Bending Science: How Special Interests Corrupt Public Health Research Hardcover – May 31, 2008
Author: Visit Amazon's Thomas O. McGarity Page | Language: English | ISBN: 0674028155 | Format: PDF, EPUB
Bending Science: How Special Interests Corrupt Public Health Research – May 31, 2008
Download electronic versions of selected books Bending Science: How Special Interests Corrupt Public Health Research – May 31, 2008 from with Mediafire Link Download Link
Books with free ebook downloads available Bending Science: How Special Interests Corrupt Public Health Research – May 31, 2008
Download electronic versions of selected books Bending Science: How Special Interests Corrupt Public Health Research – May 31, 2008 from with Mediafire Link Download Link
Review
Bending Science is so chock-full of ideas and insights...McGarity and Wagner's insight has large implications both for potential legal reforms and for public faith in the integrity of the scientific process...Bending Science is an immensely important book. It is one of quite a large number of books published recently on the manipulations of science by interest groups and the government. Yet even in this crowded field, Bending Science stakes out its own ground and makes an invaluable contribution to the debate over the role of science in public policy. (Lisa Heinzerling Texas Law Journal 2009-02-01)
Bending Science is an intelligent and compelling blend of investigative journalism and theoretical analysis of the structural and functional flaws of the research enterprise, from the development of testable ideas to the use of its results for practical purposes...Bending Science [is] an indispensable read for our current troubled times. All in all, this book is a must-read not only for researchers devoted to the scientific method but also for all who wish to become competent consumers of research that can influence their lives. The narrative is an eye-opener, which will provide the reader with tools to understand the research process and protect himself/herself from advocacy-based distortions. (Maura Pilotti Metapsychology 8111-01-00)
Bending Science is an intelligent and compelling blend of investigative journalism and theoretical analysis of the structural and functional flaws of the research enterprise, from the development of testable ideas to the use of its results for practical purposes...Bending Science [is] an indispensable read for our current troubled times. All in all, this book is a must-read not only for researchers devoted to the scientific method but also for all who wish to become competent consumers of research that can influence their lives. The narrative is an eye-opener, which will provide the reader with tools to understand the research process and protect himself/herself from advocacy-based distortions. (Maura Pilotti Metapsychology 8111-01-00)
Review
Drawing together a host of little-known but dramatic cases, this landmark book documents more comprehensively than any previous study, what has been suspected for years: how extensively scientific data are misused and abused in regulatory and tort law. Society depends on science to guide public policy on health and safety, but as McGarity and Wagner show, many interest groups do all they can to influence --and undermine-- independent and honest research. Bending Science shows just how far science has been corrupted, and offers a road to reform. (Carl F. Cranor, author of TOXIC TORTS: Science, Law, and the Possibility of Justice)
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Books with free ebook downloads available Bending Science: How Special Interests Corrupt Public Health Research – May 31, 2008
- Hardcover: 400 pages
- Publisher: Harvard University Press (May 31, 2008)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0674028155
- ISBN-13: 978-0674028159
- Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6 x 1.4 inches
- Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,277,816 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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.
This book argues that science institutions are under attack - dozens of sophisticated strategies from outcome-oriented interests (seeking a specific result favoring their product, process, etc.) are used to co-opt the science that informs public health and environmental policy. Further, policy-makers can no longer expect the scientific community to detect and filter out the distortions without assistance from the legal system. The bulk of the book is then taken up with specific examples of the abuses it is concerned about.
The first meaningful evidence of bending science in the legal world comes from the early 1900s when asbestos, tobacco, pharmaceutical, and pesticide manufacturers tried to control the bad news about their products. Suppression of industry-sponsored research and occasional harassment of independent scientists were the primary methods; in other settings manufacturers simply avoided research regarding hazards, leaving the burden to individual victims. The eventual results were new regulatory agencies (FDA and EPA) and requirements.
Outcome-oriented proponents then manufactured uncertainty about implications of well-conducted scientific studies via attacks on every minute aspect of every cited study used by experts - aimed at undermining the scientific reliability of their overall conclusions and often allowing their exclusion from court trials. Next outcome advocates than moved on to obtain legislation from 2000 - 2004 giving similar advantages dealing with regulatory agencies.
Estimates of the cumulative costs of regulatory requirements are often at least somewhat based on production lost due to particular products or wastes being banned (overstated). Regulatory agencies react slower than courts - eg.
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