Doubt Is Their Product: How Industry's Assault on Science Threatens Your Health

by David Michaels and David Michaels

Book Overview

"Doubt is our product," a cigarette executive once observed, "since it is the best means of competing with the 'body of fact' that exists in the minds of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy."
In this eye-opening expose, David Michaels reveals how the tobacco industry's duplicitous tactics spawned a multimillion dollar industry that is dismantling public health safeguards. Product defense consultants, he argues,...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 019530067X
• ISBN13: 9780195300673
• Release Date: April 2008
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 1.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.5" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Heavy Reading

This book is an examination of campaigns by industry to thwart attempts of government, especially the United States government, to protect the health of workers and citizens. Michaels has had a long history in public health working in both the public and academic sectors. In this book, he traces the history of numerous cases of industries that have escaped safety regulations and the dire consequences of their actions. Michaels observes that industries trying to escape regulation commonly do so by raising the flag of uncertainty. That is, they take advantage of the fact that it is logically impossible to prove an effect conclusively, but rather, all science can do is provide evidence that strongly suggests connections between cause and effect. This has allowed the tobacco industry to fight and delay warnings about the health risks of tobacco smoking. It also has also slowed down response to the climate change crisis, as contributing industries claim we must wait for more evidence before we take any action. He notes that industry often manages to establish doubt concerning the findings of scientific research through media reports that cite conflicting opinions on the topic. However, these media reports do not look into the sources and funding of the conflicting opinions; they contrast volumes of evidence found by independent and publicly funded research with "research" funded by industry or created by industry think tanks. The text of the book is extremely dense, with extensive references cited in endnotes. Michaels does an admirable job of explaining how the efforts of industry to undermine sound science are made to sound credible, through trade supported "peer-reviewed" journals and think tanks. He argues that because industries have been so successful at evading regulation, litigation is often the only recourse in the present system, and thus, the ability of citizens to seek damages in the courts for injuries must be protected against the industry-led campaign for "tort reform". The book provides valuable information for those seeking a deeper understanding of the extent of the control industry has managed to wrest from the government and other agencies that are supposed to be looking out for public health. On disinformation provided by industry and the conservative politicians owned by them, Michaels quotes Lily Tomlin "No matter how cynical you become, it's never enough to keep up."

Detailed expose with real solutions

David Michaels has traveled the honorable path of scientific muckracking, peeling back the lies and distortions that have killed millions in the U.S. for the greater good of shareholder profit. The great improvement of his book, "Doubt is their Product," is that it also lines out a series of concrete solutions with proven examples of ways that agencies can retake the high ground. This book has an important inspirational component and a get-to-work component that activists can use to make the workplace and environment safer. Michaels counsels us on practical means such as ending court sanctioned secrecy, allowing injured workers to sue their employees, develop better compensation systems, and ending pre-emption that harms public policy and public health. The book includes a crucial chapter on concrete ways to improve the regulatory system so that it protects the majority rather than serving as a shield, flack, and apologist for corporate profits. This is a must read for any law school course on administrative law, and for any college course on modern government. Its discussion of the asbestos industry--creator of the global mesothelioma scourge--is particularly apropos. Best of all, the book is well written, thoroughly researched, and righteous while being coolly objective.

This year most important book for environment-, health-, and safey people.

"Doubt is their product" by David Michaelis, is one of those rare books you really try hard to convince people to read, and if they don't want to buy it - you give them the book. I'm working as an occupational hygienist in a Norwegian labor union. The book has been a tremendous help to understand how the product defence system works and how they are selling doubt. To me the book is the most important book I've read for a long time. The book should be required reading for all professionals and students within the environment, healt and safety domain.

How industry shanghaied science

Conflicts of interest among members of EPA review panels have weakened governmental safety standards on toxic chemicals in the environment and in everyday consumer products. Outrage over long-standing reliance on "science for hire" by the chemical industry has prompted Congress to investigate EPA's procedures for reviewing toxic chemicals, including PBDE flame retardants and bisphenol A. These examples are just a small window into how great the tampering and influence of the chemical industry has been over EPA regulation of toxic chemicals. A new book by David Michaels, an epidemiologist and the director of the Project on Scientific Knowledge and Public Policy at The George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services, documents a seemingly endless list of examples of mercenary scientists misleading the general public and the regulatory community about the true dangers of chemical exposures, starting from lead, asbestos, and tobacco, and continuing to chromium, berillium, perchlorate, benzene, plastics chemicals, and various other environmental and occupational health hazards. The book is a must-read for anyone who cares about the best application of science in the interests of promoting public health. For a great review, readers can also go to the article by Newsweek's Sharon Begley, "Whitewashing Toxic Chemicals." One stunning quote from the book describes the tricks of the trade that industry lobby and product defense firms use to derail the regulatory process: "They profit by helping corporations minimize public health and environmental protection and fight claims of injury and illness. In field after field, year after year, this same handful of individuals and companies comes up again and again... They have on their payrolls (or can bring in on a moment's notice) toxicologists, epidemiologists, biostatisticians, risk assessors, and any other professionally trained, media-savvy experts deemed necessary. They and the larger, wealthier industries for which they work go through the motions we expect of the scientific enterprise, salting the literature with their questionable reports and studies. Nevertheless, it is all a charade. The work has one overriding motivation: advocacy for the sponsor's position in civil court, the court of public opinion, and the regulatory arena [where these studies benefit their sponsors] not because they are good work that the regulatory agencies have to take seriously but because they clog the machinery and slow down the process. Public health interests are beside the point. Follow the science wherever it leads? Not quite. This is science for hire, period, and it is extremely lucrative." Only by discovering the facts behind the scene and by bringing to light the true motivation of profit-driven public relations campaigns can we promote and defend the health of the environment and the safety of consumer products. For a veteran in the subject who may have participated in some of the struggles

Decades of Deception

Do we ever really know anything for certain? And if not, how can we move forward and protect the public health? This important book chronicles how the industry "manufactures uncertainty" about the dangers of their products, delaying or killing new regulations, and how the health of workers, the public and the environment suffer as a result. This "product defense industry" has grown very sophisticated and is well funded. Michaels offers numerous solutions in the final chapters to reset the Nation's regulatory apparatus and keep it from listing more and more towards protecting industry's profits rather then health. This book will make you angry, but it will also motivate you. The hope is that a new Administration will put us on a path towards a fairer and safer world.