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by David Egilman, MD, MPH
I just finished watching the Waxman hearings on FDA preemption and must comment on Christopher Shays’ (R-CT) comments. Christopher Shays is the last remaining Republican congressman from New England. Hopefully the November elections will result in the extinction of this last remaining
remnant of the age of the dinosaurs.
He repeatedly stated that he “had no dog in this hunt” concerning the impact of preemption and torts suits on drug safety. This is a peculiar position for a Congressperson who must decide whether or not the FDA’s actions are appropriate. It’s one thing to have no opinion; it is in another to imply that there is no reason to have opinion.
UPDATED BELOW
Annys Shin of the Washington Post has reported that Dr. Gail Charnley, a well-known corporate product defense expert, is the White House’s leading candidate for the chairmanship of the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
We’ve written extensively here about this beleaguered agency. Finally, after the nation watched helplessly at the recall of millions of lead-contaminated toys, President Bush has evidently decided to replace current Chairman Nancy Nord with someone more competent to safeguard the interests of manufacturers of dangerous products.
The Post article lists a few reasons the public might be concerned about a Charnley appointment, including one dispute over a missing conflict of interest disclosure. Curious about Dr. Charnley’s work, I spent a little time on the web reviewing selected aspects of her work, and have turned up what appears to be a new failure to disclose a pretty basic financial conflict. But I’ll return to that after reviewing what the Post has learned:
Several months ago, I tried to get a simple question answered by NIOSH about part of its process for awarding mine safety research grants. The technical staff with whom I spoke probably knew the answer to my question, but they weren’t sure whether the information could be disclosed or not. Fair enough. They suggested that I file a FOIA request which I promptly did. More than 4 months later, I’m still waiting for an answer.
Granted, this is nowhere near the worst FOIA performance (see annual Rosemary Award), but my question to NIOSH was straightforward, and I guarantee they have at least one document which would be responsive to my request.
The journal Epidemiology has just published new evidence that drinking hexavalent chromium — also called chromium 6 — increases risk of stomach cancer. The study is important for public health purposes, since many drinking water sources are chromium contaminated (including the water in the community in the movie Erin Brockovich).
This new study is also the latest piece of a very ugly scandal that illustrates how polluters manufacture doubt to impede regulation. And this scandal is but one of several in which chromium polluters have manipulated epidemiologic studies to sow uncertainty - see our case study on chromium 6 at DefendingScience.org.
Pump Handle readers may recall our reporting on the controversy around a study of stomach cancer in Chinese villages where there were high levels of chromium in the drinking water. After an initial study reported elevated rates of stomach cancer, product defense consultants working for US chromium polluters reanalyzed the study, and the increased risk disappeared. The consultants re-analyzed the data and arranged for it to be published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (JOEM) without their names on it, hiding any connection to the product defense firm (Chemrisk) or the polluters who paid for the re-analysis. After the controversy was reported in the Wall Street Journal, the editor of JOEM retracted the study.
The chairman of the University of Kentucky’s (UK) mining engineering department wrote in a recent op-ed of his strong oppposition to a new mine safety bill (HR 2768) which is making its way through Congress. The legislation will address long-standing health and safety hazards faced by miners such as disease-causing coal dust and silica, belt-air ventilation, flammable conveyor belts, among other things. In “New Mining Bill Premature,” printed in the Lexington Herald-Leader, Professor Rick Honaker says it is “incomprehensible” that Congress is attempting to place new safety requirements on coal operators.* He claims new mandates will “serve no useful purpose” and will “only undermine the efforts of those trying to implement” the 2006 MINER Act. That’s some tough criticism.
On closer look, I notice that neither the op-ed itself nor the professor’s byline mentions his university department’s financial connection to mining industry—an industry that also strongly opposes HR 2768. These ties include a large financial endowment established by the mining industry, called the Mining Engineering Foundation. The Foundation was created in 1983 with a $1 million endowment, which included a hefty donation of $500,000 from Mr. Catesby Clay, president of Kentucky River Coal.** Interest from the fund now provides financial support to school’s mining engineering department.
Do you still believe the fairy tale that payments by a product’s manufacturer to a scientist (even the most well-meaning, independent-thinking scientist) do not inevitably influence that scientist’s interpretation of the technical data on product’s risks and benefits? If so, this will change your mind.
by Susan F. Wood, PhD
FDA recently announced two draft guidances regarding advisory committees, one on public disclosure of financial conflicts of interests and the other on voting procedures.
Earlier this week, the Washington Post’s Elizabeth Williamson reported on industry-financed trips that Consumer Product Safety Commission chairs had taken. Today, she writes about other CPSC staff members (from both the Clinton and Bush administrations) who took such trips, and about proposed legislation spurred by the CPSC travel revelations. Meanwhile, eight new toy recalls have been issued.
On Friday, the Washington Post reported that Consumer Product Safety Commission acting chair Nancy Nord and her predecessor, Hal Stratton, accepted dozens of trips paid for by companies and industries they oversee. (Nord, you might remember, is in the spotlight for objecting to legislation that would give her agency more money and authority.) Nord defended her actions by saying that they all went through the agency’s usual approval process, though she also called for an outside review of CPSC travel policies after news of her trips sparked anger in Congress.
In today’s Washington Post, Elizabeth Williamson provides more details about Nord’s and Stratton’s industry-sponsored travel and gets ethics experts’ reactions to the situation.
By Susan F. Wood, PhD
Two things appear to be major bones of contention in determining the final version of what is now named the “FDA Revitalization Act of 2007″ (FDARA). And they both related to public transparency and public accountability.
By Susan F. Wood, PhD
In an article in the New England Journal of Medicine today, Sheila Weiss Smith points out that the FDA has not been responsive to the Institute of Medicine (IOM) report on Drug Safety. That study and its recommendations took on the question of how to improve our nation’s drug safety system, specifically through regulation by FDA. In her Perspective article, Dr. Smith writes:
In general, the IOM implored the agency to “embrace a culture of safety” by increasing the priority accorded to the safety of patients. Such an emphasis could have ramifications for medical care that would be as broad and positive as those that the 1999 IOM report on medical error, To Err Is Human,2 has had for the health care system. Sadly, the FDA’s official response falls far short of what the American public expects and deserves.
by Susan F. Wood, PhD
Today’s Washington Post writes about one more instance where women’s health and children’s health were a lower priority than the interests of a powerful group. In this case, it was breastfeeding vs. the formula industry.
Marc Kaufman and Christopher Lee write:
In an attempt to raise the nation’s historically low rate of breast-feeding, federal health officials commissioned an attention-grabbing advertising campaign a few years ago to convince mothers that their babies faced real health risks if they did not breast-feed. It featured striking photos of insulin syringes and asthma inhalers topped with rubber nipples.
Plans to run these blunt ads infuriated the politically powerful infant formula industry, which hired a former chairman of the Republican National Committee and a former top regulatory official to lobby the Health and Human Services Department. Not long afterward, department political appointees toned down the campaign.
The ads ran instead with more friendly images of dandelions and cherry-topped ice cream scoops, to dramatize how breast-feeding could help avert respiratory problems and obesity. In a February 2004 letter, the lobbyists told then-HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson they were “grateful” for his staff’s intervention to stop health officials from “scaring expectant mothers into breast-feeding,” and asked for help in scaling back more of the ads.
By Liz Borkowski
Revere’s been keeping us up to date on the latest news about the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences – specifically, the stepping aside of Director Dr. David Schwartz for an NIH investigation, and the letter sent to NIEHS employees with the apparent goal of discouraging whistle-blowing. It seems like a good time to review some NIEHS happenings that had already attracted congressional scrutiny.
Our regular readers may remember that back in March, environmental advocates raised concerns about the National Toxicology Program contractor preparing a draft report on bisphenol A, because the contractor had ties to companies that manufacture this particular chemical. (Read past posts on the issue.) After investigating the allegations, the NTP fired the contractor, Virginia-based Sciences International.
Now, Susanne Rust of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that the NTP has conducted an audit and found no imporpriety in the preparation of the report, which will provide background material for an expert panel evaluating the chemical’s safety. Evironmental advocates interviewed say the audit findings don’t put their concerns to rest. From the article:
The Boston Globe, home town paper of Senator Ted Kennedy, Chair of the Senate Health, Environment, Labor and Pensions Committee, ran two important commentaries on the FDA this week.
First was an editorial yesterday strongly urging Congress to pass a strong FDA reform bill, including restricting financial conflicts of interests for advisory committee members.
Today the Globe ran an oped coauthored by David Michaels and me, again calling for leaders in Congress to ensure that the final bill (it is now in “conference” between the House version and the Senate version) come out as strong a bill as possible.
Take a look, I hope the Senator does!
Susan Wood is Research Professor at George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services, where she is part of the Project on Scientific Knowledge and Public Policy (SKAPP).
In a post last week entitled Mining Professors Oppose Mine Safety Bill, I invited the signatories of a letter opposing new mine safety legislation to disclose their financial ties to the mining industry (if any) or other related conflicts of interest. A couple of days later, one of the letter’s signers, Larry Grayson, PhD of Penn State University, responded thoughtfully and thoroughly (here and here) to my post. I respectfully invite the other signatories to follow Dr. Grayson’s lead and provide their own disclosures.
Remember back in May, when public health advocates sounded the alarm about the fact that EPA’s short list of nominees for its Science Advisory Board asbestos panel included scientists associated with product defense firms? As David Michaels explained, these firms are hired by corporations and trade associations to minimize government regulation, and scientists associated with them have a fundamental conflict of interest that should preclude their participation in EPA’s science advisory panels.
Now a similar problem is arising with another SAB panel: the particulate matter review panel of SAB’s Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, which will “review EPA’s technical and policy assessments that form the basis for updating the national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS) for particulate matter.” The EPA has released the short list of nominees, and Merrill Goozner at GoozNews explains what’s wrong with it:
By Peter Lurie, MD, MPH, Deputy Director, Public Citizen’s Health Research Group
Dr. Lurie is a contributor to Public Citizen’s drug newsletter, available at www.worstpills.org. He will present testimony on state doctor gift disclosure laws before the Senate Special Committee on Aging on Wednesday, June 27, 2007. This article originally appeared in the May 2007 issue of Public Citizen’s Health Letter.
The life of a doctor must be tough. To judge by most of their offices, doctors are unable to afford pens, mugs, refrigerator magnets, or pads of paper. Even lunch is beyond their reach, it seems. And dinner at a fancy downtown restaurant? Fuhgeddaboutit.
Fortunately, there’s a group willing to step into the breach and supply these missing morsels and amenities. You guessed it: the pharmaceutical industry.
Despite the growing prevalence of direct-to-consumer advertising on television ($4.2 billion in 2005), the pharmaceutical industry continues to lavish the lion’s share of its advertising budget on physicians ($7.2 billion, excluding the ubiquitous free samples). After all, it is the physician who wields the power of the prescription pen.
Somehow, doctors operate under the delusion that the pharmaceutical industry is misguided enough to squander close to $20 billion on promotion annually even though, according to many doctors’ reasoning, all this largesse has no influence upon their prescribing habits. Much research suggests otherwise. When doctors were sent on expensive junkets to exotic locales, purportedly to receive objective education on a drug or disease, researchers noticed that prescribing of the sponsoring drug companies’ products went up in those doctors’ hospitals upon their return. Doctors accepting gifts from drug companies are more likely to request that their hospital add drugs to the hospital’s formulary, its list of preferred drugs.
Some people have had enough. Recently, a number of prominent medical schools, including Stanford, Yale, and the University of Pennsylvania, have sharply limited interactions between their physicians and pharmaceutical representatives. And now states are getting in on the action.
By David Michaels
The National Football League, like many trade associations, has been disputing the long-term risks associated with employment in that industry. We’ve written about the league’s Committee on Mild Traumatic Brain Injury, supposedly independent but in fact dominated by individuals who work for NFL teams or the league itself. The Concussion Commission has been accused of downplaying the long term risks of football-induced brain injury. (Also see this post about one star running back’s fight with the NFL for work-related disability payments.)
Now Alan Schwarz, who has been covering the issue for the New York Times, has a report on new evidence of the terrible and previously hidden effects of football injuries on the brain. Read the rest of this entry »
By David Michaels
Chris Cillizza of WashingtonPost.com’s The Fix blog reports that former U.S. Senator Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.) is “growing more and more serious about a run for president” - in fact, he’s chosen a “campaign manager in waiting.”
Tom Collamore, a former vice president of public affairs at Altria, has been leading the behind-the scenes organization efforts for a Thompson presidential candidacy and will be intimately involved when (not if) the former senator decides to announce a bid.
Altria is the parent company of Philip Morris (PM), which was behind many of the tobacco industry’s creative methods for staving off and weakening government regulation of tobacco products. How much did Collamore participate in these activities?
Collamore joined Philip Morris in 1992, Cillizza reports. At that time, the tobacco industry was concerned about moves to ban smoking in public places based on the health risks associated with secondhand smoke, or environmental tobacco smoke (ETS). Tobacco’s number one enemy was the EPA, which had conducted a risk assessment that concluded that ETS was causing disease and death among non-smokers. Big Tobacco realized that as long as the harm from tobacco was limited to smokers, the cigarette makers could avoid regulation by claiming that smoking (and related illness) was just a personal choice issue. But once it became clear that smoking kills non-smokers too, all bets were off.
A 2004 article in Preventive Medicine by Monique Muggli, Richard Hurt, and Lee Becker uncovered Philip Morris’s work to “derail the [EPA’s] risk assessment on environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) by recruiting a network of journalists to generate news articles supporting the industry’s position and pushing its public relations message regarding the ETS issue.” Collamore was apparently involved in this effort: Read the rest of this entry »
By David Michaels
The Chinese government has apparently recognized the importance of integrity in drug regulation. According to AP:
China’s top drug regulator was sentenced to death on charges of corruption and negligence, state media said Tuesday, the latest development stemming from growing alarm over the country’s poor food-safety record. Read the rest of this entry »
The public (that’s you) have until May 24 to comments on EPA’s list of nominees for its Science Advisory Board panel on asbestos. David Michaels has weighed in on this issue and is submitting his comments today to EPA. Another organization providing input is the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). Writing on behalf of NRDC, senior scientist Jennifer Sass writes:
On the whole, industry-employed scientists and scientists working for industry-supported research institutions tend to downplay the effects of toxic chemicals. …Here, many, if not most of the industry nominees developed their asbestos publication record in the last five years, becoming “instant experts” in the service of their corporate clients. The nominees are unfit to provide EPA with robust independent scientific advice.
A complete list of the nominees appears here.
By David Michaels
Product Defense is a lucrative business. The scientists who own and operate these firms make sizable profits helping polluters and manufacturers of dangerous products stymie public health and environmental regulators. The companies, and the scientists, sell not just their scientific expertise, but their knowledge of and access to regulatory agencies. Hire me, they say, because I can get the results you want. I used to work at EPA, or OSHA, or FDA — I know how they operate, and besides, the folks at the agency will always answer my phone calls. This is mercenary science.
Should scientists whose financial success depends on influencing agency policy be appointed to Advisory Committees that help the agency set policy? It is clear to me the answer should be no.
By David Michaels
Earlier this month, the National Institute of Health’s National Toxicology Program fired the contractor that had been running its Center for the Evaluation of Risks to Human Reproduction (CERHR) after environmental health advocates drew attention to the company’s chemical industry ties. (Go here to see previous posts.)
Now, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel draws attention to another NIH contractor with potential conflicts of interest – and once again highlights the lack of appropriate disclosure policies for NIH contractors. At issue is the contractor that prepares the NTP’s Report on Carcinogens.
By David Michaels
The controversy continues over NIH’s review of Bisphenol A (BPA), and the agency’s firing of Sciences International. Members of the NIH’s BPA Expert Panel have joined the discussion, through comments to the Pump Handle, assuring the public that their work was not not influenced by any potential conflicts.
In addition, today’s Washington Post and Los Angeles Times both have articles with additional details on the conflicts of interest that triggered the firing, along with comments on the process to date. There is also an interview with a panel member defending the quality of Sciences International’s work.
And a member of the Expert Panel has written a letter to the Post, with a copy to the Pump Handle, clarifying what he believes are mistakes in the Post’s coverage.
By Dick Clapp
Opponents in the debate over conflict of interest in cancer research are duking it out, and the current forum for their fight is the American Journal of Industrial Medicine. The article that touched off this particular scuffle was “Secret Ties to Industry and Conflicting Interests in Cancer Research,” by Hardell L, et al. (Am J Ind Med 2007;50:227-233), which details a number of examples of researchers working for industries and not disclosing their ties. The most widely publicized revelations (see this Guardian story) were about Sir Richard Doll, one of the icons of 20th century epidemiology, and his consulting arrangement with Monsanto, Turner and Newall (a British asbestos manufacturer), the Chemical Manufacturers Association, ICI (a British producer of vinyl chloride), Dow Chemicals and others. Other sections of the Hardell, et al. paper discuss testimony and articles by Dimitrios Trichopoulos, Hans-Olov Adami, Dennis Paustenbach and Jack Mandel regarding dioxin, Joseph McLaughlin and John Boice regarding cell phones and other examples of apparently undisclosed conflicts of interest.
The original article is well worth a read, but the letters in response – published in AJIM’s March 2007 issue—are just as revealing in their own way.
By David Michaels
The National Toxicology Program (NTP) has fired Sciences International. Last month, Marla Cone wrote in the Los Angeles Times about allegations that the consulting firm, hired by the NTP to run the Center for the Evaluation of Risks to Human Reproduction (CERHR), had significant conflict of interest. The allegation was that Sciences International also worked for manufacturers of Bisphenol A, or BPA, a controversial endocrine-disrupting chemical that CECHR was evaluating. (Jennifer Sass and Sarah Janssen of the Natural Resources Defense Council have post on the BPA evaluation here).
Now, Lyndsey Layton of the Washington Post reports that
At the same time it has been advising the federal government, Sciences International has been on the payroll of Dow Chemical, BASF, 3M and other companies that produce some of the chemicals under scrutiny. Read the rest of this entry »
A few weeks ago, we detailed some of the concerns about the review of the chemical Bisphenol-A (BPA) coordinated by the contractor Sciences International for the National Toxicology Program’s (NTP) Center for the Evaluation of Risks to Human Reproduction (CERHR). The story broke shortly before an expert panel on BPA was scheduled to meet, when Environmental Working Group reported that Sciences International has worked closely with tobacco and chemical companies – including Dow Chemical, a BPA manufacturer. We noted that these were evidently previous clients of Sciences International, which is under new management and no longer works for the tobacco industry or BPA manufacturers, but that the NTP does not have an adequate process in place to identify and deal with such potential conflicts among its contractors.
After hearing from public health advocates about their concerns, the NTP announced that it would postpone the BPA decision and review the ties between CERHR and Sciences International. On Saturday, the News & Observer (NC) reported that NTP has suspended its work with Sciences International:
By Jennifer Sass and Sarah Janssen
As described in earlier posts (here and here), the NIH’s National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) has contracted the work of the Center for the Evaluation of Risks to Human Reproduction (CERHR) out to the consulting company Sciences International. This issue received public attention just as CERHR’s scheduled review of the chemical Bisphenol A (BPA) was taking place.
We submitted comments to CERHR detailing concerns about the content and the process of the BPA review. Our concerns include:
By David Michaels
Since my post on privatizing federal science, I have learned more about Sciences International and owe them an apology. I said in my post, “Sciences International is not a hack company; it employs some very respected scientists who do excellent work.” But that was buried in the post.
Since writing the post, I have been assured that Sciences International no longer works for chemical manufacturers involved in producing bisphenol A (BPA). I noted in the post that the previous head of Sciences International, who had been involved in work for the tobacco industry, has left the company. In addition, I am told that the statement the company works for chemical manufacturers who produce BPA came from an out-of-date web post, and that the scientists involved in that work have all left Sciences International.
I remain concerned, however, with the potential effects of conflicted interests, and the way that questions about conflict undermine public confidence in the quality and credibility of government science. Which is exactly what has happened here.
We in the science community need to continue to wrestle with the potential effects of conflict on interest when the government privatizes science, as it does more and more. Certainly, disclosure and transparency are the beginning, but more is needed. To begin with, federal agencies like NIEHS should prohibit contracting work to conflicted scientists and consulting firms. If prohibitions like this were in place, we wouldn’t have to debate whether any particular contract was appropriate.
David Michaels heads the Project on Scientific Knowledge and Public Policy (SKAPP) and is Professor and Associate Chairman in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services.
One of the great things about the blogosphere is that even when several bloggers are writing about the same story, they’re covering different angles. Here are a couple of examples of posts that complement our posts from the past week:
As a complement to Revere’s post on the FDA’s cefquinome decision, check out The Olive Ridley Crawl for a list of five reasons the approval is unnecessary and Mike the Mad Biologist to learn why cefepime-resistant salmonella is only the tip of an infection iceberg.
As a complement to David Michaels’s post on antioxidants and cancer, learn how antioxidants might be increasing cancer (if the findings of the recent article are true) from Abel Pharmboy at Terra Sigillata.
On a less TPH-centric note, here are other blog highlights from the past week:
by Liz Borkowski
On Sunday, Marla Cone of the LA Times wrote about a federal health center contracting out the work of assessing potentially dangerous chemicals to a company with chemical-industry ties (see David Michaels’s post for reasons to be wary of this particular contractor). Her story in today’s paper shows that shining a light on such shady ties can sometimes have an effect.
By David Michaels
Marla Cone, in the Los Angeles Times, reports on a complaint raised by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) that the National Toxicology Program’s Center for the Evaluation of Risks to Human Reproduction (CERHR) is being run not by federal scientists but by a consulting firm that also works for manufacturers of chemicals CECHR is charged with evaluating.
by Revere, cross-posted from Effect Measure
The University of California Regents (their Board of Trustees) is facing a thorny issue: should researchers in the University of California system be banned from taking research support from the tobacco industry? Two conflicting imperatives, one, unfettered freedom to pursue research wherever it leads; the other, the need for some constraints. Not anything goes, even in the hallowed halls of higher learning. Let me be clear. I think the chief executives of tobacco companies are aiding and abetting, if not committing, homicide, by promoting an addiction to a fatal product for money. I favor prosecuting them fully if they have committed fraud, or at least suing them for every penny they have and then some. That said, I still don’t favor a ban. Here’s why. Read the rest of this entry »
By Sheldon Krimsky
ExxonMobil has already come under scrutiny for funding global warming deniers, but the company has also funded research that raises concerns about conflict of interest in litigation research. The company began funding litigation research after being hit with punitive damages for the Exxon Valdez oil tanker spill, and then cited that research in an appeal that ultimately reduced those damages by $2 billion.
If you’ve got a long weekend coming up, what better way to spend it than by reading the best science blog posts? Coturnix of A Blog Around the Clock has links to the 50 posts chosen for the Science Blogging Anthology.
Elsewhere in the blogosphere …
by Dick Clapp
The latest issue of Occupational and Environmental Medicine contains a commentary from Ken Mundt, a consultant with ENVIRON International Corporation, on “Cancer incidence among semiconductor and electronic storage device workers,” an IBM-funded study by Bender et al appearing in the same issue. Mundt says that “the study offers some reassurance that at this stage of follow-up no noteworthy increases in cancer risk are seen among employees in the semiconductor production and storage device sectors” (though he notes that additional follow-up should be considered). I believe he is being too quick here to minimize the cancer risk in the semiconductor industry.
By Dick Clapp
On December 1, NPR’s Living on Earth aired a segment on conflicts of interest in medical research. Host Bruce Gellerman interviewed Dr. Lennart Hardell, lead author of a recent article on conflicts of interest in cancer research published in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine, Catherine DeAngelis, editor-in-chief of the Journal of the American Medical Association, and me. On LOE’s website, there’s also a conversation between Gellerman and Dr. Dimitrios Trichopoulos, one of the researchers whom Hardell and his co-authors criticized in their article.
It’s instructive to examine Hardell’s allegations about Trichopoulos and Trichopoulos’s response, because both are fairly typical of the widespread dilemma of conflicts of interest in medical research.
By David Michaels
According to a report in the Wall Street Journal published last December (by Peter Waldman, 12/23/05), product defense experts at ChemRisk pulled off a particularly audacious scam on behalf of Pacific Gas and Electric, the California utility that was being sued for contaminating drinking water with hexavalent chromium, a carcinogen.
ChemRisk’s scientists went to China to obtain the raw data of a 1987 study that had implicated chromium-polluted water in high cancer rates, paying the lead author $2,000, re-analyzing his data, changing the results to exonerate chromium and republishing the study still under his name in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (JOEM), without obtaining his permission and without acknowledging that ChemRisk had done virtually all the work on the new study.
Following the exposé, the editor of JOEM retracted the paper (July 2006 issue).
Now the story has resurfaced, with the paper’s second author claiming (according to her attorney) that the Wall Street Journal’s coverage was “false and defamatory,” and demanding a retraction and apology. She is also demanding that JOEM withdraw their retraction, and re-publish the original article.
Neither the WSJ or JOEM are backing down. Here are the details:
by Liz Borkowski
If you haven’t read Laurie David’s op-ed, “Science a la Joe Camel,” in yesterday’s Washington Post, I recommend clicking over to it. David was a producer of Al Gore’s climate change documentary “An Inconvenient Truth,” and reports that the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) turned down 50,000 free DVDs of that movie, which the movie company offered for classroom viewing.
Why would an organization of science teachers turn down a movie that brings science to a mainstream audience and tackles what’s arguably the most important environmental issue of the day? Because, David explains, NSTA is funded by ExxonMobil.
