Furthermore, Scranton seriously misrepresents our work. We argue that the industry had a responsibility to inform the government, not necessarily publish all of its findings. Scranton suggests that we are arguing that industry should have published all of its findings when, in fact, we argue simply that when asked by the government to tell them of information about the possible danger of a product industry should have let the officials know that their test animals were dying after being exposed to low levels of vinyl chloride monomer. By conflating “publication” with the responsibility to inform the government he misleads the reader in a haze of irrelevant arguments about the philosophy of science and knowledge itself. If scientists abided by Scranton’s argument that no preliminary results or theories should be revealed before they are confirmed, Watson and Crick’s analysis of the structure of the chromosome would have been delayed for years, we would still await the publication of Einstein’s theory of relativity, and the notion of Darwinian evolution would still not appear in evolutionary biology textbooks (since there is still contention about whether or not it is “true”). Few, if any, philosophers of science would ascribe to Scranton’s reading of the scientific method. It is disingenuous to claim that industry maintained its silence in order to attain better information in the name of good science. The simple fact is that Good Science Does Not Equal Silence. In fact, good science demands transparency and openness.
A few pages later, after arguing that not only was silence necessary but actually in keeping with good practice, Scranton contradicts himself by arguing that good science results from open discussion of ideas, that it is a complex process in which proof of causation sometimes takes “years, even decades,”(Scranton, p.17) to accomplish and that truth is the result of consensus and community acceptance. He quotes and paraphrases Henry Bauer and Michael Polonyi who liken science to a “jigsaw puzzle” with each scientist building upon the work of others, sharing information in order to attain truth.(Scranton, p.18) Here, it would appear, he is arguing for transparency and openness –even publications of preliminary results – as a necessary element in scientific progress. We heartily agree with him. How can he argue, then, that the chemical industry’s decision to remain silent about the potential danger to workers was legitimate?
Scranton quotes Bauer and Polonyi as a way to explain industry’s delay in informing government of the suspicions of danger of VCM. Bauer and Polonyi are not making their point about the complexity of the process to justify silence but to justify the opposite – to argue for transparency and openness. The fact that science is a process of asking questions and science is always incomplete does not mean that we cannot act or move to protect the population from harms we suspect are there. In Scranton’s extended attempt (Scranton, 16-23) to put the best face on industry’s actions by quoting Bauer and Polonyi regarding publication of preliminary data, he misses what Harriet Hardy, the eminent occupational physician, observed in the 1960s: “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.” [29]
Previous Page | Page 21 | Next Page