Sep 1 2009 (Vol. 29, No. 15)
Consumers are increasingly being exposed to what chemistry Nobel laureate Irving Langmuir dubbed “pathological science,” the “science of things that aren’t so.” It is the specialty of self-styled public interest groups, whose agenda too often is not protection of public health or the environment, but intractable opposition to whatever research, product, or technology they happen to dislike. This is not a harmless diversion: When their machinations give rise to overregulation—or even bans—of safe and useful products or processes, all of society is the poorer for it. Activists who disapprove of certain kinds of R&D or marketed products often try to stigmatize them via guilt by association with corporate interests. For several reasons, however, including the importance of corporate branding, avoidance of liability, and a desire to succeed in the marketplace, industrial research most often adheres to high professional and legal standards, including peer review. When it doesn’t, the scientific method, market forces, and regulatory oversight collaborate to ensure that, ultimately, dishonesty is exposed, condemned, and punished. By contrast, activist-funded research is commonly held to a lower standard, or none at all. Activists’ claims are typically promoted by alarmist press releases and reported by the media (their dual mottos: “If it bleeds, it leads,” and “Never let facts get in the way of a good story”), but seldom are they independently peer-reviewed and published in scientific journals. Sadly, after its claims are repeated again and again, policy-makers, the media, and the public come to accept this pathological science as credible—or even proven. Misinformation thrives in part because of the “information cascade” phenomenon, the way in which ideas gain acceptance by being parroted until eventually we assume they must be true even in the absence of persuasive evidence. |
Henry I. Miller, M.D. (), a physician and molecular biologist, is a fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He was at the FDA from 1979 to 1994.
9/3/2009
Many thanks to Henry Miller for this excellent column, which would be far more impactful if published in NY Times or Washington Post.
Unfortunately, there are many more health scares that have been fomented by activists that are perpetuated by authors of peer reviewed scientific articles and that are adopted as official policies by government health agencies.
Probably the most notorious example of this is the claim by abstinence-only anti-tobacco extremists that smokefree tobacco/nicotine products are "unsafe" alternatives to cigarettes.
Epidemiological studies have consistently found that daily cigarette smoking is about 100 times deadlier than using smokeless tobacco products (i.e. those commonly used in the US and Sweden).
But hundreds of scientific journal articles written by anti tobacco extremists (and peer reviewed primarily by other anti tobacco extremists) inaccurately mislead readers to believe that smokeless tobacco products are just as hazardous as cigarettes.
Meanwhile, US Congress, CDC, NCI, US SG, and all state health departments have two-decade-old policies of misleading smokers (and the public) to inaccurately believe that smokeless tobacco products are just as hazardous as cigarettes, and that smokeless tobacco products are not less hazardous alternatives to cigarettes.
Due to this misinformation campaign against smokeless tobacco, 85%-90% of smokers (and nonsmokers) incorrectly believe that smokeless tobacco products are just as (if not more) hazardous than cigarettes.
Even worse, the FDA (which Congress recently authorized to regulate tobacco products) has recently blocked the importation of, and misrepresented the scientific evidence about, electronic cigarettes (which are basically noncombustible nicotine inhalers that emit no smoke) in a back door attempt to ban these products that have helped hundreds of thousands of smokers quit and/or sharply reduce cigarette consumption http://www.fda.gov/downloads/NewsEvents/Newsroom/MediaTranscripts/UCM173405.pdf
And yet, FDA officials are fully aware that electronic cigarettes contain similar trace levels of carcinogens as nicotine gums and patches (that are approved by the FDA for smoking cessation), that there is no evidence that any e-cigarette user has been harmed by the product, and that reports of adverse health affects due to the products' usage, and that there is no evidence that any youth or nonsmoker has ever become addicted to the product.
Tens of millions of addicted cigarettes smokers could sharply reduce their health risks (nearly as much as by quitting all tobacco/nicotine use) by switching to far less hazardous smokefree tobacco/nicotine alternatives.
Unfortunatly, federal and state health officials have allowed their personal abstinence-only anti-tobacco attitudes to trump their ethical duty to truthfully inform tobacco consumers about the comparable health risks of different tobacco/nicotine products.
Bill Godshall
Executive Director
Smokefree Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh, PA
smokefree@compuserve.com
9/6/2009
I agree with Bill's approach. It's the smoke inhalation that is causing the true public health problem. Sure poeple get addicted to nicotine surges and consequent dopamine release but it's the delivery vehicle that is the true health problem. Stopping the sale of any product designed to work by inhaling smoke is where we should be putting our energy, and using whatever non-smoke inhahalation device we have available to do this should be our focus.
9/11/2009
True, but rarely unpopular ideas turn out to be major discoveries.
You did not mention the time, effort and money that is wasted in adressing some of the examples you gave.
I think that mercury-containg is incorrect chemically and misleading too non-chemists. Assuming that mercury means elemental mercury. This was never a vaccine component. Thimerosal contains is an organic mercurial with anionic mercury. As we know 1 electron changes everything. Not that this means there is no potential harm. Everything has its other side. But let's be specific so that the risks can be properly attributed and evaluated.
There are infinitly greater sources of mercury compounds in the enviorment and these require attention.
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