Skewing science: four new books expose how government and industry manipulate science to fit their needs

Alternatives Journal, August, 2009 by Stephen Bocking

Diagnosis: Mercury: Money, Politics and Poison, Jane M. Hightower, Washington, DC: Island Press, 2008,326 pages.

The Secret History of the War on Cancer, Devra Davis, New York: Basic Books, 2007, 560 pages.

Bending Science: How Special Interests Corrupt Public Health Research, Thomas O. McGarity and Wendy E. Wagner, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2008, 400 pages.

Doubt is Their Product: How Industry's Assault on Science Threatens Your Health, David Michaels, New York: Oxford University Press, 2008, 384 pages.

THE BUSH ERA IS OVER but the stain, including a string of last-minute legal changes, lingers. These "midnight regulations" made some things easier, such as dumping mine waste in streams and building power plants near parks. Other things became harder, such as using science to protect endangered species or to reduce workers' exposure to hazards. Continuing that administration's usual practice, these cuts to health and environmental safeguards were justified by manipulating the way science relates to policy. Once again, the supposedly straightforward part of environmental affairs--determining the facts--was where the real manoeuvring took place.

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But Bush didn't invent this game. Ask who uses science to conceal hazards, and the answer is nearly everyone: car makers, lead refiners, asbestos miners, nuclear processors, chemical producers, drug manufacturers and on and on. The chemical industry's attacks on Rachel Carson were among the more vicious efforts; cigarette makers' denial that their products kill were the most persistent; cover-ups of the effects of asbestos and other toxic materials were among the deadliest. While there have been successes--gas is no longer leaded, big tobacco is in retreat--the manipulation of science has only accelerated, and corporate deviancy still flourishes. But the blame cannot be laid solely on industry and government: some universities prefer corporate partnerships to free exchange of knowledge, and scientists have often been unable, even unwilling, to defend scientific integrity. Science as objective and open? That's a fantasy to be shelved next to the myths of free markets and sensible bankers.

Many books have urged reform -testifying to how the written word can drive, not merely describe, history. Upton Sinclair's The Jungle (1906) exposed the disgustingly unsanitary American meatpacking industry, and Ralph Nader, in Unsafe at Any Speed (1965), indicted the car industry. More recently, Dan Fagin and Marianne Lavelle, in Toxic Deception (1996), and Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, in Trust Us, We're Experts (2001), described how industry buys science. Now four more exposes have appeared, surveying both the corruption of science and the possibility of reform.

In Diagnosis: Mercury, Jane Hightower, a physician, describes how her patients' inexplicable symptoms, including fainting and headaches, provoked her interest in this metal. She traced their ailments to mercury-laden fish (a connection that goes against the usual pattern of environmental injustice since wealthier consumers, who are able to afford large cuts, are most vulnerable). Pursuing the matter further, she uncovered how industry and government had obscured what they knew about mercury, or based exposure standards on faulty data from Iraq and elsewhere. Assessments of mercury, it turned out, mirrored economic interests. Hers is a doctor's perspective, focused on determining a safe level of consumption, and consumers' right to know what they are eating.

Devra Davis also begins her book with a mystery. As she describes in The Secret History of the War on Cancer, some time ago she and other epidemiologists began to notice that some cancers were becoming more common. Fifty years ago, one in 20 women got breast cancer; now it is one in seven. The explanation is that the intensive effort--the "war"--to cure cancer has focused on individuals and the illness itself, leaving its causes untouched. She eviscerates the usual suspects who have waged this misdirected war, including the tobacco industry and its campaign to prolong scientific debates about smoking. Unlikely alliances are also exposed: cancer scientists had covert ties to the chemical industry, and the American Medical Association worked closely with big tobacco. Some of those most involved in fighting this pervasive disease have profited mightily from selling cancer-causing chemicals, or producing anti-cancer drugs. Cancer care, she shows, is not just about curing people - it is a huge business, involving powerful interests.

In Bending Science, Thomas McGarity and Wendy Wagner provide a broader and more dispassionate perspective on science and regulation. Using several case studies, they analyze how corporations and governments "bend" science: shaping, hiding, attacking, harassing, packaging and spinning knowledge. Studies work backwards from the desired result. Scientists are hired to write articles or sit on committees that distill research in industry-friendly ways. Unwelcome results--say, evidence of industry hazards--are attacked by captive experts. Outfits such as the Center for Indoor Air Research (a front for the tobacco industry) impart a neutral image to sponsored research. The ways that science can be bent are both ingenious and insidious.