81
This paradigm (i.e. the “Four D’s”) was applied many times over in the case of
each of the following harmful substances before public policy was changed:
• Tobacco
• Nickel
• Benzene
• Lead
• Asbestos
• Climate Change
and continues today with updates provided, for example, on:
• Asbestos (Miller 2019)
• Cell phone Electro-magnetic Frequency (EMF)/Radio-Frequency Radiation
exposures in cell phones (Sasco 2018; Miller et al. 2019)
• Mercury (Mergler 2019)
5 How Manipulation and Misconduct Operate
To effect delays noted above, and to drive division among scientists, epidemiologists knowledgeable about the tools of epidemiology are capable of introducing bias
in subtle and influential ways into research studies. For those epidemiologists who
wittingly (and usually for large sums of money) allow themselves to cast aside their
scientific values and their duty to pursue truth in the public interest, a toolkit of
techniques is available to skew results and produce junk science (Cranor 2011;
Soskolne 2017). They seek to achieve this through applying the following techniques that usually operate at the level of applying the methods of the discipline:
• Under-powered studies
• Inadequate follow-up methods
• Inadequate follow-up time
• Inappropriate biomarkers of exposure
• Contaminated controls
• Unbalanced discussion
• Selective disclosure of competing interests
• Biased/selective interpretation
• Mechanistic information is ignored for inferring effects
• Exaggerated differences are made between human and toxicology studies, the
insistence being on separating effects seen in animals from effects in humans
• Molecular structures predicting hazard potential are ignored
• The insistence on first demonstrating effects in local populations of exposed
people, despite demonstrated effects in humans elsewhere
• The failure to make explicit the implicit value judgements that go into deciding
appropriate standards of evidence for drawing policy-relevant conclusions (i.e.,
suppressing dominant interests and values).
Epidemiology and Public Health Under Siege: In Whose Best Interests?
This paradigm (i.e. the “Four D’s”) was applied many times over in the case of
each of the following harmful substances before public policy was changed:
• Tobacco
• Nickel
• Benzene
• Lead
• Asbestos
• Climate Change
and continues today with updates provided, for example, on:
• Asbestos (Miller 2019)
• Cell phone Electro-magnetic Frequency (EMF)/Radio-Frequency Radiation
exposures in cell phones (Sasco 2018; Miller et al. 2019)
• Mercury (Mergler 2019)
5 How Manipulation and Misconduct Operate
To effect delays noted above, and to drive division among scientists, epidemiologists knowledgeable about the tools of epidemiology are capable of introducing bias
in subtle and influential ways into research studies. For those epidemiologists who
wittingly (and usually for large sums of money) allow themselves to cast aside their
scientific values and their duty to pursue truth in the public interest, a toolkit of
techniques is available to skew results and produce junk science (Cranor 2011;
Soskolne 2017). They seek to achieve this through applying the following techniques that usually operate at the level of applying the methods of the discipline:
• Under-powered studies
• Inadequate follow-up methods
• Inadequate follow-up time
• Inappropriate biomarkers of exposure
• Contaminated controls
• Unbalanced discussion
• Selective disclosure of competing interests
• Biased/selective interpretation
• Mechanistic information is ignored for inferring effects
• Exaggerated differences are made between human and toxicology studies, the
insistence being on separating effects seen in animals from effects in humans
• Molecular structures predicting hazard potential are ignored
• The insistence on first demonstrating effects in local populations of exposed
people, despite demonstrated effects in humans elsewhere
• The failure to make explicit the implicit value judgements that go into deciding
appropriate standards of evidence for drawing policy-relevant conclusions (i.e.,
suppressing dominant interests and values).
Epidemiology and Public Health Under Siege: In Whose Best Interests?