Customer Reviews

Bending Science: How Special Interests Corrupt Public Health Research

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

When I took Professor McGarity's administrative law class at the University of Texas many, many years ago, the lectures were notable chiefly as brief intermissions where I could doze off in the semi-comfortable chairs of the law school. The fault was hardly his. An excellent lecturer and acknowledged expert in administrative law, my narcolepsy had more to do with juggling school, work, a young marriage and a younger child.

Professor McGarity has teamed up with Wendy Wagner, another UT law prof who may one day wrest away the mantle of regulatory guru from McGarity himself. These two brilliant writers have unleashed a tour de force that exposes, in the powerfully understated title "Bent Science," how industry has corrupted the science upon which public health policy is based.

They could have titled it "Rape of Science," "Scruples be Damned," or "Money Can Buy You Science," but no title would equal the impact of this balanced, thoughtful, footnoted, politic, and academic sledgehammer of a book. Though the authors go out of their way to avoid using the word corrupt, no possible reading of their extensive survey can lead to any other conclusion. Industry has purchased the governmental regulatory process by vitiating the very process of science itself. This has had tremendous implications for people poisoned by toxic substances like asbestos, resulting terminal illnesses like mesothelioma.

From their careful introduction, where they lay out the problem and explain exactly what bent science means, to the final chapters where they provide practical (and a few idealistic) solutions in tandem with exhortations to optimism, this hard hitting book covers every sleazy corporate trick in the book.

Corporations are free to subvert the scientific process without fear of penalty, they have endless resources to fabricate research that always draws the right conclusions, they hide unfavorable science, pervert good research into "junk" by sophisticated namecalling, they bully and intimidate honest scientists, they convene sham groups to tout dishonest results, they manipulate public perceptions through PR campaigns, and--the one thing these two fine lawyers neglected to say--they blame it all on trial lawyers.

This book is a fine complement to "Doubt is Their Product: How Industry's Assault on Science Threatens Your Health" by David Michaels. Professors McGarity and Wagner have made a meaningful and readable contribution to the mountain of evidence that corporate behavior has ceased running roughshod over the public and is now simply running amok. Over everything. The authors' message that change is needed, badly, comes at an opportune time. What we need is change, let's see, change we can, hmmm, believe in? Change we can believe in!

Might not be a bad idea for a political slogan.

This book argues that science institutions are under attack - dozens of sophisticated strategies from outcome-oriented interests (seeking a specific result favoring their product, process, etc.) are used to co-opt the science that informs public health and environmental policy. Further, policy-makers can no longer expect the scientific community to detect and filter out the distortions without assistance from the legal system. The bulk of the book is then taken up with specific examples of the abuses it is concerned about.

The first meaningful evidence of bending science in the legal world comes from the early 1900s when asbestos, tobacco, pharmaceutical, and pesticide manufacturers tried to control the bad news about their products. Suppression of industry-sponsored research and occasional harassment of independent scientists were the primary methods; in other settings manufacturers simply avoided research regarding hazards, leaving the burden to individual victims. The eventual results were new regulatory agencies (FDA and EPA) and requirements.

Outcome-oriented proponents then manufactured uncertainty about implications of well-conducted scientific studies via attacks on every minute aspect of every cited study used by experts - aimed at undermining the scientific reliability of their overall conclusions and often allowing their exclusion from court trials. Next outcome advocates than moved on to obtain legislation from 2000 - 2004 giving similar advantages dealing with regulatory agencies.

Estimates of the cumulative costs of regulatory requirements are often at least somewhat based on production lost due to particular products or wastes being banned (overstated). Regulatory agencies react slower than courts - eg. asbestos production had largely halted due to lawsuits prior to regulatory action.

Plaintiff attorneys are also guilty at times - eg. biased assembly-line diagnoses of silicosis and fen-phen diet pill users. Claims of saccharin carcinogenicity originally halted its approval - twenty years later researchers showed the problem was limited to laboratory rats. Government agencies (AEC/DOE, USDA, NOAA, and FDA) have also been found to bend science for their own purposes.

Policy-relevant research is not that interesting to most scientists - the topics are frequently unoriginal and usually contested by advocates. The result is a lack of professional oversight in some areas. Absent clear evidence of fraud, the law does little to penalize parties producing unreliable science for use in regulation and litigation.

Methods used to bias tests include manipulating the control dosage for medications (keep low), the length of time that negative observations are tested for (keep short), doing a poor job of counting the number 'exposed' (eg. include unexposed office workers to lower any negative impact findings), forged data, misinterpreting results (eg. 'seeing' that naproxen lowered the risk of heart attacks vs. Vioxx, instead of the fact that Vioxx raised the risk of heart attacks vs. placebos), selective reporting of only favorable results. Attacks on results not liked include allegations of wrong statistical tests (obscures and delays), and other contentions of inappropriate procedure. Other approaches include filing charges of scientific misconduct against those presenting disliked material, and blocking future funding for their work, and selective assembling of expert panels (example cited involving former Secretary Thompson). Finally, impressive-sounding think tanks have also been funded to oppose studies disliked by industry, often with former politicians as leaders and public-interest-sounding names (eg. 'Citizens for . . .).

The authors contend that correcting these problems requires forcing bad behavior out in the open. Many scientific journals already require disclosures of conflicts of interest and data sharing to allow others to verify results published. Regulators and courts should do likewise. Congress should also limit the discretion used in reporting adverse outcomes. Probably the most likely-to-succeed suggestion is to emphasize science-blind actions (eg. reduce pollution X%, without attempting to scientifically justify the specific level). The authors also believe the media should address more attention to exposing the extent bent science exists and the damage caused.

Bottom Line: "Bent Science" highlights an important problem in today's efforts at policy-making and litigation. Unfortunately, the problem is not limited to the 'hard sciences' - economic and social policies and litigation are also impacted in the same manner.

It's an incredibly thorough report of a depressing reality and I think I understand why no one has written a review yet. Whoever has read this may feel dejected about its revelation that people with the power to hide or distort scientific findings that would probably turn consumers against their money-making products are willing and able to destroy the most honest scientists and subvert the least honest ones. People with this power may be corporate policy setters of dangerous products, their lawyers, the scientists they are able to subvert into science-bending endeavors, and many others ... including personnel in government agencies, which further includes one I've long suspected ... the National Institute of Health. That agency appears to have made efforts to correct the problem that I call the "we gotta do what will satisfy the pharmaceutical guys" but I'm not sure such efforts will work permanently there ... or anywhere else. Obsessive drive for materialistic acquisition has blotted out concern for other humans' welfare in so many of our powerful people, whether they be entrepreneurs, scientists, legal wizards, politicians, or whatever. I'm finding myself doubting the likelihood of behavioral reform among the corruptible people described in this book.