Protecting Scientific Integrity
Sheldon Krimsky reviews Thomas O. McGarity and Wendy E. Wagner’s Bending Science: How Special Interests Corrupt Public Health Research.
"...scientists conducting their work in different sectors of society are faced with different social and political contexts, and they may not exercise the same autonomy to investigate the natural world and report on their findings. In the United States, for example, government scientists who are expected to submit papers for talks and publications may be required to submit their papers to be vetted by policy members of their agency. In turn,
the policy members may censor the language and conclusions prior to publication or distribution. This practice is illustrated by the recent controversies over “political editing” of scientific documents on global warming."
The rights and responsibilities of government and industry scientists are not as clear as they are for academic scientists. And while considerable attention is paid to academic freedom and investigator autonomy within universities, there too
scientists can exercise self-censorship when they wish to please an external funder who has a financial or political interest in the outcome of their research.
Bending Science explores the multifarious ways that science has been distorted when its goals and practices are superseded by profits, issues of liability, politics, and industrial competitiveness. The book is structured around six core themes: “Shaping Science” (the use of contract research to acquire support for preexisting views); “Hiding Science” (suppressing knowledge that politically or economically motivated funders dislike); “Attacking Science” (manufacturing uncertainty around sound scientific results); “Harassing Scientists” (using litigation to force scientists to defend their published results in court); “Packaging Science” (selecting scientists to reach a predetermined outcome); and “Spinning Science” (reinterpreting or falsely interpreting scientific results to meet non-scientific agendas). A wealth of both vignettes and historical cases illustrate these six themes.
The authors, both law professors at the University of Texas, contribute a unique legal and regulatory perspective
on current trends that compromise the integrity of and the public trust in science. A notable discussion is the conflict between trade secrecy and the public’s right to know. The conflict becomes palpable when
companies negotiate out-of-court tort settlements that block public access to discovery documents that may provide valuable knowledge about certain products’ occupational or public health dangers.
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Science is an amazing thing, without it we'd still be in the middle ages, but let's not kid ourselves that it operates in a bubble free of influence from government and the corporations that fund and oversee it.
