Doubt is Their Product
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It started with Big Tobacco. In the 1950s, when epidemiologists showed that lung cancer was killing smokers, the cigarette companies launched a sophisticated public relations campaign to raise doubts about the increasingly definitive scientific evidence. The tobacco industry recognized that if they could limit the debate to whether the science was accurate, they could avoid the obvious policy discussion: how to stop people from buying their deadly product.The scientists and public relations experts who manufactured uncertainty for Big Tobacco saw that their strategy worked - do it well and you immobilize government regulators. Tobacco's success has spawned a multimillion dollar industry. Now the strategy is deployed to defend drugs like Vioxx, the pain killer that has caused 100,000 heart attacks; food additives like artificial butter flavor, linked to popcorn lung disease; and scores of pesticides and toxic industrial chemicals like asbestos, lead, and benzene. When researchers discovered that taking aspirin dramatically increased children's risk for developing the often-fatal disease Reye's syndrome, manufacturers claimed that more proof was needed and delayed warnings on aspirin bottles for two years. Hundreds of children died needlessly. The oil and coal companies use this same strategy to question the existence of global warming.
In Doubt Is Their Product, author David Michaels explains how many of the scientists who spun science for tobacco have become practitioners in the lucrative world of product defense. Whatever the story- global warming, toxic chemicals, sugar and obesity, secondhand smoke- these scientists generate studies designed to make dangerous exposures appear harmless.
At its heart,Doubt Is Their Product documents the way in which scientists who specialize in "product defense" have manipulated the scientific literature, manufactured and magnified scientific uncertainty, and influenced policy decisions to the advantage of private interests, rather than in the interests of the public. Michaels explains how the current Administration has changed the rules under which federal agencies operate, limiting the government's ability to reject mercenary science.
Michaels lays out the "tricks of the trade" - exactly how these scientists produce studies designed to produce negative results. It begins with a study that seems scientific, except that researchers know ahead of time what the results will be. Then, public relations experts provide these scientists with contrarian sound bites that make the news because they're so different from what most scientists and health professionals are saying. Reporters are happy to have contrasting views, but Michaels suggests in Doubt Is Their Product that one side has been bought and paid for. To prove it, Michaels produces the "smoking guns" - secret industry documents - that show exactly how product defense scientists manufacture doubt, and how they boast of their successes.
Reviews
"In Doubt Is Their Product, David Michaels gives a lively and convincing history of how clever public relations has blocked one public health protection after another. The techniques first used to reassure us about tobacco were adapted to reassure us about asbestos, lead, vinyl chloride-and risks to nuclear facilities workers, where Dr. Michaels' experience as the relevant Assistant Secretary of Energy gave him an inside view. And if you're worried about climate change, keep worrying, because the same program is underway there."--Donald Kennedy, Editor-in-Chief, Science
"We live in an age of unprecedented disinformation, misinformation, and outright lying by those in power. This important book shows who profits by misleading the public-and who ultimately pays with their health."--Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation
"This well-researched book by someone who truly knows the system is a must read for anyone who wants to understand the cozy relationship between industry and regulatory agencies on matters that affect the health and safety of our families and neighbors. The cited examples illustrate how, with the help of irresponsible members of Congress and other public officials, corporate greed can trump any sense of ethics, morality, and human compassion."--Neal Lane, former Science Advisor to President Bill Clinton and former Director of the National Science Foundation
"This brave, shocking book exposes the abuse of science by government and industry in ways that endanger the workplace, the home, the water supply, the air quality-in fact, our planet as a whole. David Michaels speaks authoritatively from his firsthand experience as a champion of occupational safety and health. He tells a terrific story."--Dava Sobel, author of Longitude and Galileo's Daughter
"In Doubt Is Their Product, David Michaels calls out the corporations you'll recognize them that bankroll lobbyists and unethical scientists to attack factual evidence that their products, such as asbestos, lead, and tobacco, are deadly."--Vanity Fair, Green Issue, May 2008
"In Doubt Is Their Product, David Michaels calls out the corporations you'll recognize them that bankroll lobbyists and unethical scientists to attack factual evidence that their products, such as asbestos, lead, and tobacco, are deadly."--Vanity Fair, Green Issue, May 2008
"David Michaels has written a powerful, thorough indictment of the way big business has ignored, suppressed or distorted vital scientific evidence to the detriment of the public's health."--Nature
From Newsweek, 5/12/08 _ That science can be bought is hardly news to anyone who knows about tobacco "scientists." But how pervasive, effective and stealthy this science-for-hire is-as masterfully documented by David Michaels of George Washington University in his new book, "Doubt Is Their Product: How Industry's Assault on Science Threatens Your Health"-will shock anyone who still believes that "science" and "integrity" are soulmates. In studies of how toxic chemicals affect human health, Michaels told me, "It's quite easy to take a positive result [showing harmful effects] and turn it falsely negative. This epidemiological alchemy is used widely." -Sharon Begley
From Nature, 6/12/08 _ David Michaels has written a powerful, thorough indictment of the way big business has ignored, suppressed or distorted vital scientific evidence to the detriment of the public's health. Doubt Is Their Product catalogues numerous corporate misdemeanours, especially in the United States, from the criminal neglect of the dangerous nature of asbestos and the lies told by the tobacco industry, to the suppression of adverse findings of deaths caused by the anti-inflammatory drug Vioxx and the increased risk of suicide among teenagers taking selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors for depression. The book concludes with a list of prescriptions for securing better regulation and greater protection for the public, mainly through increased public disclosure of vested interests. -Dick Taverne
"The book is a shocking portrayal of the tactics used by corporate America to delay public health and environmental regulation of their products for the sake of profit...It is a must read for anyone interested in public health and environmental protection."--Chemical & Engineering News
"...Doubt Is Their Product reminds one of deeper risks that threaten scientific fields and democratic deliberation. ...The scientific community and the public need to be on guard against such abuses; Michaels's history of these events sounds an alert that must not be ignored."--Durrants
One of Library Journal 's top 10 sci-tech books of 2008!
Received an Honorable Mention in the Society for Environmental Journalism's 2009 Awards for Reporting on the Environment for the category Rachel Carson Environment Book Award.
About the Author(s)
David Michaels is a scientist and former government regulator. During the Clinton Administration, he served as Assistant Secretary of Energy for Environment, Safety and Health, responsible for protecting the health and safety of the workers, neighboring communities, and the environment surrounding the nation's nuclear weapons factories. He currently directs the Project on Scientific Knowledge and Public Policy at The George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services. In 2006, he received the American Association for the Advancement of Science's Scientific Freedom and Responsibility Award for his work on behalf of nuclear weapons workers and for advocacy for scientific integrity.
