenious names can be confusing. The focus is almost entirely American, but the problems it addresses are certainly universal, although maybe not to the same extent. I suspect that there is a lot of duplication of material contained in his earlier book (I have not read it), although the problem of fake science and anti-science and anti-intellectual sentiments has gotten far worse in the interval between the two books, largely thanks to the election of Donald Trump.
This work is enlightening and sobering, a call to carefully review the source of any purported work of science, but to not reject good science with solid factual conclusions. It is difficult to determine who would enjoy this book, but fewer will read it than could be usefully educated by doing so.
Thanks,
Al. (He actually discussed the author’s earlier book.)
The Passionate Reader 