This information was not “rumor,” or “individuals’ opinions.” Rather this was information upon which the industry revised its own research project. In addition, at the behest of Dow Chemical, the MCA asked the Europeans for permission to give this information to the government, seeing it as highly significant and relevant to the regulatory effort. Indeed, the representatives of industry themselves recognized that the denial of this information to the government “could be construed as an illegal conspiracy by industry.” [27] This type of evidence in the historical record is hardly conducive to Scranton’s depiction of it as “first-stage research findings” or “rumors” unworthy of mention to government officials.
Further, he quotes at length from Bauer and Polonyi with regard to what scientists should and should not publish: “To ask that every scientist publish every piece of data is to invite a flood of unsound, uninteresting garbage.” (Scranton, p18) He argues what we, in Deceit and Denial, “represented as immorality and illegality [actions that]… can be more adequately, persuasively, and at a minimum, alternatively be described as sound scientific practice. Demanding that preliminary results from the Maltoni study should have been instantly released was a claim that reinforced the ‘junk science’ that grabs headlines.” (Scranton, p.18) [28] This is nonsense. The issue that Scranton avoids is whether or not data that the industry considered highly significant should have been consciously and deliberately kept from the government, despite the fact that the government had put out a call for any information regarding the dangers of vinyl chloride.
He conflates the difference between informing governmental regulators of findings and publishing scientific findings.
He confuses the methodology and responsibilities of scientists with the interests of industry representatives, managers, spokespersons and lawyers.
It is impossible in a reasonable space to address every paragraph of Scranton’s arguments about science and scientists’ responsibilities. He criticizes us for saying that “where human lives are at stake, most researchers accept that they have an obligation to share knowledge about potential harm.” This is hardly a point in need of documentation which he demands. (It lacked, he says, “any reference to a source that would confirm or validate its assertions.”) (Scranton, p.20) Nor do we believe that it is necessary to define the terms “knowledge” and “potential harm” each of which, Scranton says, “demands precision.”
An example of Scranton’s argument follows:
“Surely in every medical research project, human health and human lives are implicated, but Markowitz did not discuss how he construed the sense of lives ‘at stake,’ how researchers at that time understood this term, and whether this referenced an immediate and universal hazard (like asphyxiation or catastrophic heart failure through intense exposure to a deadly toxin ), or something longer-term and unevenly-distributed among those encountering the hazard. Markowitz failed to consider scientific variations like these and thus these assertions are simplistic and valueless as historical analysis.” (Scranton, p.21).
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