Sciences International: Vanity Press and the Education of the Layperson
(Continued from previous post)
In 2005, Sciences International Inc. (SII), a private company hired to run the Center for the Evaluation of Risks to Human Reproduction (CERHR) in the NIH, publicized on their website their mission to educate the "layperson". As all companies do, SII was working to raise its company status with public appearances, professorships, and peer reviewed research in publications.
Getting research published in peer-reviewed scientific journals is a time consuming, challenging task, commensurate with the also burdensome role of peer review, editing and analysis on the part of the journal. In some cases, SII sometimes found it easier to create their own journal, called Risk Analysis ask some of their staff to review the papers, and then publish -- presto. So when they wrote on their website:
"One of our staff is among several scientists who have questioned the dichotomy between cancer and noncancer risk assessments. He has argued that low-dose estimates of cancer risk should not be obtained from linear extrapolations; rather, only RfDs and RfCs should be provided. This work has been peer-reviewed and published in Risk Analysis."
What they really meant by "peer review" wasn't that peer review, but the one where you show your manuscript to your employee, who says - yes that looks good, let's run off some copies in the cellar. Risk Analysis and the associated Society for Risk Analysis, were both founded by Sciences International's founder and long time president, who also serves as editor in chief of the journal. Other SI employees who served on the journal editorial board included the Area Editor for Health Risk Assessment and the Managing Editor of the journal.
As with many pieces of this the story, one can devise alternate plausible explanations for this move by SII. On one hand perhaps the company founded a well needed journal for a niche area of research. On the other hand, it's more impressive to self-publish your research in your own journal than to limit yourself to the company blackboard or your intranet blog. However, needless to say, research published in your own journal could be judged by scientists as being less rigorous than research published in a slightly less insular, non-company owned journal. But many readers, especially the average visitor to your company website just wouldn't know the difference.
For years, SII continued its work refining safety regulations, educating the public, and then like a well oiled machine spinning around to sell services to the chemical industry on the back of it's public works.
But by the time of their bisphenol A report, BPA had been receiving wide attention in many quarters. Researchers published hundreds of papers, regulatory attempts to place in states like California and cities like San Francisco, and efforts by scientists like Frederick Vom Saal kept attention on the issue of the low-dose health effects of BPA. Environmental groups such as EWG and coverage in publications like the Wall Street Journal and Nature, and local TV stories had contributed to a different sort of public education and alerted the public to signs of business malfeasance that undermines the public interest.
80,000 Chemicals, So Little Time
We want to assure ourselves that the contractors are honest -- I do. Of course there are many different ways to judge the actions of this tiny contractor, and I would like to believe that everything's on the up and up and that this contractor had public interest in mind. But citizens have good reasons to be wary especially when it comes to BPA. We know that the American Chemical Council, SI's client, sponsored websites like www.babybottle.org to reassure consumers of the safety of bisphenol A in plastic bottles. There's tremendous industry incentive to disavow low-dose BPA research. And if the long record of bisphenol A lobbying itself isn't warning enough, we know that the tobacco industry research denied the link between cigarette smoking and cancer and the petroleum industry produced "evidence" against global warming. We're familiar with the discrepancies between corporate science rhetoric and public health science. Here we're presented with SII's claims of innocence, versus what looks to be a written record all but bragging of conflict of interest.
In the EWG's latest statement they insist the NIH should conduct their own overview of the conflict of interest review of SII's work, rather than simply accepting SII's self audit and its admissions of historical conflicts of interest. When the Washington Post interviewed a staffer for Democrat Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, last month, he said Waxman wanted to review all of SII's previous recommendations. But the Post also interviewed NIH officials who said they would not review Sciences International's past work.
If Sciences International was working more intently on behalf of its industry clients than on it's regulatory contracts, its actions went on for over a decade with brazen openness. Eventually, EWG feretted out some interesting SI machinations at NERHR, and NIH fired the contractor. But Science's International, a ten person company with hefty public marketing claims in the public record was an easy target, both to expose and to fire. If the oversight is truly as lax as it looks, then certainly companies with inclinations to skew results in favor of industry would merely need to cover their tracks better than SI did. Search the internet to see how many other companies in the same business area (and there are quite a few) clearly listing their clients and ambitions on their websites. Most are publicly opaque about the details of their business deals.
There are no easy answers that will solve the problem that don't involve summoning resources to pay better attention to what goes on in these contracts. There are over 80,000 chemicals in use today. Despite all the public attention to bisphenol A, the public comments section of the bisphenol A draft contains only a few comments, 4 from industry groups, 2 environmental groups, and one Ph.D. expert (1). The capacity and budget of government is outranked by that of industry. The NIH has burgeoning responsibility and a shrinking budget. The idea of taxes in the U.S., which could potentially fund more concerted government oversight efforts is anathema to most citizens. Industry, on the other hand, is flush with resources. In the Wall Street Journal editorial page last week, a quarter page ad announced boldly that the "business of chemistry contributes $635 billion" to the economy, and "helps support 17% of GDP". Chemicals are "essential2gdp" according to the ad sponsor, the American Chemistry Council. There was no EPA ad on the other side of the page that said, "Saving Your Babies' Lives -- Your Precious Children, What's it Worth? The EPA, Protecting Your Family, Protecting Your Health. Overseeing Chemicals, One Tax Dollar at a Time".
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(1) The Center for Reproductive Health and Risks CERHR has extended the comment period for the bisphenol A draft.
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The Los Angeles Times reported on the EWG action and subsequent NIEHS firing March 4th, and April 4th.
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Acronym Required previously wrote about bisphenol A in the following articles:
Plastic Bottles- Protecting Your Baby, by the ACC (July, 2005)
Bisphenol-A and Phthalates Bill in California (January, 2006)
San Francisco Bans Bisphenol A, Phthalates (July, 2006)
San Francisco phthalates & Bisphenol A Ban (November, 2006)
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