In a couple of key cases, this instance of Bisphenol A also worked with Atrazine which is the herbicide, we see grotesque distortions of science that compete with the best examples of industry defending tobacco.  It’s straight out of the tobacco play book.

This work was done in the late nineties and it was immediately criticized by industries.  It was a fascinating process to watch unfold as the science came out, was criticized, other people worked to see if it could be confirmed.  Some in industries, some in independent labs, and this pretty remarkable pattern came out of those attempts at testing, at what scientists call replicating results.  An important science like the result like that needs to be confirmed by independent people to make sure it is right.  So the pattern that emerged was every industry attempt to replicate it failed.  To date, by December of 2004 there had been eleven industry efforts to replicate the low level affects of Bisphenol A.  Not just the prostate affect but in general the low level affects beneath the level that EPA tells us is safe.  So eleven efforts by industry to do it, every one of them didn’t show an affect.  There were 105 academic studies of it funded by government.  Of those 105, 94 showed positive affects.  So here you’ve got industry funding 0 out of 11, government funding 94 out of 105 showing positive affects.  Something is wrong here.  And what’s unfolded in the public debate is industry spokes people point to those 11 and say this isn’t a problem.  And in fact there’s a drum beat coming out of some of their trade representative associations that basically say well the only relevant research has been the initial study and maybe one or two others, ignoring the 105 government studies.  And frankly indulging in the worst of tobacco science to try and protect their product.

There are very good industry scientists, very honest people, but what we see overall in a couple of key cases, this instance of Bisphenol A also worked with Atrazine which is the herbicide, we see grotesque distortions of science that compete with the best examples of industry defending tobacco.  It’s straight out of the tobacco play book and actually it was quite interesting, about two weeks ago in a public health journal there was an analysis of some more tobacco science.  It was a revelation by public health scientists who had gained access to a large repository of documents from the Phillip Morris Company, documents that were made public as a result of tobacco suit settlements and were not designed to be read by outsiders but now are available and shed light on the practices that they were using to, in this case it was to obscure the links between second hand smoke and sudden infant death syndrome.  A very concerted effort that involved paying scientists to write distorted papers promoting things in ways that didn’t reflect what the real science was saying.  So this came out in January or February of 2005.  It was about events taking place in 2001/2002, at a time when the tobacco industry was saying oh, we’ve been bad guys, we’ve changed, we’re responsible citizens now.  Well we here the same things from some sectors within the chemical industry.  They’re saying oh we’ve change our practices.  We don’t do that anymore.  But at the same time, right now they’re pursuing, legally they’re pursuing a pair of scientific historians, Rosner and Markowitz at Columbia University.  They’re pursuing them.  They’re aggressively going after them legally because they’ve written an amazing book called “Deceit and Denial” which is an eighty year history of distortive practices in science on key chemical issues.  I know there are really good people working in labs in industry.  I know that they are very responsible people in those industries, but at the same time there’s a process that’s going on that’s not letting them make all the decisions.