Response to Philip Scranton’s Report On Deceit and Denial: The Deadly Politics of Industrial Pollution

Scranton argues that we “wrote with the benefit of hindsight, judging actors generations ago as if they should have had foreknowledge of research outcomes, as if they should have been able, in advance, to recognize which among various possible health and safety threats would prove to be substantive and which would prove to be illusory.” (Scranton, p.19) This is a complete misreading of the documents and our text. He would like the reader to believe that WE are arguing that vinyl chloride monomer was linked to cancer when in fact, it was the industry representatives at the time who were worried that research showed that vinyl chloride monomer might be a human carcinogen. He would like the reader to believe that it is WE who project back on the historical actors the fear that this information would lead to regulatory action, lawsuits or other problems for the industry when, in fact, what we do in the book is show that it was industry representatives themselves who were concerned about these possibilities. We were not guilty of presentism, as Scranton would like readers to believe. [25]

Scranton on “Good Science”

“All scientific work is incomplete…. All scientific work is liable to be upset or modified by advancing knowledge. That does not confer upon us a freedom to ignore the knowledge we already have, or to postpone the action that it appears to demand at a given time.” –Harriet Hardy [26]

Among the more disingenuous sections of Scranton’s analysis is his attempt to use the history and philosophy of science as a means of defending the industry’s decisions NOT to inform the government of its findings and suspicions about the carcinogenic effects of vinyl chloride monomer. Not only does he misuse the work of others in trying to buttress his central argument that doing good science demanded that information be kept from the government, but he completely conflates a variety of issues. He argues that we “ignored the difference between information (e.g. rumors, first-stage research findings, individual’s opinions) and reliable scientific knowledge” in his attempt to explain why industry didn’t tell government officials about the Europeans’ finding of angiosarcomas in rats (Scranton, p. 4).

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[25] Scranton (p.8-9) imposes some “presentist” ideology of his own when he attacks Irving Selikoff, one of the leading historical figures for his work on asbestos. He makes irrelevant and beside the point comments that have nothing to do with our book or the chemical industry and serve merely to caste aspersions on the character of recognized experts of the period: In an attempt to discredit Selikoff, Scranton argues that we should have impugned his credibility because he may (or may not) have been accurate in his claims about the potential dangers of asbestos-related deaths! Apparently, we should have impugned him in his damning testimony on the dangers of VCM because Scranton thinks he was wrong on a totally unrelated matter. In his statement, Scranton leaves the reader to believe that we discuss Selikoff and asbestos on page 203, note 35 but if one bothers to turn to that page, one sees no such reference. Note 35 refers to Louis Beliczky, not Selikoff, and no where on that page is there a reference to asbestos. This is another gratuitous attempt to mislead the reader about what we say and what he invents.
[26] Quoted in Deceit and Denial, pp. 113.