by Thomas O. McGarity, Wendy E. Wagner
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Product Description
What do we know about the possible poisons that industrial technologies leave in our air and water? How reliable is the science that federal regulators and legislators use to protect the public from dangerous products? As this disturbing book shows, ideological or economic attacks on research are part of an extensive pattern of abuse. Thomas O. McGarity and Wendy Wagner reveal the range of sophisticated legal and financial tactics political and corporate advocates use to discredit or suppress research on potential human health hazards. Scientists can find their research blocked, or find themselves threatened with financial ruin. Corporations, plaintiff attorneys, think tanks, even government agencies have been caught suppressing or distorting research on the safety of chemical products. With alarming stories drawn from the public record, McGarity and Wagner describe how advocates attempt to bend science or “spin” findings. They reveal an immense range of tools available to shrewd partisans determined to manipulate research. Bending Science exposes an astonishing pattern of corruption and makes a compelling case for reforms to safeguard both the integrity of science and the public health.
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Not sleeping anymore, 2008-10-29
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.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
The Truth Can Be Depressing, 2008-09-20
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.
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