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[Book reviews]

Muckraking
Inside the science/PR/industrial complex

BY BEN GEMAN

Trust Us, We’re Experts!: How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles with Your Future, by John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton. Tarcher/Putnam, 360 pages, $24.95.

“University politics are vicious,” Henry Kissinger once quipped, “precisely because the stakes are so small.” Anyone who thinks of repeating that line should first consider the University of California–Berkeley’s Department of Plant and Microbial Biology, where biotech giant Novartis kicked in $25 million in 1999 — and now has dibs on lots of the research.

For firms like Novartis, the stakes on campus are high indeed. The growing corporate funding of universities ties research to vested industry interests. This is troubling stuff, and only part of the nexus between business, public relations, and not-quite-objective “science.”

John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton untangle this web in their new exposé Trust Us, We’re Experts!: How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles with Your Future. The two activists and investigative journalists — authors of 1995’s Toxic Sludge Is Good for You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry — have made careers out of revealing the scummy and dangerous influence of big-time PR. Their new book explores the power of chemical, biotech, and other industries to obfuscate debate on public-health issues, slow regulators, neuter scientists whose findings threaten profit, and misinform journalists and the public about the real and potential dangers they create.

The idea that truth is a frequent casualty of war — over profit or anything else — may not be new. But the evidence here reveals a growing subversion of science to corporate interests with a stake in how government agencies regulate industries and what we buy at the store. The authors suggest that in a world where technology with big consequences — like genetic engineering — is developing exponentially, these trends are especially troubling.

The “manipulation” mentioned in the title takes a number of forms, so the authors catalogue various ways the “perception management” business sullies important debates. Stauber and Rampton remind us that many “grassrootsy,” “environmental,” or “publicly minded” groups are actually nothing of the sort. The American Council on Science and Health and the Advancement of Sound Science Coalition are industry mouthpieces, and the fossil-fuel industry’s Global Climate Coalition is anything but green. The movement for “sound science” tends to be what sounds good in boardrooms. When it’s time to play defense, there’s even a software program used by PR firms called “Outrage,” a package the authors note is “designed to assist companies in predicting and managing the anger of ‘stakeholders’ affected by corporate actions.”

Stauber and Rampton also discuss dirty tricks, like the surveillance of activist groups by consultants to companies like DuPont and Shell, and academic smear campaigns against researchers who step out of line. There’s the remarkable case of Herbert Needleman, who saw his damning research into the toxic effects of lead exposure on children subjected to years of suppression and challenges by industry-backed scientists, with the help of the big-time PR firm Hill & Knowlton. Elsewhere, the authors dig deep into the inroads that corporate-funded research has made into leading medical journals, despite policies designed to weed out conflicts of interest.

Ultimately, Trust Us shows how the influence of the scientific/PR/industrial-complex is systemic and not just the work of any one front group or biased analysis. The last 25 years, the authors write, have brought the “commercialization” of big science, with corporate research funding now far outpacing government funding. They step back again to show that debates around issues like biotech foods are skirmishes in a larger battle over how to handle uncertainty in public-health and environmental policy. Many industries rightfully fear the growing currency of the “precautionary principle,” which argues that the burden of proof should rest with an industry — like biotech food — to prove that something is safe, and that any doubt or uncertainty is reason for caution.

Much of Trust Us centers on the real-world implications of an abstract idea that’s been repeated elsewhere — namely, that the values and goals of institutions and projects often reflect the interests of those who fund them. When this filters down to, say, the pages of the world’s most respected medical journals, or information fed to the public, it’s time to start looking under the rug. And fortunately, that’s still possible. We’re not helpless, and the book documents the progress of public-health advocates — sometimes just ordinary citizens — in the face of industry-backed opposition. Stauber and Rampton give a few examples of groups and publications — like their own terrific muckraking newsletter PR Watch — that help punch through the industry-induced haze. Trust Us also helps you figure out how to decode the language of propaganda by offering a laundry list of tactics and industry buzzwords.

That’s a good thing, too, because otherwise, much of Trust Us could engender cynicism rather than useful skepticism. “The public needs to know the context with which to weigh the information it receives,” the authors write about the inquiries journalists should but often don’t make. “Does the scientist or other expert receive any funding from companies with a stake in the topic? Are there conflicts of interest? . . . These questions deserve to be answered, but are rarely even asked.”

For an excerpt from Trust Us, We’re Experts! and an interview with the authors, see the News & Features section.

Trust Us, We’re Experts!: How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles with Your Future, by John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton. Tarcher/Putnam, 360 pages, $24.95.

“University politics are vicious,” Henry Kissinger once quipped, “precisely because the stakes are so small.” Anyone who thinks of repeating that line should first consider the University of California–Berkeley’s Department of Plant and Microbial Biology, where biotech giant Novartis kicked in $25 million in 1999 — and now has dibs on lots of the research.

For firms like Novartis, the stakes on campus are high indeed. The growing corporate funding of universities ties research to vested industry interests. This is troubling stuff, and only part of the nexus between business, public relations, and not-quite-objective “science.”

John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton untangle this web in their new exposé Trust Us, We’re Experts!: How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles with Your Future. The two activists and investigative journalists — authors of 1995’s Toxic Sludge Is Good for You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry — have made careers out of revealing the scummy and dangerous influence of big-time PR. Their new book explores the power of chemical, biotech, and other industries to obfuscate debate on public-health issues, slow regulators, neuter scientists whose findings threaten profit, and misinform journalists and the public about the real and potential dangers they create.

The idea that truth is a frequent casualty of war — over profit or anything else — may not be new. But the evidence here reveals a growing subversion of science to corporate interests with a stake in how government agencies regulate industries and what we buy at the store. The authors suggest that in a world where technology with big consequences — like genetic engineering — is developing exponentially, these trends are especially troubling.

The “manipulation” mentioned in the title takes a number of forms, so the authors catalogue various ways the “perception management” business sullies important debates. Stauber and Rampton remind us that many “grassrootsy,” “environmental,” or “publicly minded” groups are actually nothing of the sort. The American Council on Science and Health and the Advancement of Sound Science Coalition are industry mouthpieces, and the fossil-fuel industry’s Global Climate Coalition is anything but green. The movement for “sound science” tends to be what sounds good in boardrooms. When it’s time to play defense, there’s even a software program used by PR firms called “Outrage,” a package the authors note is “designed to assist companies in predicting and managing the anger of ‘stakeholders’ affected by corporate actions.”

Stauber and Rampton also discuss dirty tricks, like the surveillance of activist groups by consultants to companies like DuPont and Shell, and academic smear campaigns against researchers who step out of line. There’s the remarkable case of Herbert Needleman, who saw his damning research into the toxic effects of lead exposure on children subjected to years of suppression and challenges by industry-backed scientists, with the help of the big-time PR firm Hill & Knowlton. Elsewhere, the authors dig deep into the inroads that corporate-funded research has made into leading medical journals, despite policies designed to weed out conflicts of interest.

Ultimately, Trust Us shows how the influence of the scientific/PR/industrial-complex is systemic and not just the work of any one front group or biased analysis. The last 25 years, the authors write, have brought the “commercialization” of big science, with corporate research funding now far outpacing government funding. They step back again to show that debates around issues like biotech foods are skirmishes in a larger battle over how to handle uncertainty in public-health and environmental policy. Many industries rightfully fear the growing currency of the “precautionary principle,” which argues that the burden of proof should rest with an industry — like biotech food — to prove that something is safe, and that any doubt or uncertainty is reason for caution.

Much of Trust Us centers on the real-world implications of an abstract idea that’s been repeated elsewhere — namely, that the values and goals of institutions and projects often reflect the interests of those who fund them. When this filters down to, say, the pages of the world’s most respected medical journals, or information fed to the public, it’s time to start looking under the rug. And fortunately, that’s still possible. We’re not helpless, and the book documents the progress of public-health advocates — sometimes just ordinary citizens — in the face of industry-backed opposition. Stauber and Rampton give a few examples of groups and publications — like their own terrific muckraking newsletter PR Watch — that help punch through the industry-induced haze. Trust Us also helps you figure out how to decode the language of propaganda by offering a laundry list of tactics and industry buzzwords.

That’s a good thing, too, because otherwise, much of Trust Us could engender cynicism rather than useful skepticism. “The public needs to know the context with which to weigh the information it receives,” the authors write about the inquiries journalists should but often don’t make. “Does the scientist or other expert receive any funding from companies with a stake in the topic? Are there conflicts of interest? . . . These questions deserve to be answered, but are rarely even asked.”

For an excerpt from Trust Us, We’re Experts! and an interview with the authors, see the News & Features section.