NOTES
PREFACE: THE SMELL TEST
2 James Lindheim, “Restoring the Image of the Chemical Industry,”
Chemistry and Industry, no. 15, August 7, 1989, p. 491.
CHAPTER 1: THE THIRD MAN
1 Greg Miller and Leslie Helm, “Microsoft Tried to Grow ‘Grass Roots,’ ”
Los Angeles Times, April 10, 1998.
3 “An Open Letter to President Clinton from 240 Economists on Antitrust Protectionism,” the Independent Institute, June 1999.
4 Robert MacMillan, “240 Economists Slam U.S. for Antitrust Actions,”
Newsbytes, June 2, 1999.
5 Joel Brinkley, “ ‘Unbiased’ Ads for Microsoft Came at a Price,”
New York Times, September 18, 1999, p. 1.
7 David Callahan, “The Think Tank As Flack,”
Washington Monthly, vol. 31, no. 11 (November 1, 1999), p. 21.
8 Robert Dilenschneider, keynote speech at Media Relations ’98, Marriott Marquis Hotel, New York, NY, April 27, 1998.
9 Jack O’Dwyer’s Newsletter, vol. 31, no. 16 (April 22, 1998), p. 8.
10 Ben Wildavsky and Neil Munro, “Culture Clash,”
National Journal, vol. 30, no. 20 (May 16, 1998), p. 1102.
11 Mary Mosquera, “Spin Accelerates as Microsoft Trial Nears,”
TechWeb News, October 16, 1998.
12 Ted Bridis, Glenn Simpson, and Mylene Mangalindan, “When Microsoft’s Spin Got Too Good, Oracle Hired Private Investigators,”
Wall Street Journal, June 29, 2000, p. 1.
13 Mary Jo Foley, “Microsoft Still Considering Image Makeover Plan,”
PC Week Online, April 13, 1998.
15 Robert Cwiklik, “Ivory Tower Inc.: When Research and Lobbying Mix,”
Wall Street Journal, June 8, 1998.
16 Annabel Ferriman, “An End to Health Scares?”
British Medical Journal, vol. 319, September 11, 1999, p. 716.
17 “State Ags Investigate Healthcare PR Alliances,”
O’Dwyer’s PR Services Report, October 1999, p. 1.
18 Mark Megalli and Andy Friedman,
Masks of Deception: Corporate Front Groups in America (Essential Information, 1991), p. 82.
19 Bob Burton, “Sometimes the Truth Leaks Out: Failed PR Campaigns ‘Down Under,’ ”
PR Watch, vol. 4, no. 4 (Fourth Quarter 1997).
20 Merrill Rose, “Activism in the 90s: Changing Roles for Public Relations,”
Public Relations Quarterly, vol. 36, no. 3 (1991), pp. 28-32.
21 Susan B. Trento,
The Power House: Robert Keith Gray and the Selling of Access and Influence in Washington (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992), p. 62.
22 Douglas Walton,
Appeal to Expert Opinion: Arguments from Authority (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997), pp. 33-35.
23 Edward L. Bernays,
Public Relations (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1952), pp. 163-164.
24 Jack O’Dwyer, “Hire a PR Firm to Get the Two ‘I’s’—Ink and Intelligence,”
O’Dwyer’s PR Services Report, May 1997, p. 57.
25 Scott Cutlip,
The Unseen Power: Public Relations: A History (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., 1994), p. 210.
26 Brian Tokar, “The Wise Use Backlash: Responding to Militant Anti-Environmentalism,”
The Ecologist, vol. 25, no. 4 (1995), p. 151.
27 Jack O’Dwyer’s Newsletter, vol. 31, no. 36 (September 16, 1998), p. 8.
28 Neal Cohen, “Fine Tuning for Grassroots Effectiveness 1994,” presentation to the Public Affairs Council National Grassroots Conference, February 1994.
29 Jennifer Sereno, talk to the Madison, Wisconsin chapter of the Public Relations Society of America, March 26, 1998.
30 Martin A. Lee and Norman Solomon,
Unreliable Sources: A Guide to Detecting Bias in the Media (New York, NY: Carol Publishing, 1991), p. 66.
32 Kevin E. Foley, “Ethics and Sigma are in ‘VNR Cartel,’ ”
O’Dwyer’s PR Services Report, April 1993, p. 13.
33 Debra Hauss, “Ways to Save Money on VNRs,”
PR Week, July 19, 1999, p. 24.
34 Darren Bosik, “TV Stations Desire Health, Medical VNRs the Most,”
O’Dwyer’s PR Services Report, April 1991, p. 12.
35 Ted Anthony, “Film Review—Thirteenth Floor,” Associated Press, May 27, 1999.
36 Walter Lippmann,
Public Opinion (New York, NY: Free Press Paperbacks, 1997), pp. 27-28.
44 “O’Dwyer’s 1999 PR Buyer’s Guide: Celebrities,”
O’Dwyer’s PR Services Report, January 1999, p. 42.
45 Gerard F. Anderson and Jean-Pierre Poullier, “Health Spending, Access, and Outcomes: Trends in Industrialized Countries,”
Health Affairs, Vol. 18, No. 3 (May-June 1999), pp. 178-192.
46 “PR Pros Are Among Least Believable Public Figures,”
O’Dwyer’s PR Services Report, August 1999, p. 1.
48 Randall Rothenberg, “The Age of Spin,”
Esquire, December 1996, p. 71.
CHAPTER 2: THE BIRTH OF SPIN
1 Thomas L. Haskell, “Power to the Experts” (review of Burton J. Bledstein’s
The Culture of Professionalism),
New York Review of Books, October 13, 1977.
2 Chicago Times-Herald, October 22, 1897; University of Chicago,
University Record, II (October 22, 1897), pp. 246-249.
3 Howard S. Miller
Dollars for Research: Science and Its Patrons in Nineteenth-Century America, (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 1970), p. 184.
4 Stephen F. Mason,
A History of the Sciences (New York, NY: Macmillan, 1962), p. 591.
6 Quoted in David F. Noble,
The Religion of Technology (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 1997), p. 204.
7 Quoted in Lewis A. Coser,
Men of Ideas: A Sociologist’s View (New York, NY: Free Press, 1970), pp. 28-29.
8 Frank Fischer,
Technocracy and the Politics of Expertise (Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, Inc., 1990), pp. 67-68.
10 E. H. Carr,
Studies in Revolution (New York: Grossett and Dunlap, 1964), p. 2. Cited in Fischer, p. 69.
11 Howard P. Segal,
Technological Utopianism in American Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), pp. 62-63. Cited in Fischer, p. 69.
14 H. H. Gerth and C. W. Mills, trans. and eds.,
From Max Weber, Essays in Sociology (New York: Oxford University Press, Inc., 1947), pp. 232-233. In Coser, p. 174.
15 V. I. Lenin, “The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government,” in
Lenin: Selected Works (New York: International Publishers, 1971), p. 417. In Fischer, p. 303.
16 Fischer, pp. 125, 306, 335.
19 Quoted from Ralph Chaplin in Howard Scott,
Science Versus Chaos (New York: Technocracy, Inc., 1933), foreword. In Fischer, p. 85.
21 Frederick Lewis Allen,
Only Yesterday (New York, NY: Bantam Books, 1959), pp. 69, 140.
22 Scott Cutlip,
The Unseen Power: Public Relations: A History (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., 1994), pp. 170-176.
23 Irwin Ross,
The Image Merchants: The Fabulous World of Public Relations (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1959), pp. 51-52.
26 Edward L. Bernays,
Propaganda (New York: 1928), p. 9.
27 Richard Swift, “One-Trick Pony” (interview with Stuart Ewen),
New Internationalist 314 (July 1999), pp. 16-17.
28 Stuart Ewen,
PR! A Social History of Spin (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1996), pp. 9-10.
29 Bernays,
Crystallizing Public Opinion (New York, NY: 1923), pp. 109, 122.
31 Bernays,
Propaganda, pp. 47-48.
32 Bernays,
Crystallizing Public Opinion, p. 217.
36 “The Public Relations Counsel and Propaganda,”
Propaganda Analysis (Institute for Propaganda Analysis), August 1938, p. 62.
38 Edward L. Bernays,
Biography of an Idea (New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1965), p. 445.
40 Bernays,
Biography of an Idea, p. 445.
44 Neil Baldwin,
Edison: Inventing the Century (New York, NY: Hyperion, 1995), p. 396.
46 Bernays,
Biography of an Idea, pp. 456-457.
47 Ibid., pp. 466, 468-472.
CHAPTER 3: DECIDING WHAT YOU’LL SWALLOW
1 International Food Information Council, “How Americans Relate to Genetically Engineered Foods” (research report), September 14, 1992, pp. 1, 2.
6 Libby Mikesell and Tom Stenzel, “Re: Refining the Dictionary” (memo to Biotech Research Core Team), International Food Information Council, October 28, 1992.
7 Robert Youngson,
Scientific Blunders: A Brief History of How Wrong Scientists Can Sometimes Be (New York, NY: Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc., 1998), p. 301.
8 Ibid., pp. 225-226. Isaac Asimov reached similar conclusions in his encyclopedic
New Guide to Science (New York, NY: Basic Books, 1985), p. 845: “Psychoanalysis still remains an art rather than a science. Rigorously controlled experiments such as those conducted in physics and the other ‘hard’ sciences are, of course, exceedingly difficult in psychiatry. The practitioners must base their conclusions largely on intuition or subjective judgment. . . . Nor has it developed any all-embracing and generally accepted theory, comparable to the germ theory of infectious disease. In fact, there are almost as many schools of psychiatry as there are psychiatrists.”
9 “Television Show Spotlights Major PR Controversies,”
O’Dwyer’s PR Services Report, April 1991, p. 62.
11 Randall Rothenberg, “The Age of Spin,”
Esquire, December 1996, p. 71.
12 Jack O’Dwyer, “Marketing is Perception—Not Truth,”
Jack O’Dwyer’s Newsletter, vol. 25, no. 8 (February 19, 1992), p. 7.
14 “Cutlip Tells of Heroes and Goals Encountered in 55-Year PR Career,”
O’Dwyer’s PR Services Report, May 1991, p. 12.
16 William Greider,
Who Will Tell the People: The Betrayal of American Democracy (New York, NY: Touchstone Books, 1992), p. 54.
17 James E. Lukaszewski, “When the Press Attacks: Should You Stonewall or Cooperate?” presentation at Media Relations ’98, Marriott Marquis Hotel, New York, NY, April 27, 1998.
18 James E. Lukaszewski, “Face the Press: Media Training for Public Relations Professionals,” presentation at Media Relations ’98, Marriott Marquis Hotel, New York, NY, April 28, 1998.
19 Lukaszewski, “When the Press Attacks.”
20 Lukaszewski, “Face the Press.”
23 PR Newswire, “Much Ado About Nothing—Sound Science Group Responds to the Latest CSPI Scare” (news release from The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition), February 21, 1996.
25 Bob Condor, “Dr. Robert Kushner” (interview),
Chicago Tribune, July 18, 1999, p. 3.
PART TWO—RISKY BUSINESS (PREFACE)
1 Peter Bernstein,
Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk (New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, 1998).
CHAPTER 4: DYING FOR A LIVING
1 Rachel Scott,
Muscle and Blood (New York, NY: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1974), p. 293.
2 David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz, “Workers’ Health and Safety—Some Historical Notes,” in Rosner and Markowitz (eds.),
Dying for Work: Workers’ Safety and Health in Twentieth-Century America (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1987), p. xvii.
3 Marie H. Bias-Jones, “For Survivors of the Hawk’s Nest Tunnel, It Was Just a Job,”
Charleston Gazette, August 7, 1996, p. 4.
5 Rosner and Markowitz, p. xvii.
6 Abid Aslam, “Environment: New Book Records Neglect by Union Carbide,” Inter Press Service, May 2, 1990.
7 Robert D. Bullard,
Unequal Protection (San Francisco, CA: Sierra Club Books, 1994). Quoted in Craig Fluorney, “In the War for Justice, There’s No Shortage of Environmental Fights,”
Dallas Morning News, July 3, 1994, p. 8J.
8 James L. Weeks, “Deadly Dust” (book review),
Science, vol. 256, no. 5053 (April 3, 1992), p. 116.
12 Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner, “The Reawakening of National Concern About Silicosis,”
Public Health Reports, vol. 113, no. 4 (July 17, 1998), p. 302.
13 “Preventing Silicosis and Death in Construction Workers,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Cited in James E. Roughton and John C. Pierdomenico, “Crystalline Silica: The New Asbestos,”
Professional Safety, vol. 43, no. 5 (May 1998), pp. 12-13.
14 Gardiner Harris, “Dust, Deception and Death,”
Courier-Journal (Louisville, KY), April 19, 1998, p. 01K.
15 Jim Morris, “Silicosis: A Slow Death,”
Houston Chronicle, August 9, 1992, p. A1.
17 Quoted in Markowitz and Rosner, “The Reawakening of National Concern About Silicosis,” p. 302.
18 David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz,
Deadly Dust: Silicosis and the Politics of Occupational Disease in Twentieth Century America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), p. 186.
20 Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner, “The Reawakening of National Concern About Silicosis,” p. 302.
21 J. Paul Leigh, et al., “Occupational Injury and Illness in the United States: Estimates of Costs, Morbidity and Mortality,”
Archives of Internal Medicine, July 28, 1997, pp. 1357-1368.
22 William Serrin, “The Wages of Work,”
The Nation, vol. 252, no. 3 (January 28, 1991), p. 80.
23 David Kotelchuck, “Asbestosis—Science for Sale,”
Science for the People, v. 7, no. 5 (September 1995), p. 10.
24 Jim Morris, “Worked to Death,”
Houston Chronicle, October 9, 1994, p. A1.
26 David F. Noble, “The Chemistry of Risk,”
Seven Days, vol. 3, no. 7 (June 5, 1979), p. 24.
28 Quoted in Scott, p. 40.
31 William Graebner, “Hegemony Through Science: Information Engineering and Lead Toxicology, 1925-1965,” in Rosner and Markowitz (eds.),
Dying for Work: Workers’ Safety and Health in Twentieth-Century America (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1987), p. 143.
32 David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz, “ ‘A Gift of God’? The Public Health Controversy Over Leaded Gasoline in the 1920s,” in Rosner and Markowitz,
Dying for Work, p. 125.
36 Quoted in
Rachel’s Environment & Health Weekly, no. 539 (March 27, 1997).
37 Rosner and Markowitz, “ ‘A Gift of God’?” p. 131.
38 Ellen Ruppel Shell, “An Element of Doubt: Disinterested Research Casts Doubt on Claims that Lead Poisoning from Paint is Widespread Among American Children,”
Atlantic Monthly, vol. 276, no. 6 (Dec. 1995), p. 24.
39 Deborah Baldwin, “Heavy Metal,”
Common Cause Magazine, Summer 1992.
40 William Graebner, “Hegemony Through Science: Information Engineering and Lead Toxicology, 1925-1965,” in Rosner and Markowitz,
Dying for Work, p. 147.
42 Ellen M. Perlmutter, “Pitt Scientist Prevails Over Lead, Critics, Wins $250,000 Heinz Award,”
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 12/1/95, p. A1.
CHAPTER 5: PACKAGING THE BEAST
2 Karen Silkwood was a chemical technician at the Kerr-McGee company’s plutonium fuels production plant in Crescent, Oklahoma. An activist who was critical of plant safety, she died under suspicious circumstances. During the week prior to her death, she was reportedly gathering evidence to support her claim that the company was negligent in maintaining plant safety, and at the same time she was involved in a number of unexplained exposures to plutonium. On November 13, 1974, she was killed when her car crashed into a concrete embankment en route to a meeting with a
New York Times reporter to deliver documents proving her allegations about plant safety. Her files were never recovered from the wreck. Many people believe that her car was forced off the road, causing her death.
3 In 1990, local communities began organizing, and Ken Saro-Wiwa was chosen to head a new activist organization, MOSOP. After an angry mob killed four Ogoni opponents of MOSOP, the government arrested Ken Saro-Wiwa and the eight others, subjecting them to nine months of torture before convicting them of “inciting” the murders in a special military trial that was condemned as “fundamentally flawed and unfair” by international legal observers.
4 “Clear Thinking in Troubled Times” (Shell newspaper ad), quoted in “Clear Thinking,”
Moneyclips, November 21, 1995.
5 Andy Rowell, “Shell Shocked: Did the Shell Petroleum Company Silence Nigerian Environmentalist Ken Saro-Wiwa?”
The Village Voice, November 21, 1995, p. 21.
6 Polly Ghazi, “Shell Refused to Help Saro-Wiwa Unless Protest Called Off,”
The Observer (London), November 19, 1995, p. 1.
7 Thomas Buckmaster, “Defusing Sensitive Issues Through Risk Communication,” presentation at the Public Affairs Council’s National Grassroots Conference for Corporate and Association Professionals, Key West, Florida, February 9-13, 1997. Quoted in
PR Watch, vol. 4, no. 1 (first quarter 1997).
8 Daniel E. Geer, “Risk Management Is Where the Money Is,” presentation to the Digital Commerce Society of Boston, November 3, 1998.
9 Ian Stewart, “Playing with Numbers,”
Guardian (London), March 28, 1996.
10 C. R. Cothern, W.A. Coniglio and W. L. Marcus, “Estimating Risk to Human Health,”
Environmental Science and Technology, vol. 20 (February 1986), p. 111.
11 Peter Montague, “The Waning Days of Risk Assessment,”
Rachel’s Environment and Health Weekly, no. 652 (May 27, 1999).
12 David F. Noble, “Cost-Benefit Analysis,”
Health/PAC Bulletin, vol. 11, no. 6 (July/August 1980), p. 27.
14 H.W. Lewis,
Technological Risk (New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Co., 1990), pp. 43-45.
17 Steven Fink,
Crisis Management (New York: American Management Association, 1986), pp. 169-170. An exact figure for the dead and injured does not exist. Estimates of the number of dead range from a low of 1,700 to a high of 4,500. The figure of 200,000 injured has been widely cited and is generally considered a conservative estimate.
19 Suketu Mehta, “After Bhopal: What Does It Mean to Take ‘Moral Responsibility’ for a Disaster?”
Village Voice, December 10, 1996, p. 54. See also Wilbert Lepkowski, “Ten Years Later: Bhopal,”
Chemical & Engineering News, December 19, 1994, pp. 8-18.
21 Geoffrey Bennet,
By Human Error: Disaster of a Century (London: Seeley, Service, 1961), p. 144.
24 “Crisis Busters,”
PR Week, May 17, 1999, p. 16.
26 Gary Lewi, “How to Polish a Tarnished Reputation,” presentation at Media Relations ’98, Marriott Marquis Hotel, New York, NY, April 27, 1998.
27 Steve Crescenzo, “Fighting a Blitzkrieg: PR Firms Representing Swiss Authorities Find Themselves in a Foxhole,”
Public Relations Tactics, vol. 4, no. 7 (July 1997), pp. 1, 12.
28 Public Relations Tactics, November 1995.
29 Kathleen Fearn-Banks,
Crisis Communications: A Casebook Approach (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1996), pp. 149-150.
30 Larry Dobrow, “Got a Plan? H&K CD-ROM Simulates Crisis Exercise,”
PR Week, April 12, 1999, p. 5.
31 Larry Kamer, “Crisis Drill: Testing Your Company Before Disaster Strikes,” presentation at Media Relations ’98, Marriott Marquis Hotel, New York, NY, April 27, 1998.
32 Paul Holmes, “This Is a Drill,”
Reputation Management, May/June 1997, pp. 17-28.
CHAPTER 6: PREVENTING PRECAUTION
1 Crisis Management Plan for the Clorox Company, 1991 Draft Prepared by Ketchum Public Relations. For further excerpts, see the appendix to our previous book,
Toxic Sludge Is Good for You!: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry (Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 1995).
2 Charles Campbell, “Crisis Plan’s Leak Smudges Clorox,”
Los Angeles Times, May 14, 1991, p. 9D.
3 Hank Baughman and Patty Tascarella, “Ketchum—Winning in the Age of Zapping,”
Executive Report, vol. 10, no. 5 (January 1992), sec. 1, p. 16.
4 Greenpeace scientist Pat Costner notes that sodium hypochlorite is problematic in two ways: “First, its production and use requires the continued production of elemental chlorine, the root source of effectively all anthropogenic dioxins as well as a known dioxin source in its own right. Secondly, some sodium hypochlorite has been found to be contaminated with dioxins,” she says. However, notes former Greenpeace organizer Charlie Cray, “sodium hypochlorite is probably low down on the list of priorities for phasing out the various uses of chlorine, since other uses of chlorine are far greater in terms of their quantity, and since it is not as toxic, persistent and bioaccumulative in the environment.” Quoted in Margo Robb, “Fwd: Re: chlorine,” July 3, 2000, personal e-mail to Sheldon Rampton.
5 Carolyn Raffensperger and Joel Tickner, eds.,
Protecting Public Health and the Environment: Implementing the Precautionary Principle (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1999), p. 1.
6 Jean Halloran, “Re: Beef Hormones,” May 27, 1999, personal e-mail to John Stauber.
7 Frederick Kirschenmann, “The Organic Rule: Risk Assessment vs. the Precautionary Principle,” February 10, 1998, <
http://www.pmac.net/nosfk5.htm>, (July 25, 2000).
9 Gregory Bond, Ph.D., M.P.H., “In Search of Balance Between Science and Societal Concerns in Shaping Environmental Health Policy,” a presentation at the First Annual Isadore Bernstein Symposium, “Environmental Health Policy: Whither the Science?” March 12, 1999, University of Michigan School of Public Health, Ann Arbor, MI.
10 John O. Mongoven, “The Precautionary Principle,”
eco.logic, March 1995, pp. 14-16.
eco.logic is a publication of the Environmental Conservation Organization, Hollow Rock, TN.
12 “MBD Profile,” Mongoven, Biscoe & Duchin (undated).
13 “MBD—A Brief Description,” Mongoven, Biscoe & Duchin (undated).
14 “Core Issues Monitored by MBD,” Mongoven, Biscoe & Duchin (undated).
15 “MBD—A Brief Description.”
16 “Table of Contents of Each Organizational Profile,” Mongoven, Biscoe & Duchin (undated).
17 For examples of deceptive efforts by MBD and other PR firms to infiltrate and interrogate various activist groups, see Chapter 5, “Spies for Hire,” in our previous book,
Toxic Sludge Is Good for You!: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry (Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 1995), pp. 47-64.
18 Bartholomew Mongoven, Letter to the Wilderness Society, Sydney, Australia, January 25, 1995.
19 Samantha Sparks, “South Africa: U.S. Clergy Group Linked to Shell Oil,” Inter Press Service, October 7, 1987. See also “Ex-Nestlé Firm Goes Bankrupt,”
O’Dwyer’s PR Services, November 1990, p. 1.
20 Alan Guebert, “Pork Battles: Pork Groups Pays Firm to ‘Monitor’ Other Ag Groups Using Checkoff Money,”
The Pantagraph (Bloomington, IL), February 9, 1997, p. E4.
21 “MBD Update and Analysis: Confidential For: Chlorine Chemistry Council,” Mongoven, Biscoe & Duchin, May 18, 1994, p. 2.
22 “MBD Issue Research and Analysis: Activists and Chlorine in August,” Mongoven, Biscoe & Duchin, 1994, pp. 1-2.
25 There are some 75 different types of dioxin, however, with varying levels of toxicity.
26 Leslie Roberts, “Flap Erupts Over Dioxin Meeting,”
Science, vol. 251, no. 4996 (February 22, 1991), p. 866.
27 “MBD Update and Analysis,” p. 6.
28 Gordon Graff, “The Chlorine Controversy,”
Technology Review, vol. 98, no. 1 (January 1995), p. 54.
29 American Public Health Association, Policy Statement 9304, “Recognizing and Addressing the Environmental and Occupational Health Problems Posed by Chlorinated Organic Chemicals,”
American Journal of Public Health, vol. 84, no. 3 (March 1994), pp. 514-515. Quoted in
Rachel’s Environment & Health Weekly, no. 495, May 23, 1996.
30 Theo Colborn, Dianne Dumanoski, and John Peterson Myers,
Our Stolen Future: Are We Threatening Our Fertility, Intelligence, and Survival?—A Scientific Detective Story (New York, NY: Dutton Books, 1996), pp. 185, 210.
32 “Exposure to Environmental Chemicals: PR Hype or Public Health Concern,” debate between Elizabeth Whelan, Peter Myers, and Theo Colborn, sponsored by Environmental Media Services, June 12, 1996.
33 Jack Mongoven, “Re: MBD Activist Report for August,” memorandum to Clyde Greenert and Brad Lienhart, September 7, 1994.
34 “Summary of MBD Recommendations to CCC, August 1994,” Mongoven, Biscoe & Duchin, p. 2.
35 Devra Lee Davis et al., “International Trends in Cancer Mortality in France, West Germany, Italy, Japan, England and Wales, and the USA,”
Lancet, vol. 336, no. 8713 (August 25, 1990), pp. 474-481.
36 Devra Lee Davis, Capitol Hill Hearing Testimony on Use of Estrogenic Pesticides and Breast Cancer, U.S. Congress Subcommittee on Health and the Environment, October 21, 1993.
37 Karen Wright, “Going by the Numbers,”
New York Times, December 15, 1991, section 6, p. 59.
38 Devra Lee Davis et al., “Medical Hypothesis: Xenoestrogens as Preventable Causes of Breast Cancer,”
Environmental Health Perspectives, vol. 101, no. 3 (October 1993), pp. 372-377.
39 Gayle Greene and Vicki Ratner, “A Toxic Link to Breast Cancer?”
The Nation, vol. 258, no. 24 (June 20, 1994), p. 866.
40 Michael Castleman, “Despite Mounting Evidence,”
Mother Jones, no. 3, vol. 19 (May 1994), p. 33.
41 Mary S. Wolff et al., “Blood Levels of Organochlorine Residues and Risk of Breast Cancer,”
Journal of the National Cancer Institute, vol. 85, no. 8 (April 21, 1993), pp. 648-652.
42 F. Laden and D. J. Hunter, “Environmental Risk Factors and Female Breast Cancer,”
Annual Review of Public Health, vol. 19 (1998), pp. 101-123. See also N. Krieger et al., “Breast Cancer and Serum Organochlorines: A Prospective Study Among White, Black, and Asian Women,”
Journal of the National Cancer Institute, vol. 86, no. 8 (April 20, 1994), pp. 589-599.
43 E. J. Feuer et al., “The Lifetime Risk of Developing Breast Cancer,”
Journal of the National Cancer Institute, vol. 85, no. 11 (June 2, 1993), pp. 892-897. Lezak Shallat, “Up in Arms Over Breast Cancer,”
Women’s Health Journal, January 1995, p. 31.
44 Davis, Capitol Hill Hearing Testimony.
46 Michele Landsberg, “Breast Cancer Battle Now Focuses on Deadly Chemicals,”
Toronto Star, July 20, 1997, p. A2.
47 Wright, “Going by the Numbers.”
48 Michelle Slatalla,“The Lagging War on Breast Cancer,”
Newsday, October3, 1993, p.4.
49 Peter H. Stone, “From the K Street Corridor,”
National Journal, vol. 26, no. 51-52 (December 17, 1994), p. 2975.
50 Peter H. Stone, “Back Off!”
National Journal, vol. 26, no. 45 (December 3, 1994), p. 2840.
51 Allison Lucas, “Health Studies Raise More Questions in Chlorine Dispute,”
Chemical Week, December 21, 1994, p. 26.
53 “MBD Update and Analysis,” p. 10.
54 “Summary of MBD Recommendations to CCC,” p. 3.
55 “Koch Hit With Record Fine for Pipeline Spills in Six States,”
Octane Week, January 24, 2000.
56 ex femina, The Newsletter of the Independent Women’s Forum, special edition (May 1999), Washington, DC.
CHAPTER 7: ATTACK OF THE KILLER POTATOES
2 Pennie Taylor, “Smear Campaign Fails to Silence Scientist Who Spilled GM Beans,”
Sunday Herald (Scotland), May 23, 1999, p. 7.
3 B. G. Hammond, J. L. Vicini, G. F. Hartnell, et al., “The Feeding Value of Soybeans Fed to Rats, Chickens, Catfish and Dairy Cattle Is Not Altered by Genetic Incorporation of Glycophosphate-Tolerance,”
Journal of Nutrition, no. 126 (1996), pp. 717-727.
4 Arpad Pusztai, “SOAEFD Flexible Fund Project RO 818: Report of the Project Coordinator on Data Produced at the Rowett Research Institute (RRI), October 22, 1998, <
http://www.rri.sari.ac.uk/gmo/ajp.htm>, (July 25, 2000).
5 Liane Clorfene-Casten, “FrankenFoods: Monsanto Engineers the Farming Biz,”
Conscious Choice: The Journal of Ecology and Natural Living, vol. 12, no. 5 (May 31, 1999), pp. 48-49.
6 Alan Rimmer, “I Have Been Crucified, Says Dr. Arpad Pusztai,”
Sunday Mirror, February 21, 1999, p. 7.
8 Arpad Pusztai, “Reply,” December 9, 1999, personal e-mail to Sheldon Rampton.
9 Nigel Hawkes, “Scientist’s Potato Alert Was False, Laboratory Admits,”
The Times (London), August 13, 1998.
10 Arpad Pusztai, “Your Book,” November 23, 1999, personal e-mail to Sheldon Rampton.
11 Euan McColm, “Doctor’s Monster Mistake,”
Scottish Daily Record & Sunday Mail, October 13, 1998, p. 6.
12 Charles Arthur, “The Strange Case of the Rats, the ‘Cover-up’ and a Political Hot Potato,”
The Independent (London), February 16, 1999, p. 3.
13 Charles Clover and Aisling Irwin, “Heartfelt Fears of the Whistleblower Who Spilled the Beans over GM,”
The Daily Telegraph (London), June 10, 1999, p. 4.
14 Christopher Leake and Lorraine Fraser, “Scientist in Frankenstein Food Alert Is Proved Right,”
Mail on Sunday, January 31, 1999, p. 20. Euan McColm, “Doctor’s Monster Mistake,”
Scottish Daily Record & Sunday Mail, October 13,1998, p. 6.
15 Pennie Taylor, “GM Food Feud Comes to the Boil,”
Sunday Herald (Scotland), March 14, 1999, p. 3.
16 Ibid., and Charles Clover and Aisling Irwin, “Heartfelt Fears of the Whistleblower Who Spilled the Beans over GM,”
The Daily Telegraph (London), June 10, 1999, p. 4.
17 Geoffrey Lean, “How I Told the Truth and Was Sacked,”
The Independent (London), March 7, 1999, p. 11.
18 Christopher Leake, “Minister Blackened My Name Says Doctor,”
Mail on Sunday (London), February 14, 1999, p. 5.
19 Taylor, “Smear Campaign.”
20 Stuart E. Eizenstat, testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance during hearings on his nomination to be Deputy Secretary of the Treasury, June 29, 1999.
21 For a review of the history and scientific issues pertaining to mad cow disease, see our previous book,
Mad Cow U.S.A.: Could the Nightmare Happen Here? (Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 1997). For a specific discussion of the impact of the mad cow scandal on European opinions about biotech foods, see Frank Mitsch,
Ag Biotech: Thanks, But No Thanks? Deutsche Banc, July 12, 1999, p. 6.
22 Sarah Ryle, “Food Furor: The Man With the Worst Job in Britain,”
The Observer (London), February 21, 1999, p. 13.
23 Howard J. Lewis, “Science Journalism Around the World: Vive la Difference!”
ScienceWriters (newsletter of the National Association of Science Writers), vol. 48, no. 2 (Summer 1999), p. 12.
24 Ziauddin Sardar, “Loss of Innocence: Genetically Modified Foods,”
New Statesman (UK), No. 4425, vol. 129 (February 26, 1999), p. 47.
25 Tom Rhodes, “Bitter Harvest,”
Sunday Times (London), August 22, 1999.
26 Marian Burros, “Additives in Advice on Foods?”
New York Times, November 15, 1995, p. C1.
27 James C. Barr and E. Linwood Tipton, letter to Mary Jane Wilkinson, February 8, 1996.
28 Dairy Coalition, “Dairy Coalition Has Meeting, Heated at Times, with
USA Today” (memorandum), February 9, 1996.
29 Dairy Coalition, “Making Headway with the Media” (memorandum), February 23, 1996.
31 For further documentation of this point, see Larry Lebowitz, “Hormone-Free Milk? There’s No Guarantee,”
Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, April 4, 1998, p. 1A.
32 Jennifer Nix, “Hard-Hitting TV News Hard to Get on Air,”
Variety, April 20-26, 1998, p. 5.
33 “Improving on Mother Nature?”
Consumer Reports, vol. 60, no. 7 (July 1995), p. 480.
34 Michael Pollan, “Playing God in the Garden,”
The New York Times Magazine, October 25, 1998.
35 Phil Bereano and Florian Kraus, “The Politics of Genetically Engineered Foods: The United States Versus Europe,”
Loka Alert vol. 6, no. 7 (November 22, 1999), Loka Institute, Amherst, MA.
36 Clive James, “ISAA Briefs: Global Review of Commercialized Transgenic Crops,” 1998, Ag Biotech InfoNet, <
http://www.biotech-info.net/isaaa__briefs.html>, (July 25, 2000). See also Paul Jacobs, “Protest May Mow Down Trend to Alter Crops: Public Outcry Over Genetically Modified Foods Has the U.S. Agriculture Industry Backpedaling,”
Los Angeles Times, October 5, 1999; and Frank Mitsch,
Ag Biotech: Thanks, But No Thanks? Deutsche Banc, July 12, 1999, p. 20.
37 “Greenwar” (editorial),
Wall Street Journal, August 11, 1999.
38 John Vidal and David Hencke, “Genetic Food Facing Crisis,”
The Guardian (London), November 18, 1998.
39 Geoffrey Lean, “GM Foods—Victory for Grassroots Action,”
The Independent (London), May 3, 1999.
40 Quoted in Bereano and Kraus, “The Politics of Genetically Engineered Foods: The United States Versus Europe.”
41 “Let the Harvest Begin” (attachment to a letter from Donald B. Easum of Global Business Access Ltd. on behalf of Monsanto), May 1998.
42 Claudia Parson, “Aid Agencies Say Biotechnology Won’t End Hunger,” Reuters, September 1998.
43 Charles Benbrook, “Evidence of the Magnitude and Consequences of the Roundup Ready Soybean Yield Drag from University-Based Varietal Trials in 1998,” Ag BioTech InfoNet Technical Paper Number 1, July 13, 1999, <
http://www.biotech-info.net/RR__yield__drag__98.pdf>, (July 25, 2000).
44 “Playing God in the Garden,”
New York Times, October 25, 1998.
45 “Allergies to Transgenic Foods” (editorial),
New England Journal of Medicine, vol. 334, no. 11 (March 14, 1996), p. 726.
46 “Playing God in the Garden,”
New York Times, October 25, 1998.
47 Mary Challender, “Sufferers Hope to Get Word Out on L-Tryptophan Illness,”
Des Moines Register, October 12, 1993.
49 Arthur N. Mayeno et al., “Characterization of ‘Peak E,’ a Novel Amino Acid Associated with Eosinophilia-Myalgia Syndrome,”
Science, vol. 250, no. 4988 (December 21, 1990), pp. 1707-1708.
50 EMS was first identified as a disease syndrome in October 1989. FDA advisories and product recalls for L-tryptophan began in November 1989, with a more comprehensive recall issued in March 1990. For a brief synopsis of the process by which the disease was discovered and the FDA-initiated regulatory measures, see Stephen A. Gold et al., “The Clinical Impact of Adverse Event Reporting,” in
Medscape Clinician Reviews, vol. 7, no. 7 (1997).
51 For an attempt to ascertain what caused the disease, see Arthur N. Mayeno and Gerald J. Gleich, “Eosinophilia-myalgia Syndrome and Tryptophan Production: A Cautionary Tale,”
Trends in Biotechnology, vol. 12, no. 9 (September 1994), pp. 346-352. Also see Hertzman, P.A., “L-tryptophan Related Eosinophilia-myalgia Syndrome,” in
Drug and Device Induced Disease: Developing a Blueprint for the Future, Proceedings of a MEDWATCH Conference, January 21-22, 1994, Rockville, MD, Food and Drug Administration.
52 Verlyn Klinkenborg, “Biotechnology and the Future of Agriculture,”
New York Times, December 8, 1997.
53 Statement delivered by Julian Edwards, Director General, Consumers International, before the Codex Committee on Food Labeling, 26th Session, Ottawa, Canada, May 26-29, 1998.
54 Karen Charman, “America for Sale: Destruction of the Heartland,” unpublished master’s thesis, 1994 (updated).
55 “New Study Backs Up Biotech Fears,” Inter Press Service, September 4, 1998.
56 Carol Kaesuk Yoon, “Squash with Altered Genes Raises Fears of ‘Superweeds,’ ”
New York Times, November 3, 1999.
57 Terence Corcoran, “Attack of the Tomato Killers,”
Financial Post (Canada), May 8, 1999, p. C7.
58 David Barboza, “Biotech Companies Take On Critics of Gene-Altered Food,”
New York Times, November 12, 1999, p. 1.
59 “Greenwar” (editorial),
Wall Street Journal, August 11, 1999.
62 Scott Kilman, “Food Fright: Biotech Scare Sweeps Europe, and Companies Wonder if U.S. Is Next,”
Wall Street Journal, October 7, 1999, p. A1.
63 “Biotech Crops Gain Favor on the Farm: Controversy Abroad Hasn’t Slowed Planting,”
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 23, 1999. “U.S. Agriculture Loses Huge Markets Thanks to GMOs,”
Reuters, March 3, 1999.
64 Rick Weiss, “Food War Claims Its Casualties,”
Washington Post, September 12, 1999, p. A1.
65 Testimony of Tim Hume, board member of the National Corn Growers Association, before the Senate Agriculture Committee, October 7, 1999.
66 Jim Ostroff, “Genetically Modified Foods: Peril or Promise? U.S. Fight Over Bioengineering Starting to Take Shape—in Congress, in Stores, and in the Minds of Consumers,”
Supermarket News, October 25, 1999.
67 A. Birch et al., “Interactions Between Plant Resistance Genes, Pest Aphid Populations and Beneficial Aphid Predators,” 1996/1997 Scottish Crop Res. Inst. Annual Report, Dundee, pp. 68-72; A. Hilbeck et al., “Effects of Transgenic
Bacillus thuringiensis Corn-Fed Prey on Mortality and Development Time of Immature
Chrysoperla carnea (Neuroptera: Chrysopidae),”
Environmental Entomology no. 27 (1998), pp. 480-487. Deepak Saxena, Saul Flores, and G. Stotzky, “Transgenic Plants: Insecticidal Toxin in Root Exudates from Bt Corn,”
Nature, no. 402 (December 2, 1999), p. 480.
68 John Frank, “Field of Bad Dreams,”
PR Week, July 5, 1999, p. 17.
69 “Butterflies and Bt Corn Pollen: Lab Research and Field Realities,” Monsanto position paper, February 15, 2000.
70 Biotechnology Industry Organization, “Scientific Symposium to Show No Harm to Monarch Butterfly” (news release), November 2, 1999.
71 Robert Steyer, “Scientists Discount Threat to Butterflies from Altered Corn,”
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 2, 1999, p. A5.
72 Rebecca Goldburg, “Industry Manipulation of Research Results on Bt Corn and Monarchs,” November 4, 1999, e-mail to distribution list.
73 Carol Kaesuk Yoon, “No Consensus on the Effects of Engineering on Corn Crops,”
New York Times, November 4, 1999.
74 David Barboza, “Biotech Companies Take on Critics of Gene-Altered Foods,”
New York Times, November 12, 1999, p. 1.
75 Camillo Fracassini, “Food Row: Scientist ‘Sacked’ Over Data Mistake,”
The Scotsman, August 13, 1998, p. 1.
76 S. W. B. Ewen and Arpad Pusztai, “Effects of Diets Containing Genetically Modified Potatoes Expressing Galanthus Nivalis Lectin on Rat Small Intestines,”
The Lancet, no. 354 (1999), pp. 1353-1354. Not all of Pusztai’s research points to problems with GM foods. In 1999 he published a study in the
Journal of Nutrition which examined the effect of a different lectin transgene inserted into peas and found no adverse affects. See Arpad Pusztai, G. Grant, S. Bardocz, R. Alonso, M. J. Chrispeels, H. E. Schroeder, L. M. Tabe and T. J. V. Higgins, “Expression of the Insecticidal Bean Alpha-amylase Inhibitor Transgene Has Minimal Detrimental Effect on the Nutritional Value of Peas Fed to Rats at 30% of the Diet,”
Journal of Nutrition, no. 129 (1999), pp. 1597-1603.
77 Robin McKie, “Why Britain’s Scientific Establishment Got So Ratty with This Gentle Boffin,”
The Observer, October 17, 1999, p. 10.
78 Laurie Flynn and Michael Sean Gillard, “Pro-GM Food Scientist ‘Threatened Editor, ’ ”
The Guardian (London), November 1, 1999.
80 1999 O’Dwyer’s Directory of Public Relations Firms (New York, NY: J. R. O’Dwyer Co., Inc., 1999) lists all clients but Philip Morris, who is listed in
1999 Washington Representatives (New York, NY: Columbia Books, Inc., 1999).
81 Telephone interview by Karen Charman with Brian Sansoni, October 27, 1999.
82 Stephen Rouse, “GM Scientist Defends Himself on Internet,”
Aberdeen Press and Journal, June 14, 1999, p. 2.
83 Jose L. Domingo, “Health Risks of GM Foods: Many Opinions but Few Data,”
Science, vol. 288 (June 9, 2000), pp. 1748-1749.
PART THREE—THE EXPERTISE INDUSTRY (PREFACE)
1 Elizabeth MacDonald and Scot J. Paltrow, “Merry-Go-Round: Ernst & Young Advised the Client, but Not About Everything,”
Wall Street Journal, August 10, 1999, p. A1.
3 See Brian Martin,
Confronting the Experts (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1996), pp. 5, 175-176.
CHAPTER 8: THE BEST SCIENCE MONEY CAN BUY
1 Robert N. Proctor,
Cancer Wars: How Politics Shapes What We Know and Don’t Know About Cancer (New York, NY: Basic Books, 1995), p. 9.
3 Karl Pearson,
The Grammar of Science (London: MacMillan, 1896). A statistician, Pearson invented the chi-square test of statistical significance. “The scientific method,” he wrote, “consists in the careful and often laborious classification of facts, the comparison of their relationships and sequences, and finally in the discovery by aid of the disciplined imagination of a brief statement or formula, which in a few words resumes a wide range of facts. Such a formula is called a scientific law” (
The Grammar of Science, p. 77). “The man who classifies facts of any kind whatever, who sees their mutual relation and describes their sequences, is applying the scientific method and is a man of science,” he stated. “The facts may belong to the past history of mankind, to the social statistics of our great cities, to the atmosphere of the most distant stars, to the digestive organs of a worm or to the life of a scarcely visible bacillus. It is not the facts themselves which make science, but the method by which they are dealt with” (
The Grammar of Science, Part 1, 12). His preoccupation with statistical correlations made him a prominent exponent of the “biometrical movement,” which sought to measure traits within populations, and also a leading figure in developing the racist pseudoscience of eugenics. “History shows me one way, and one way only, in which a high state of civilization has been produced,” he stated, “namely the struggle of race with race, and the survival of the physically and mentally fitter race. . . . My view—and I think it may be called the scientific view of a nation—is that of an organized whole, kept up to a high pitch of internal efficiency by insuring that its numbers are substantially recruited from the better stocks, and kept up to a high pitch of external efficiency by contest, chiefly by way of war with inferior races” (Karl Pearson,
National Life from the Standpoint of Science, 2nd Edition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1919).
4 Gordon D. Hunter,
Scrapie and Mad Cow Disease (New York: Vantage Press, 1993), pp. 25-26.
5 “Peer Review: Reforms Needed to Ensure Fairness in Federal Agency Grant Selection,” General Accounting Office, June 24, 1994, GAO/PEMD-94-1.
6 Horace Freeland Judson, “Structural Transformations of the Sciences and the End of Peer Review,”
Journal of the American Medical Association, no. 272 (July 13, 1994), pp. 92-94.
7 Richard Smith, “Peer Review: Reform or Revolution?”
British Medical Journal, no. 315 (1997), pp. 759-760.
8 David Hanners, “Scientists Were Paid to Write Letters: Tobacco Industry Sought to Discredit EPA Report,”
St. Louis Pioneer Dispatch, August 4, 1998.
10 Charles Ornstein, “Fen-phen Maker Accused of Funding Journal Articles,”
Dallas Morning News, May 23, 1999, p. 1A.
12 Robert Bell,
Impure Science: Fraud, Compromise and Political Influence in Scientific Research (New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1992), pp. 190-219.
13 Brooke T. Mossman and J. Bernard L. Gee, “Asbestos-related Diseases,”
New England Journal of Medicine, vol. 320, no. 26 (June 29, 1989), pp. 1721-1730. For a detailed critique of this incident, see Paul Brodeur and Bill Ravanesi, “Old Tricks,”
The Net-worker (newsletter of the Science and Environmental Health Network), June 1998.
14 For
NEJM’s response to the controversy over this incident, see Marcia Angell and Jerome P. Kassirer, “Editorials and Conflicts of Interest,”
New England Journal of Medicine, no. 335 (1996), pp. 1055-1056. For the researchers’ side, see JoAnn E. Mason, “Adventures in Scientific Discourse,”
Epidemiology, vol. 8, no. 3 (May 1997).
15 Jerry H. Berke, “Living Downstream” (book review),
New England Journal of Medicine, no. 337 (1997), p. 1562.
16 Nate Blakeslee, “Carcinogenic Cornucopia,”
Texas Observer, January 30, 1998.
17 “Medical Journal Apologizes for Ethics Blunder,”
Washington Post, December 28, 1997.
18 Sheldon Krimsky et al., “Scientific Journals and Their Authors’ Financial Interests: A Pilot Study,”
Psychother Psychosom, vol. 67, nos. 4-5 (July-October 1998), pp. 194-201.
19 Reported in Ralph T. King, “Medical Journals Rarely Disclose Researchers’Ties, Drawing Ire,”
Wall Street Journal, February 2, 1999. See also Sheldon Krimsky, “Will Disclosure of Financial Interests Brighten the Image of Entrepreneurial Science?” (Abstract A-29), in
1999 AAAS Annual Meeting and Science Innovation Exposition: Challenges for a New Century, C. J. Boyd, ed., American Association for the Advancement of Science.
20 Lisa A. Bero, Alison Galbraith, and Drummond Rennie, “The Publication of Sponsored Symposiums in Medical Journals,”
New England Journal of Medicine, vol. 327, no. 16 (October 15, 1992), pp. 1135-1140.
21 Cynthia Crossen,
Tainted Truth: The Manipulation of Fact in America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), pp. 183-184.
22 David Shenk, “Money + Science = Ethics Problems On Campus,”
The Nation, March 22, 1999, p. 14.
23 David Ozonoff, “The Political Economy of Cancer Research,”
Science and Nature, no. 2 (1979), p. 15.
24 Percy W. Bridgman,
Reflections of a Physicist (New York: Philosophical Library, Inc., 1950), pp. 294-296, 299-300. Quoted in Lewis A. Coser,
Men of Ideas: A Sociologist’s View (New York, NY: Free Press, 1970), pp. 300-301.
25 Stephen Hilgartner, Richard C. Bell, and Rory O’Connor,
Nukespeak: The Selling of Nuclear Technology in America (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 1983), pp. 25-35.
28 Quoted in Susan Lederer, remarks at AAAS symposium on Secrecy in Science, MIT, Cambridge, MA, March 29, 1999.
29 Alvin M. Weinberg, “Social Institutions and Nuclear Energy,”
Science, vol. 177, no. 4043, July 7, 1972, p. 34. Quoted in Hilgartner, p. 58.
30 J. Gustave Speth, Arthur R. Tamplin, and Thomas B. Cochran, “Plutonium Recycle: The Fateful Step,”
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, vol. XXX, no. 9, November 1974, p. 20. Quoted in Hilgartner, p. 58. The half-life of plutonium, by the way, is 24,400 years.
31 New York Times, May 20, 1948, p. 2. Cited in Hilgartner, p. 101.
32 World Health Organization (WHO),
Mental Health Aspects of the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy, Report of a Study Group, Technical Report Series no. 151, Geneva, 1958, p. 6. Also annex 1, “Statement of the Sub-committee on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy of the World Federation for Mental Health, approved by the 25th Meeting of the Executive Board of the WFMH, London, 8-12 February 1957,” pp. 47-48. Quoted in Hilgartner et al., p. 102.
36 Ritchie Calder,
Living With the Atom (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1962), pp. 24-25. Quoted in Hilgartner et al., p. 103.
37 Dorothy Nelkin,
Science As Intellectual Property: Who Controls Scientific Research? (New York, NY: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1984), pp. 85-86.
38 George Rathjens, “The Role of the Scientist in Military Preparedness,” from Warfare in the 1990s (conference proceedings), October 1981, <http://itest.slu.edu/dloads/ 80s/warfare.txt>, (July 25, 2000).
39 Theodore H. White, “The Action Intellectuals,”
Life, June 9, June 16, June 23, 1967. Cited in Frank Fischer,
Technocracy and the Politics of Expertise (Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, Inc., 1990), p. 152.
40 “U.S. Expenditures for Research and Development by Source of Funds and Performer,”
Wall Street Journal Almanac 1999 (New York, NY: Ballantine Books, 1998), p. 363.
41 Dorothy Nelkin,
Science As Intellectual Property: Who Controls Scientific Research? (New York, NY: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1984), pp. 18-21.
43 Melissa B. Robinson, “Medical School Faculty Say Budget Cuts Are Hurting Teaching,” Associated Press, May 19, 1999.
47 “Special Report: What Happens When Universities Become Businesses?” (Research Corporation Annual Report, 1997), p. 6.
49 Letter from Arthur Bueche to S. Dedijer, quoted in S. Dedijer, “Management Intelligence and Secrecy Management,” in Manfred Schmutzer,
Technische Innovation (Wien: Interdisziplinares Forschungszentrum, 1979), p. 119.
50 David Blumenthal et al., “Withholding Research Results in Academic Life Science,”
Journal of the American Medical Association, vol. 277, no. 15 (April 16, 1997).
51 Drummond Rennie, “Thyroid Storm” (editorial),
Journal of the American Medical Association, vol. 277, no. 15 (April 16, 1997), p. 1242.
54 Robert Lee Hotz, “Secrecy Is Often the Price of Medical Research Funding,”
Los Angeles Times, May 18, 1999, p. A-1.
55 Richard A. Knox, “Disclosure Fight May Push Doctor Out of Occupational Health Field,”
Boston Globe, May 22, 1999, p. B5.
56 Richard A. Knox, “Science and Secrecy,”
Boston Globe, March 30, 1999, p. A3.
57 “Special Report: What Happens When Universities Become Businesses?” (Research Corporation Annual Report, 1997), p. 9.
58 Richard A. Davidson, “Source of Funding and Outcome of Clinical Trials,”
Journal of General Internal Medicine, vol. 12, no. 3 (May-June 1986), pp. 155-158. Quoted in Crossen, p. 169.
59 P. A. Rochon, J. H. Gurwitz, R. W. Simms, P. R. Fortin, D. T. Felson, K. L. Minaker, et al., “A Study of Manufacturer-Supported Trials of Nonsteroidal Anti-inflammatory Drugs in the Treatment of Arthritis,”
Archives of Internal Medicine, vol. 154, no. 2 (January 24, 1994), pp. 157-163.
60 Mildred K. Cho and Lisa A. Bero, “The Quality of Drug Studies Published in Symposium Proceedings,”
Annals of Internal Medicine, vol. 124, no. 5 (3/1/96), pp. 485-489.
61 Henry Thomas Stelfox et al., “Conflict of Interest in the Debate over Calcium-Channel Antagonists,”
New England Journal of Medicine, vol. 338, no. 2 (January 8, 1998), pp. 101-106.
62 M. Friedberg, B. Saffran, T. J. Stinson, W. Nelson, and C. L. Bennett, “Evaluation of Conflict of Interest in Economic Analyses of New Drugs Used in Oncology,”
Journal of the American Medical Association, vol. 282, no. 15 (October 20, 1999), pp. 1453-1457.
63 Dan Fagin and Marianne Lavelle,
Toxic Deception (Secaucus, NJ: Birch Lane Press, 1996), pp. 51-52.
64 Neil D. Rosenberg, “Love Makes the World Go ’Round, and Cologne May Offer Some Help,”
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, May 11, 1998, p. 1.
CHAPTER 9: THE JUNKYARD DOGS
Many of the documents cited in this chapter have been released into the public domain as a result of the legal settlement between the tobacco industry and U.S. state attorney generals. Each page of those documents has been assigned a unique “Bates number.” They can be accessed from the documents websites of Philip Morris (
www.pmdocs. com) and R. J. Reynolds (
www.rjrt.com).
1 Michael A. Miles, Speech to the Economic Club of Chicago, February 9, 1993, Bates nos. 2501187852-2501187863.
2 Peter Huber,
Galileo’s Revenge: Junk Science in the Courtroom (New York, NY: Basic Books, 1991), pp. 2, 3.
4 Memorandum from William M. H. Hammett, President, Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, to All Civil Justice Contacts, January 7, 1987. Quoted in Kenneth J. Chesebro, “Galileo’s Retort: Peter Huber’s Junk Scholarship,”
The American University Law Review, vol. 42, no. 4 (Summer 1993).
5 Marc Galanter, “Pick a Number, Any Number,”
Am. Law, April 1992, p. 84. Quoted in Chesebro, p. 1655.
6 Colin Stokes, “RJR’s Support of Biomedical Research,” 1981, Bates nos. 503082904- 503082915.
7 Memorandum from William M. H. Hammett, quoted in Chesebro. Chesebro notes that funding for Huber’s project at the Manhattan Institute comes from 14 of the nation’s largest insurance companies, 16 of the biggest chemical and pharmaceutical manufacturers, and 21 of the largest industrial manufacturers. It is work that pays well. In 1993, Chesebro points out, Huber and two other employees at the Manhattan Institute’s Judicial Studies Program were “slated to split $500,000 this year in salaries and benefits.”
8 Peter Montague, “How They Lie, Pt. 3: The Alar Story,”
Rachel’s Environment & Health Weekly, nos. 530-534 (January 23-February 20, 1997).
10 Howard Kurtz, “Dr. Whelan’s Media Operation,”
Columbia Journalism Review, March/April 1990.
12 Janet Key, “Seeds of Debate Over Food Safety,”
Chicago Tribune, March 19, 1989.
13 H. S. Diehl,
Tobacco and Your Health: The Smoking Controversy (1969), p. 1.
14 Memo from Tobacco Institute vice president Fred Panzer to president Horace Kornegay, May 1, 1972. Cited in Richard W. Pollay, “Propaganda, Puffing and the Public Interest,”
Public Relations Review, vol. XVI, no. 3, Fall 1990, p. 50.
15 Mike Moore, Attorney General, State of Mississippi in lawsuit filed on May 23, 1994.
16 Scott M. Cutlip, “The Tobacco Wars: A Matter of Public Relations Ethics,”
Journal of Corporate Public Relations, vol. 3 (1992-1993), p. 28.
17 Scott M. Cutlip,
The Unseen Power: Public Relations: A History (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1994), p. 488.
19 Cutlip,
The Unseen Power, p. 501.
21 Speech by Ellen Merlo to the Philip Morris USA vendor conference, January 25, 1994, Bates nos. 2024007050-2024007066.
22 Corporate Affairs 1994 Budget Presentation, October 21, 1993 (overhead slides), Bates nos. 2046847121-2046847137.
23 Covington and Burling (London), Report on the European Consultancy Program, March 1990, Bates nos. 2500048956-2500048969.
26 Huber eventually switched sides, agreeing in 1998 to testify in court for plaintiffs against the tobacco industry. His motives for switching, he said, included the death of his father from a smoking-related lung disease. “My daughter came to me and said, ‘Dad, you’ve got to be careful. These guys are pimping you,’ ” he told
NBC Nightly News reporter Bob Kur on March 4, 1998. For further details about Huber’s defection, see Lee Hancock and Mark Curriden, “Researcher’s Defection Sets Stage for Court Show-down With Tobacco Industry,”
Buffalo News, January 4, 1998, p. 11A.
27 For information about the institute’s pro-tobacco bias, see R. G. Dunlop, “Lawmakers Refuse Close Look at Institute,”
Courier-Journal (Louisville, KY), July 31, 1996, p. 4A.
28 “Study’s Tobacco Funding Hidden by School,”
Austin American-Statesman, November 16, 1997, p. B5.
29 Letter from Carrey Carruthers to Gary L. Huber, May 21, 1993, Bates nos. 2024233657-2024233658.
30 Letter from Gary L. Huber to Anthony J. Andrade, September 27, 1993, Bates no. 2024233656.
31 Proposal for the Organization of the Whitecoat Project, 1988, Bates nos. 2501474262- 2501474265.
32 Corporate Affairs 1994 Budget Presentation, October 21, 1993, Bates nos. 2045521070-2045521111.
33 Craig L. Fuller, February Monthly Report to Michael A. Miles (Philip Morris Interoffice Correspondence), March 17, 1994, Bates nos. 2041424310-2041424316.
34 Task Force Review of Y&R ETS Materials, p. 1, Bates no. 2025835738.
35 Ellen Merlo, letter and contract to Margery Kraus, March 3, 1993, Bates nos. 2045930469-2045930472.
36 Victor Han, “Re: Burson/ETS,” memo to Ellen Merlo, February 22, 1993, Bates nos. 2023920035-2023920040.
37 Ellen Merlo, Philip Morris Interoffice Correspondence, February 19, 1993, Bates nos. 2021252097-2021252110.
38 Letter from Margery Kraus to Vic Han, September 23, 1993, Bates nos. 2024233677- 2024233682.
39 APCO Associates, “Revised Plan for the Public Launching of TASSC (Through 1993),” October 15, 1993, Bates nos. 2045930493-2045930504.
40 Jack Lenzi, “Re: TASSC Update,” note to Ellen Merlo, November 15, 1993, Bates no. 2024233664.
41 Consumer Issues Program, Draft I., Bates nos. 2046039179-2046039194.
42 “National Watchdog Organization Launched to Fight Unsound Science Comes to Texas” (news release), December 3, 1993, Bates nos. 2046988980-2046988982.
43 Garry Carruthers and Donald Stedman, interview with KWMX 107.8-FM, “Mile High Magazine,” Denver, CO, November 21, 1993. Bates nos. 2046988927-2046988943.
44 “Science: A Tool, Not a Weapon,” Draft Advertorial #1, 1993, Bates nos. 2023332314-2023332316.
45 See, for example, “A Symposium: Doctors and Smoking: The Cigarette Century,”
New York Times, April 10, 1986, in which Koop stated, “For most of the past 20 or 30 years, we’ve been focusing our attention primarily on the smoker. But cigarette smoking is a cloud that has no silver lining. Smokers engage in mainstream smoking; the sidestream smoker involuntarily inhales smoke in the ambient air. . . . Both the sidestream smoker and the mainstream smoker are breathing in the same 4,000 or so constituents of cigarette smoke. . . . This ought to be alarming news for the two-thirds of the American adult population who do not smoke—or who think they do not smoke. They may have saved themselves from the stink and the mess of smoking, but they have not completely protected themselves from all of the health hazards. And that is at the heart of the movement by nonsmokers to ban smoking in virtually every public space.”
46 1994 Communications Plan, Bates nos. 2023918833-2023918852. See also Ellen Merlo, “Re: TASSC,” memo to Matthew Winokur, April 29, 1994, Bates no. 2024233594.
47 Scientists for Sound Public Policy: Assessment Project and Symposium (slide presentation), Burson-Marsteller, Bates nos. 2028363773-2028363791.
48 Jim Lindheim, “Scientist Group in Europe,” memorandum to David Greenberg and Matt Winokur, April 18, 1994, Bates nos. 2025493128-2025493129.
49 Margery Kraus, “Re: Sound Science/Lindheim Meeting/Next Steps,” memorandum to David Greenberg and Matt Winoker, April 26, 1994, Bates nos. 2025493192- 2025493194.
50 Tom Hockaday and Neal Cohen, “Re: Thoughts on TASSC Europe,” memorandum to Matthew Winokur, March 25, 1994, Bates nos. 2024233595-2024233602.
51 Known corporate funders of ACSH have included American Cyanamid, American Meat Institute, Amoco, Anheuser-Busch, Archer Daniels Midland, Ashland Oil Foundation, Boise Cascade, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Burger King, Chevron, Ciba-Geigy, Coca-Cola, Consolidated Edison, Coors, Dow Chemical, DuPont, Exxon, Ford Motor Co., Frito-Lay, General Electric, General Mills, General Motors, Hershey Foods, Johnson & Johnson, Joseph E. Seagrams & Sons, the Kellogg Co., Kraft Foundation, Kraft General Foods, Merck Pharmaceuticals, Mobil, Monsanto, National Agricultural Chemicals Association, National Dairy Council, National Soft Drink Association, National Starch and Chemical Foundation, Nestlé, NutraSweet Co. (owned by Monsanto), Oscar Mayer Foods, Pepsi-Cola, Pfizer, Procter & Gamble, Shell Oil, Sugar Association, Union Carbide Corp., Uniroyal Chemical Co., USX Corp., and Wine Growers of California.
52 Elizabeth M. Whelan, “Chemicals and Cancerphobia,”
Society, March/April 1981, p. 7. Cited in Stephen Hilgartner, “The Political Language of Risk: Defining Occupational Health,” in Dorothy Nelkin, ed.,
The Language of Risk: Conflicting Perspectives on Occupational Health (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage), pp. 25-65.
53 Daily Messenger, Canandauigua, NY, December 8, 1997.
54 Scranton Times, Scranton, PA, September 12, 1997.
55 Wall Street Journal, August 26, 1997.
56 Record, Troy, NY, September 13, 1997.
57 Orange County Register, July 14, 1997.
58 Washington Times, June 18, 1997.
59 Intelligencer, Wheeling, WV, January 16, 1998.
60 Agri-News, Billings, MT, January 2, 1998.
61 San Mateo County Times, San Mateo, CA, August 1, 1997.
62 Houston Chronicle, Houston, TX, December 14, 1997.
63 Frederick Stare, letter to H. R. R. Wakeham, December 5, 1980, Bates nos. 1000283163-1000283164.
64 R. H. H. Wakeham, memorandum, January 5, 1981, Bates nos. 1000283166- 1000283167.
65 Jane Fritsch, “Sometimes Lobbyists Strive to Keep Public in the Dark,”
New York Times, March 19, 1996.
66 Milloy claims that he has never personally engaged in lobbying. When pressed, he characterizes the EOP Group as a “regulatory consulting group” where all employees were registered as lobbyists “as a matter of course” in order to ensure compliance with federal law. According to the
Legal Times, however, the EOP Group received $1,380,000 in lobby fees in 1997 alone. The
Political Finance & Lobby Reporter gives some specific examples: “hired by Dow Elanco, Indianapolis, to lobby on legislation and regulations affecting the registration of pesticides; by the American Automobile Manufacturers Association, Washington, D.C., to lobby on global warming legislation; and by OHM Remediation Services Corp., Findlay, Ohio, to lobby with regard to a contract for toxic waste cleanup services.” The EOP Group’s methods of “regulatory consulting” featured prominently during the bribery and influence-peddling trial of former Clinton administration agriculture secretary Mike Espy, where it was disclosed that the EOP had hired Espy’s girlfriend at a salary of $35,000 per year, even though her performance was, in the company’s own estimation, “sporadic at best.” While lobbying for forgiveness of a $286 million penalty owed by one of its clients in 1994, the EOP Group paid a ticket scalper $6,600 so it could take Espy to the Super Bowl—a violation of federal ethics laws for which the client eventually paid a fine of $1 million. (Espy himself eventually beat the rap.)
67 “TASSC Names Executive Director” (news release),
PR Newswire, March 3, 1997.
68 New Project (1993), Bates nos. 2046662829-2046662837.
69 J. Boland and T. Borelli, “Monthly Budget Supplement Re: ETS/OSHA Federal Activities” (Philip Morris Interoffice Correspondence, February 17, 1993, Bates nos. 2046597149-2046597150.
70 One of those reports, titled “Choices in Risk Assessment, the Role of Science Policy in the Environmental Risk Management Process,” was prepared for Sandia National Laboratories. University of California-San Francisco professor Stanton Glantz, a prominent critic of the tobacco industry, scrutinized the report in 1996, noting that it was “mentioned many times” by tobacco industry witnesses in government hearings. “The organizations used to provide information for the report,” he observed, “are dominated by industry associations which represent polluters (including the American Automobile Manufacturers Association, the American Petroleum Institute, the Chemical Manufacturers Association, the Halogenated Solvents Industry Association, the National Agricultural Chemicals Association, and many others). . . . Even though ‘Choices’ deals extensively with tobacco smoke as a science policy issue, they did not contact recognized governmental or previewed authorities in the preparation of the report (such as the Centers for Disease Control Office on Smoking and Health or various health groups such as the American Cancer Society).” Instead, “The authors of ‘Choices’ relied on several sources closely allied with the tobacco industry, including Philip Morris Companies, the Health Policy Institute, and ENVIRON Corporation.” Stanton Glantz, Post-OSHA Hearings Comments, 1996 <
http://www.tobacco.org/Misc/oshapost.html>, (July 25, 2000).
71 Barry Meier, “Tobacco Industry, Conciliatory in U.S., Goes on the Attack in the Third World,”
New York Times, January 18, 1998, section 1, p. 14.
72 Elizabeth Whelan, “Secondhand Facts?” (letter to the editor),
National Review, July 28, 1997.
73 “Heritage, Brookings Get Top Rankings,”
O’Dwyer’s Washington Report, vol. 9, no. 17, August 23, 1999, p. 4.
74 “Junk Science Makes Junk Law” (
New York Times advertisement), Washington Legal Foundation, February 10, 1997.
75 “Tobacco Strategy,” Bates nos. 2022887066-2022887072.
76 Neal Smith, “Organic Foods Can Make You Sick,”
Des Moines Register, March 12, 1999.
77 The Human Cost of Regulation: Reframing the Debate on Risk Management, Competitive Enterprise Institute, 1994, Bates nos. 2047099454-2047099464.
78 Thomas Borelli, “February Activity Report,” Philip Morris Interoffice Correspondence to Jim Botticelli, February 1, 1994, Bates nos. 2046585282-2046585283.
79 Karen Anderson, “One Man’s Demented Vision Becomes a Nation’s Nightmare,”
The DeWeese Report, vol. 3, no. 12 (December 1997), p. 1.
80 Ellen Merlo, “Burson/ETS,” memo to Victor Han, February 22, 1993, Bates nos. 2023920035-2023920040.
81 Holcomb B. Noble, “Hailed as a Surgeon General, Koop Criticized on Web Ethics,”
New York Times, September 4, 1999.
82 Holcomb B. Noble, “Koop Criticized for Role in Warning on Hospital Gloves,”
New York Times, October 29, 1999.
84 Marcy Gordon, “Koop Criticized for Contract,”
AP Online, October 29, 1999.
85 See, for example, a September 13, 1978, letter from R. J. Reynolds to William Shinn at the tobacco law firm of Shook, Hardy and Bacon, informing Shinn that Seitz had been invited to attend an informational presentation at the Tobacco Institute. “Dr. Seitz is doing some consulting work for us, and I thought the presentation would be of interest to him,” the letter noted. “The fact that he is assisting us has not been publicly announced, so I do not wish to emphasize the fact at the meeting.” (From the RJR documents website, Bates no. 503648881.) The articles of incorporation of the R. J. Reynolds Industries Foundation for Bio-medical Research, its research arm, list Seitz as a member of the founding board of directors. (Bates nos. 504480764-504480767.)
86 Alexander Holtzman, “Fred Seitz,” Philip Morris Interoffice Correspondence to Bill Murray, August 31, 1989, Bates no. 2023266534.
87 Steve Young, “Tobacco Giant Questions EPA Study on Secondhand Smoke,” CNN’s
Moneyline (transcript #930-3), June 24, 1993.
88 Multinational Business Services, Inc., Invoice #SPPM-0693 to Steven Parrish, Vice President and General Counsel of Philip Morris USA, June 1993, Bates nos. 2023593676-2023593679.
89 Craig L. Fuller, February Monthly Report to Michael A. Miles (Philip Morris Interoffice Correspondence), March 17, 1994, Bates nos. 2041424310-2041424316.
90 Edward S. Herman,
The Myth of the Liberal Media: An Edward Herman Reader (New York: Peter Lang Publishing Inc., 2000), p. 235.
91 Ruth Conniff, “Warning: Feminism Is Hazardous to Your Health,”
The Progressive, vol. 61, no. 4 (April 1997), p. 33.
92 Huber, pp. 175, 187, 213.
93 Tom Holt, “Could Lawsuits be the Cure for Junk Science?”
Priorities (American Council on Science and Health), vol. 7, no. 2 (1995).
94 Flier circulated by Ohio Farm Bureau during 1996 lobbying for Ohio’s agricultural product disparagement law.
95 Holt, “Could Lawsuits Be the Cure for Junk Science?”
96 “ACSH Web Briefs,”
News from ACSH, vol. 8, no. 1 (2000), p. 7.
99 Tobacco Strategy, March 1994, Bates nos. 2022887066-2022887072.
100 Dave Zweifel, “Media Snookered by Prof’s Cancer Report,”
Capital Times (Madison, WI), June 8, 1992, p. 6A.
101 Elizabeth Whelan, “Cigarettes and Blurred Vision Among ‘Right’ Minded People,”
Priorities (American Council on Science and Health), vol. 6, no. 3, 1994.
CHAPTER 10: GLOBAL WARMING IS GOOD FOR YOU
1 Ross Gelbspan,
The Heat Is On: The Climate Crisis, the Coverup, the Prescription (Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books, 1998), p. 154.
2 Quoted in Joseph L. Bast, Peter J. Hill, and Richard C. Rue,
Eco-Sanity: A CommonSense Guide to Environmentalism (Lanham, MD: Madison Books, 1994), p. 53.
3 Bernhard Stauffer, “Climate Change: Cornucopia of Ice Core Results,”
Nature 399:6735 (June 3, 1999), p. 412. See also Rick Callahan, “Humans Changing Climate,”
Associated Press, June 7, 1999.
4 Peter D. Ewins and D. James Baker, Open Letter, December 22, 1999.
5 Ross Gelbspan,
The Heat Is On: The High Stakes Battle Over Earth’s Threatened Climate (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., Inc., 1997), p. 155.
8 Philip Lesly, “Coping with Opposition Groups,”
Public Relations Review, vol. 18, no. 4 (1992), pp. 325-334.
9 Mary O’Driscoll, “Greenhouse Ads Target ‘Low-income’ Women, ‘Less-educated’ Men,”
The Energy Daily, vol. 19, no. 120, June 24, 1991, p. 1. Some journalistic accounts have alleged that Bracy Williams “ran” the ICE campaign, and indeed the PR firm played a prominent role. In 1998, Michael Bracy attempted to minimize this. “In the early 1990’s, Bracy Williams and Company did a limited amount of work for one of the companies involved with ICE, but by no means did we form or ‘run’ the group,” he stated. (Michael Bracy, personal e-mail correspondence with Tom Wheeler, July 23, 1998.)
10 “Inside Track: Sowing Seeds of Doubt in the Greenhouse,”
Greenwire, June 20, 1991. Also, Sheila Kaplan, “Cold Facts,”
Legal Times, July 1, 1991, p. 5.
11 Peter Montague, “Ignorance is Strength,”
Rachel’s Environment and Health Weekly, no. 467, November 9, 1995.
12 Sharon Beder,
Global Spin: The Corporate Assault on Environmentalism (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing Co., 1997), p. 94.
14 The late Linus Pauling was one of the signers of the Heidelberg Appeal. The recipient of two Nobel Prizes (for chemistry and for peace), Pauling became associated in his later years with a controversial nutritional theory that advocated massive daily consumption of vitamin C. Although Pauling’s earlier work is widely praised, his theories regarding vitamin C have been almost universally dismissed as pseudoscience. It appears, therefore, that (1) even Nobel laureates sometimes practice pseudoscience, and (2) even the practitioners of pseudoscience believe they are against it.
15 The Nobel Prize winners who have endorsed both the Heidelberg Appeal and the “World Scientists’ Warning” are: Philip W. Anderson, Julius Axelrod, Baruj Benacerraf, Hans A. Bethe, James W. Black, Nicolaas Bloembergen, Thomas R. Cech, Stanley Cohen, John W. Cornforth, Jean Dausset, Johann Deisenhofer, Christian R. de Duve, Manfred Eigen, Richard R. Ernst, Donald A. Glaser, Herbert A. Hauptman, Dudley Herschbach, Antony Hewish, Roald Hoffmann, Robert Huber, Jerome Karle, John Kendrew, Klaus von Klitzing, Aaron Klug, Edwin G. Krebs, Leon M. Lederman, Yuan T. Lee, Jean-Marie Lehn, Wassily Leontief, Rita Levi-Montalcini, William N. Lipscomb, Simon van der Meer, Cesar Milstein, Joseph E. Murray, Daniel Nathans, Louis Neel, Erwin Neher, Marshall W. Nirenberg, George E. Palade, Max F. Perutz, John Polanyi, Ilya Prigogine, Heinrich Rohrer, Arthur L. Schawlow, Charles H. Townes, John Vane, Thomas H. Weller, Torsten N. Wiesel, and Robert W. Wilson.
16 World Scientists’ Call for Action at the Kyoto Climate Summit, 1997.
17 David Olinger, “Cool to the Warnings of Global Warming’s Dangers,”
St. Petersburg Times, July 29, 1996.
18 Hans Bulow and Poul-Eric Heilburth, “The Energy Conspiracy” (video documentary), Filmakers Library, 124 East 40th Street, New York, NY 10016.
20 Arthur B. Robinson, Sallie L. Baliunas, Willie Soon, and Zachary W. Robinson, “Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide,” George C. Marshall Institute, April 1998.
23 Ross Gelbspan, “Putting the Globe at Risk,”
The Nation, November 30, 1998, p. 20.
24 David Malakoff, “Advocacy Mailing Draws Fire,”
Science, April 10, 1998, p. 195.
25 David Helvarg, “The Greenhouse Spin,”
The Nation, December 16, 1996, p. 21.
26 Malakoff,
Science, April 10, 1998, p. 195.
27 “Top Scientist Denies Threat of Global Warming,”
Vancouver Sun, June 3, 1998, p. B2.
28 “Climate Change III: Academy Slams Skeptics’ Petition,”
National Journal’s Daily Energy Briefing, April 22, 1998.
29 Al Kamen, “A Chair for the Fallen,”
Washington Post, May 1, 1998, p. A13.
30 William K. Stevens, “Science Academy Disputes Attack on Global Warming,”
New York Times, p. A20.
31 Jake Thompson, “Spice Girl on Petition Hagel Touted,”
Omaha World-Herald, May 1, 1998, p. 12.
32 Ross Gelbspan, “Putting the Globe at Risk,”
The Nation, November 30, 1998, p. 20.
33 John H. Cushman, Jr., “Industrial Group Plans to Battle Climate Treaty,”
New York Times, April 26, 1998, p. 1.
34 “A Misinformation Campaign,”
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 23, 1998, p. B6.
35 Sharon Beder, Paul Brown and John Vidal, “Environment: Who Killed Kyoto?”
The Guardian (London), October 29, 1997, p. 4.
36 “Panel Says Global Warming Is ‘Real,’ ”
Business Wire, June 13, 2000. See also Patrick Connole, “Global Warming Real and Worsening,”
Reuters Online Service, January 13, 2000.
38 As a result of these departures, GCC was forced to reorganize itself as an umbrella group of trade associations rather than of individual companies. By 1999, the science of global warming had become so robust that many companies saw their affiliation with the GCC as a public relations liability. However, it is likely that many will continue to undermine efforts to address the climate crisis through their various trade associations—for example, the American Petroleum Institute, the American Association of Automobile Manufacturers, the National Coal Foundation, and so on.
39 Seth Borenstein, “Experts Give Dire Warning About Changing Climate,” Knight Ridder Newspapers, February 21, 2000.
CHAPTER 11: QUESTIONING AUTHORITY
1 Thomas Jefferson,
Writings (New York, NY: Library of America, 1984), p. 493.
2 Stanley Milgram,
Obedience to Authority (New York: Harper & Row, 1974), p. 20.
3 Donald Naftulin, John E. Ware, Jr., and Frank A. Donnelly, “The Doctor Fox Lecture: A Paradigm of Education Seduction,”
Journal of Medical Education 48 (1973): 630-636, p. 631.
4 Jathon Sapsford, Peter A. McKay, Mitchell Pacelle, and Bill Spindle, “Armstrong’s Visions of Business Glory Collapse in Securities-Fraud Indictment,”
Wall Street Journal, September 15, 1999, pp. C1, C11.
5 Judy Treichel and Steve Frishman, “Sandman’s Cagey Tactics,”
PR Watch, vol. 6, no. 2 (second quarter 1999).
6 Take, for example, the case of Milorganite, a fertilizer made from the city of Milwaukee’s heat-dried sewage sludge. In 1987, researchers encountered a cluster of Lou Gehrig’s disease among people who had been exposed to Milorganite. Lou Gehrig’s disease normally kills 1.23 out of every 100,000 Americans, yet it hit three former members of the 1964 squad of the San Francisco 49ers football team, whose practice field had been fertilized with Milorganite. Subsequent investigations by the
Milwaukee Sentinel found that 2 of 155 deaths among people who had worked at the city’s Milorganite plant resulted from Lou Gehrig’s disease. The
Sentinel also turned up 25 other cases of the disease in Wisconsin residents who said they had been exposed to the fertilizer. But did these cases prove that Milorganite caused the disease, or were they merely an odd coincidence? The city brought in epidemiologists from Milwaukee’s Medical College of Wisconsin and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. They reviewed death certificates for Wisconsin and found that the statewide rate of Lou Gehrig’s disease was 1.90 per 100,000—slightly higher than the national average, but not enough of an increase to meet the standard of statistical significance. The epidemiologists gave Milorganite a clean bill of health, which is the scientifically correct conclusion. Does this mean that there is no link at all between Milorganite and Lou Gehrig’s disease? Science simply has no way of answering that question. All it can say is that if there is a link, the risk appears to be low.
7 U.S. Atomic Energy Commission press release, remarks prepared for delivery at Founders’ Day Dinner, National Association of Science Writers, September 16, 1954, p. 9. Cited in Stephen Hilgartner, Richard C. Bell, and Rory O’Connor,
Nukespeak: The Selling of Nuclear Technology in America (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 1983), p. 44.
8 Life, November 20, 1970, p. 586, quoted in Theodor Roszak,
The Cult of Information: A Neo-Luddite Treatise on High-Tech, Artificial Intelligence, and the True Art of Thinking (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1994), p. 122.
9 Jeff Stier, “ ‘Flagging for Bias’ Can Unfairly Taint Studies,”
Wall Street Journal, February 17, 1999.
12 Consumer Issues Program, Draft I. Bates nos. 2046039179-2046039194.
13 For details and further examples, see Carl Pope, “Going to Extremes: Anti-environmental Groups Hide Their Extremism,”
Sierra, vol. 80, no. 5 (1995), p. 14.
14 Joel Achenbach, “Putting All the X in One Basket,”
Washington Post, April 27, 1994, p. B1.
15 Tom Brazaitis, “Big Think Tanks Lead the Charge in Washington,”
The Plain Dealer (Cleveland), December 19, 1999, p. 1A. See also David Callahan, “$1 Billion for Ideas: Conservative Think Tanks in the 1990s,” National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, March 1999.
16 See, for example, Eric Nagourney, “Recipe for Health: Shaken, Not Stirred,”
New York Times, December 21, 1999, p. F8; and Lee Bowman, “Martini Recipe for Good Health?”
Houston Chronicle, December 17, 1999, p. 32.
17 Richard E. Sclove, “Town Meetings on Technology,”
Technology Review, July 1996. Australian professor Brian Martin has also studied the use of citizen juries. He uses the term “demarchy” to contrast this decision-making process with the conventional methods of traditional representative democracy. For further information about his views on the subject, visit Martin’s website at <
http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/>, (July 25, 2000).
18 Richard E. Sclove and Madeleine L. Scammell, “Community-based Research in the United States” (summary),
Loka Alert vol. 5, no. 4 (August 2, 1998).
19 John Doble and Amy Richardson, “You Don’t Have to be a Rocket Scientist,”
Technology Review, vol. 95, no. 1 (January 1992), p. 51.
20 “Tackling the Question of Science Literacy,” Education Report, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, April 17, 1996.
21 Terri Swearingen, speech upon acceptance of the Goldman Environmental Prize, San Francisco, CA, April 14, 1997.
22 Jake Tapper, “The Town that Haunts Al Gore,”
Salon, April 26, 2000.
23 Terri Swearingen, Goldman Environmental Prize speech.