Manufacturing Doubt: Corporations perpetuate deadly products by promoting "scientific uncertainty."

[marmar]

from Slate, via ReclaimDemocracy!:



Manufacturing Doubt
Corporations have long history of perpetuating deadly products and activities by promoting "scientific uncertainty"


Print-friendly Page By Daniel Engber
First Published by Slate Magazine, April 16, 2008



In 1969, a series of historic memorandums began to circulate at a tobacco company in Kentucky. The documents addressed growing public concern over the health risks associated with smoking and outlined a brazen response: The cigarette manufacturers would "establish—once and for all—that no scientific evidence has ever been produced, presented or submitted to prove conclusively that cigarette smoking causes cancer." To support this ludicrous assertion (which the tobacco executives knew to be false) would require a spin campaign of monumental proportions. That campaign's inaugural words have now become a slogan for corporate connivery: "Doubt is our product,"read one infamous memo,"since it is the best means of competing with the 'body of fact' that exists in the mind of the general public."

This corporate strategy of "manufactured uncertainty" has become only more refined in the last 40 years. According to former Assistant Secretary of Energy David Michaels, whose startling new book, Doubt Is Their Product: How Industry's Assault on Science Threatens Your Health, comes out this week, manufacturers routinely hire "product defense" firms to challenge scientific findings and stave off government regulation. Scientific consultants are brought in to dust off and reanalyze data sets, group and regroup subject pools, and dream up confounding variables—all so that a given study can be discredited as inconclusive or, worse, labeled as "junk science."

Indeed, corporations now use the manufactured-uncertainty strategy in almost every debate over environmental and public health. Energy companies wage doubt campaigns to delay action on climate change. Drug companies undercut results from clinical trials. Even the Indoor Tanning Association has lately gotten in on the action—touting the lack of "compelling evidence" that links UV exposure to melanoma. But the exploitation of uncertainty has become something larger and more significant than an industry PR tactic. It's now a political instrument, even semi-official White House policy. And ideological groups—bible-thumpers and tree-huggers alike—embrace its doubt-spewing rhetoric.

What makes this mode of thinking so effective—and so prevalent? Like David Berlinski, the doubt-mongers swear by the foundational motto of organized science, first pronounced by the Royal Society of London in 1663: Nullius in verb, "on no man's word." They show a deep commitment to the evidentiary record, always testing the established theories and demanding more data; they attempt to undermine science from within, by aping its vaunted incredulity. But in practice their contrarian mode amounts to something like the opposite of science—a tireless search for nonanswers, a quest for the null hypothesis.

Michaels gives a detailed history of how the beryllium industry, for example, has put this anti-science to work. By 1991, academic researchers had gathered enough data to conclude that the metal was a potent carcinogen and a danger to factory workers. But a team of scientists hired by the manufacturers looked at the same studies and disagreed. The cancers, they argued in their own peer-reviewed study, might have been caused by sulfuric acid mist on the factory floor, not beryllium. When no evidence materialized to support the acid-mist hypothesis, the industry team shifted tactics: Beryllium may cause cancer, they said, but what if not all forms of the metal were equally toxic? What if particles of one size were more dangerous than others? After more than 10 years of debate, the federal government once again put off tightening the standards for workplace exposure—at least until more data could be collected. ........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.reclaimdemocracy.org/articles/2008/manufacturing_doubt.php

[ixion]

1. is there anything that is not manufactured?

Other than a few internet sites, the vast majority of the social experience is tailored, trimmed and scrubbed for 'G - Rated' public consumption. Anyone would dares speak truth to power is exiled from society, and given the dreaded 'conspiracy theorist' moniker, effectively removing any real debate that may occur about any given subject.

From the so-called 'war' on drugs and terror, to global warming, to evolution down to the screeching multitudes of commercials the 'average' person is exposed to, it's all strategically crafted to produce a specific result: dilution of the real issue, and the dumbing down of society at large.

[Jim__]

2. It's not surprising that corporations seek to undermine the scientific process.

It is disappointing the number of people who continue to support the corruption of the scientific process by Big Money paying for research in areas where they have huge financial interests. If the scientific process is to retain its integrity, corporate money has to be either removed, or forced into an indirect role where they can't choose the researchers and the specific research.

Studies funded by Big Money with big financial interests at stake, should be refused by peer reviewed journals. The studies are too suspect.

[L. Coyote]

3. White board markers, a toy, contains VOSs, a drug. Classrooms fill with drug vapors daily,

and everyone in the room is affected mentally, to a degree, not to mention the cancer risks. I tried to get my college employer to do something about this when I was harmed by the vapors. That may have cost me my job at that college. VOSs (volitile organic solvents) will kill you in a high dose, but, it is in a toy and a classroom tool, and not from China.

Petroleum products like gasoline are exempt from safety laws because they are too poisonous. Gas is about 7% toluene. If you park a car in a garage, keep the garage vapors out of your house, or you can give yourself cancer. Remove fingernail polish with a solvent, and you can get everyone in the room off on the drug it contains, xylene! Cancer causing solvents are everywhere.

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IS YOUR JOB KILLING YOU?
http://jqjacobs.net/writing/osha.html

There are as many as 575,000 hazardous chemical products in workplaces. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) estimates that over 32 million workers are exposed to hazardous chemicals. Evidence collected by OSHA indicates that chemical exposure occurs in every type of industry. In 1986, a total of 136,212 work-related chemical injuries were treated in emergency rooms according to National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) data. The chronic disease rate included 25,388 cancer cases and 12,890 cancer deaths.

In 1994, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) reported an occupational injury and illness incidence rate of 8.4 per cent of workers. Painters, plumbers, construction, and other workers experience serious central nervous system problems from exposures to solvents. Welders suffer from acute and chronic respiratory disease, and show increased rates of lung cancer. The Associated General Contractors has admitted that there are 82 hazardous chemicals involved in concrete work, including very toxic carcinogens such as benzene and vinyl chloride. Hospital personnel who administer cytotoxic (chemotherapy) drugs experience both short-term health effects and chronic effects (cancer, leukemia, birth defects, miscarriages, and chromosomal damage). Some 40-50,000 manufacturing workers per year experience chemical source illnesses. They file 10,000 worker compensation claims in connection with chemical injury.

The Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 created the Occupational Safety and Health Administration ..........