Advocacy and Oversimplification
Scranton charges that our book includes “unsupported accusations and rhetorical excesses” (p. 31) and that Deceit and Denial does not “comply with ... key professional standards concerning responsible advocacy and respect for the complexity of history in real time and real conditions.” (Scranton p. 31) We are not advocates for any position other than the truth of what industry did. Our documentation is from the industry’s own memos, minutes and corrspondence, not from critics of the industry. He charges that we offer “no evidence or evidence from a single enterprise to sustain rhetorical claims about ‘the industry’ as a whole.” As an example of this he cites Markowitz’s six page “Report to the Court” which is not a presentation of evidence, but a summary of the argument in Deceit and Denial. Specifically, he criticizes Markowitz’ Report for “repeatedly criticiz[ing] the VCM/PVC producers for not having done several things ‘forthrightly,’” and that in doing so Markowitz “did not define this term or the process it was supposed to reference, nor did he provide any examples of forthright behavior by any party.”( Scranton, p. 31) The reader should understand that Scranton is not speaking of our book, but of a brief six-page summary that is attached to our fully referenced 345 page timeline that was presented to the court. What he chooses to criticize is the definition of the word “forthrightly,” rather than the substance of the Report. That Scranton would continue to focus on our vocabulary and descriptive terms in Markowitz’ six-page report to the court merely shows the shallowness of his analysis.
Scranton next devotes two paragraphs (Scranton, pp. 31-32) to our use of the term “terrifying” (Scranton, p.5). As we extensively document throughout the chapters, the industry, faced by the threat of government regulation or possibly a ban of one of its most profitable and extensively distributed products, acted in ways that we interpret as evidence of being terrified, or at least evidence of their being worried in the extreme. We hope that Scranton does not see industry’s deception of the government as “normal” behavior. Our entire chapter is a discussion of the response of industry when it realized that millions, if not billions, of dollars were at stake if consumers believed that vinyl chloride products were possibly carcinogenic and if OSHA imposed strict exposure standards for workers in VCM plants. Scranton also quibbles with our use of the word “never,” spending half a page on this word and more paragraphs describing how we fail to use “may have” rather than “have.” With 300 references supporting our argument, we have some right to tell the broad story.
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