boutons_deux
03-30-2014, 08:22 PM
Several in the GOP want to stop a request for scientists to disclose financial conflicts in their research. What good reason could they possibly have?
A growing rift in the Republican Party about transparency has deepened within the Senate, with 16 Republicans now scolding a federal agency for the outrage of requesting that scientists submitting studies in a rule-making procedure identify any financial conflicts of interest.
No one better understands the dangers in conflicted science than the chief administrator of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, David Michaels. Michaels is an epidemiologist and a professor (on leave) from George Washington University. In 2008, he published a terrifyingly depressing account of the consequences of conflicted science, Doubt is Their Product. That title was drawn from the famous 1969 Brown & Williamson memo (http://tobaccodocuments.org/landman/332506.html) declaring “doubt is our product, since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ [linking smoking with cancer] that exists in the mind of the general public.” The strategy of the tobacco industry was to use “science” to attack science, so as to generate skepticism about whether smoking cigarettes caused cancer.
But policy makers (and the public) at least deserve a chance to know when the ordinary norms of science might be under some financial pressure, and also a chance to assure that a balance of research is presented on any particular question, not just research “funded in part by” the industry threatened with regulation.
Taxpayers spend billions of dollars each year on prescription drugs and devices through Medicare and Medicaid. The National Institutes of Health distributes $24 billion annually in federal research grants. So the public has a right to know about financial relationships between doctors and drug companies.
Led by Tennessee’s Lamar Alexander, these senators objected (PDF (http://www.help.senate.gov/imo/media/2013_1121_OSHA_silica_letter_FINAL.pdf)) to the agency’s request that financial conflicts of interest be disclosed. The Senators were “very concerned about OSHA’s attempt to have commenters disclose their financial backers.” As Liz Wolgemuth, a staffer working for Alexander’s committee explained (http://www.nature.com/news/dust-regulations-trigger-backlash-1.14806), “the chilling effect the financial disclosure could have seems counter to the idea of robust inclusion of a diverse set of ideas and views to inform the rule-making.”
The “chilling effect?” Seriously? What’s the chill? That the shrinking violets of the cement industry will be too afraid to hire lobbyists to present their views about the (non-) dangers in inhaling silica?
Whatis chilling is the idea that 16 United States senators would argue that there is some public interest in allowing people who seek to influence federal policy to hide the influences that might be affecting the quality of their research.
But a century after Justice Brandeis’s now almost clichéd “sunlight is the best disinfectant” slogan, really, what is the argument, Senator Alexander, for allowing hired guns to hide a financial conflict of interest?
Because when such silliness appears on Senate letterhead, it makes it hard to ignore the sort of data that is still, thankfully, public in America. According to a study (http://maplight.org/senators-authoring-letter-to-osha-receive-contributions-from-silica-rule-opponents) by the great maplight.org (http://maplight.org/), in the lead up to this letter’s release, the interests who would benefit by non-disclosure made a modest but significant series of contributions to the senators who signed the letter
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/03/26/the-republican-street-fight-over-transparency-in-government.html
A growing rift in the Republican Party about transparency has deepened within the Senate, with 16 Republicans now scolding a federal agency for the outrage of requesting that scientists submitting studies in a rule-making procedure identify any financial conflicts of interest.
No one better understands the dangers in conflicted science than the chief administrator of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, David Michaels. Michaels is an epidemiologist and a professor (on leave) from George Washington University. In 2008, he published a terrifyingly depressing account of the consequences of conflicted science, Doubt is Their Product. That title was drawn from the famous 1969 Brown & Williamson memo (http://tobaccodocuments.org/landman/332506.html) declaring “doubt is our product, since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ [linking smoking with cancer] that exists in the mind of the general public.” The strategy of the tobacco industry was to use “science” to attack science, so as to generate skepticism about whether smoking cigarettes caused cancer.
But policy makers (and the public) at least deserve a chance to know when the ordinary norms of science might be under some financial pressure, and also a chance to assure that a balance of research is presented on any particular question, not just research “funded in part by” the industry threatened with regulation.
Taxpayers spend billions of dollars each year on prescription drugs and devices through Medicare and Medicaid. The National Institutes of Health distributes $24 billion annually in federal research grants. So the public has a right to know about financial relationships between doctors and drug companies.
Led by Tennessee’s Lamar Alexander, these senators objected (PDF (http://www.help.senate.gov/imo/media/2013_1121_OSHA_silica_letter_FINAL.pdf)) to the agency’s request that financial conflicts of interest be disclosed. The Senators were “very concerned about OSHA’s attempt to have commenters disclose their financial backers.” As Liz Wolgemuth, a staffer working for Alexander’s committee explained (http://www.nature.com/news/dust-regulations-trigger-backlash-1.14806), “the chilling effect the financial disclosure could have seems counter to the idea of robust inclusion of a diverse set of ideas and views to inform the rule-making.”
The “chilling effect?” Seriously? What’s the chill? That the shrinking violets of the cement industry will be too afraid to hire lobbyists to present their views about the (non-) dangers in inhaling silica?
Whatis chilling is the idea that 16 United States senators would argue that there is some public interest in allowing people who seek to influence federal policy to hide the influences that might be affecting the quality of their research.
But a century after Justice Brandeis’s now almost clichéd “sunlight is the best disinfectant” slogan, really, what is the argument, Senator Alexander, for allowing hired guns to hide a financial conflict of interest?
Because when such silliness appears on Senate letterhead, it makes it hard to ignore the sort of data that is still, thankfully, public in America. According to a study (http://maplight.org/senators-authoring-letter-to-osha-receive-contributions-from-silica-rule-opponents) by the great maplight.org (http://maplight.org/), in the lead up to this letter’s release, the interests who would benefit by non-disclosure made a modest but significant series of contributions to the senators who signed the letter
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/03/26/the-republican-street-fight-over-transparency-in-government.html