| View Larger Image | Doubt is Their Product: How Industry's Assault on Science Threatens Your Health | Hardcoverby David Michaels (Author)
| List Price: | $27.95 | | Price: | $18.45 | | You Save: | $9.50 (34%) | | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours |
| | Binding: | Hardcover | | Publisher: | Oxford University Press, USA | | Edition: | 1st Edition | | Page Count: | 384 Pages | | Publication Date: | April 23, 2008 | | Sales Rank: | 39,693th |
|
FEATURES | - ISBN13: 9780195300673
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
- Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices
|
EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
"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, have increasingly skewed the scientific literature, manufactured and magnified scientific uncertainty, and influenced policy decisions to the advantage of polluters and the manufacturers of dangerous products. To keep the public confused about the hazards posed by global warming, second-hand smoke, asbestos, lead, plastics, and many other toxic materials, industry executives have hired unscrupulous scientists and lobbyists to dispute scientific evidence about health risks. In doing so, they have not only delayed action on specific hazards, but they have constructed barriers to make it harder for lawmakers, government agencies, and courts to respond to future threats. The Orwellian strategy of dismissing research conducted by the scientific community as "junk science" and elevating science conducted by product defense specialists to "sound science" status also creates confusion about the very nature of scientific inquiry and undermines the public's confidence in science's ability to address public health and environmental concerns Such reckless practices have long existed, but Michaels argues that the Bush administration deepened the dysfunction by virtually handing over regulatory agencies to the very corporate powers whose products and behavior they are charged with overseeing. In Doubt Is Their Product Michaels proves, beyond a doubt, that our regulatory system has been broken. He offers concrete, workable suggestions for how it can be restored by taking the politics out of science and ensuring that concern for public safety, rather than private profits, guides our regulatory policy. Named one of the best Sci-Tech books of 2008 by Library Journal! |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 5.0 based on 11 reviews)
|
Invaluable reference by John Mashey (Portola Valley, CA United States)  5 Stars
November 26, 2009
I agree with others that this is dense and long, but I think it is well worth reading, even if you skip parts of chapters.
I would especially suggest study of:
Chapter 13: Daubert: the Most Influential Supreme Court Ruling You've Never Heard Of
Chapter 14: The Institutionalization of Uncertainty
[The Data Access Act (Shelby) and the Data Quality Act]
Because:
a) The behaviors of some corporations, PR agencies, product defense organizations can get somewhat redundant. Hill & Knowlton created the tactics 50+ years ago and they've been widely employed.
b) But the legal issues in these two Chapters represent relatively recent changes in the law with profound effects. They (especially the Data Access Act) are now widely being used to harass climate scientists, for example.
| |
Good Documentation, but Too Long - by Loyd E. Eskildson (Phoenix, AZ.)  4 Stars
September 29, 2009
Michaels shows that the same techniques used to successfully delay legislation and regulatory action on cigarettes have since been used on any number of other public-health problems, including today's major global warming concerns. A growing trend disingenuously demands proof over precaution, always disputing conclusions that might support regulation because industry has learned that debating the science is much easier and more effective than debating the policy. It also avoids being simply branded as 'anti-environmental,' etc.
Michaels material shows instances proving the hazards of working with some chemicals was well known long before lawsuits arose. For example, as early as 1918 life insurers declined asbestos workers. Certain dye components were found to cause 100% of bladder cancer in the original DuPont workers back in 1947 - again, before major suits. Reducing lead in paint and gasoline was accomplished relatively easily, despite industry efforts - thanks mainly to the EPA and the effect lead had on catalytic converters, adding auto-makers to those demanding lead's elimination from gasoline.
Industry obstructionists (often led by the public relations firm Hill and Knowlton) repeatedly use a strategy of insisting on proof - hard to accomplish because one rarely finds 100% affliction from toxins, even cigarette smoke. The author instead recommends a 'Sarbanes-Oxley' approach to science and toxins. 1)Require full disclosure of any sponsor involvement in scientific studies. 2)Manufacturers must disclose what they know regarding the toxicity of their products and the chemicals used. 3)Rigged data reanalysis should be stopped - creates false findings. 4)Hold people accountable. 5)Protect the independence of federal scientists and science advisory committees - eg. stop asking applicants who they voted for, using panel members with conflicts of interest. 6)Embrace 'as low as reasonably achievable' standards instead of becoming embroiled in endless debates over safe levels.
Bottom Line: "Doubt Is their Product" provides good documentation of industry's non-stop reactionary foot-dragging to any profit impediment vs. public health. However, that scientists can be bought ('fake science') is hardly news to anyone who has followed the global warming debate. Thus, Michaels should have made his book considerably shorter.
| |
Get in touch with your righteous anger! by Science Goddess (Champaign, IL United States) 5 Stars
May 12, 2009
Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/RTRHV6LUR1IEE Hi, this is Joanne, a bioengineering instructor at the University of Illinois. I read science books and review them. See more at my youtube site http://www.youtube.com/user/joannelovesscience
Joanne discusses this important and infuriating book about how industry manipulates scientific data for their own interests.
| |
Doubt is Their Product by Ralph D. Hermansen (Lake Isabella, CA United States) 5 Stars
March 01, 2009
"Doubt is Their Product" is a well researched and scholarly book. It is also tells a very sad story. The government we trust to keep us safe has put the foxes in charge of the henhouses. OSHA, for example, has been so intimidated that it has quit trying to protect us. The nuclear weapons industry has contaminated the countryside and used security as an excuse to hide the fact. The FDA has little to no funding to protect us from drugs with serious side effects. If you vote, you must read this book. If you work near chemicals, you would be an idiot not to read it.
Ralph Hermansen 02/28/09
| |
More than just doubt. by Darrell Messbarger Jr. (Kansas City, Missouri) 5 Stars
December 17, 2008
Dr. Michaels' book reveals the motivations and follow-up actions of many industries who strive to protect their profits regardless of the impact on the nation's health. His story tells of the various industries' scientific and technical "whores" who sell their expertise to either create doubt about, or directly challenge the legitimate science that is produced for science sake - not profit.
However, the underlying tale is far more onerous than the title expresses. It is not much of a stretch to understand that the nature of science is being seriously subverted. Science builds upon itself. All future work in the medical sciences will have to be cautious when using data produced by these charlatans. Some of that data will, in fact, be totally false.
If this is allowed to continue, science will one day acquire the reputation now currently reserved for used-car salesmen, and streetwalkers. The problem is far greater than any of us would like to think about. Bravo Dr. Michaels.
| |
SIMILAR PRODUCTS |
| Bending Science: How Special Interests Corrupt Public Health Research
by Thomas O. McGarity (Author), Wendy E. Wagner (Author)
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...
| 
| Poisoned Profits: The Toxic Assault on Our Children
by Philip Shabecoff (Author), Alice Shabecoff (Author)
In this shocking and sobering book, two fearless journalists directly and definitively link industrial toxins to the current rise in childhood disease and death. In the tradition of Silent Spring, Poisoned Profits is a landmark investigation, an eye-opening account of a country that prizes money over children’s health.
With indisputable data, Philip Shabecoff and Alice Shabecoff reveal that the children of baby boomers–the first to be raised in a truly “toxified” world–have...
| 
| Undermining Science: Suppression and Distortion in the Bush Administration
by Seth Shulman (Author)
This vitally important exposé shows how the Bush administration has systematically misled Americans on a wide range of scientific issues affecting public health, foreign policy, and the environment by ignoring, suppressing, manipulating, or even distorting scientific research. It is the first book to focus exclusively on how this explosive issue has played out during the Presidency of George W. Bush and the first to comprehensively document his administration's abuses of science.
In...
| 
| Deceit and Denial: The Deadly Politics of Industrial Pollution (California/Milbank Books on Health and the Public)
by Gerald Markowitz (Author), David Rosner (Author)
Deceit and Denial details the attempts by the chemical and lead industries to deceive Americans about the dangers that their deadly products present to workers, the public, and consumers. Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner pursued evidence steadily and relentlessly, interviewed the important players, investigated untapped sources, and uncovered a bruising story of cynical and cruel disregard for health and human rights. This resulting expose is full of startling revelations, provocative...
| 
| How Everyday Products Make People Sick: Toxins at Home and in the Workplace
by Paul D. Blanc MD (Author)
This book reveals the hidden health dangers in many of the seemingly innocent products we encounter every day--a tube of glue in a kitchen drawer, a bottle of bleach in the laundry room, a rayon scarf on a closet shelf, a brass knob on the front door, a wood plank on an outdoor deck. A compelling exposé, written by a physician with extensive experience in public health and illustrated with disturbing case histories, How Everyday Products Make People Sick is a rich and meticulously documented...
|
|
|
