Doubt Is Their Product
How Industry's Assault on Science Threatens Your Health
- Publisher's listprice GBP 19.99
-
9 025 Ft (8 595 Ft + 5% VAT)
The price is estimated because at the time of ordering we do not know what conversion rates will apply to HUF / product currency when the book arrives. In case HUF is weaker, the price increases slightly, in case HUF is stronger, the price goes lower slightly.
- Discount 10% (cc. 903 Ft off)
- Discounted price 8 122 Ft (7 736 Ft + 5% VAT)
Subcribe now and take benefit of a favourable price.
Subscribe
9 025 Ft
Availability
Estimated delivery time: In stock at the publisher, but not at Prospero's office. Delivery time approx. 3-5 weeks.
Not in stock at Prospero.
Why don't you give exact delivery time?
Delivery time is estimated on our previous experiences. We give estimations only, because we order from outside Hungary, and the delivery time mainly depends on how quickly the publisher supplies the book. Faster or slower deliveries both happen, but we do our best to supply as quickly as possible.
Product details:
- Publisher OUP USA
- Date of Publication 17 January 2024
- ISBN 9780197760857
- Binding Paperback
- No. of pages386 pages
- Size 226x165x35 mm
- Weight 544 g
- Language English 471
Categories
Short description:
In this eye-opening expose, David Michaels reveals how unscrupulous product-defense consultants have increasingly shaped and skewed the scientific literature, manufactured and magnified scientific uncertainty, and influenced policy decisions to the advantage of polluters and the manufacturers of dangerous products. He proves that our regulatory system is broken and offers concrete, workable suggestions for how it can be restored by taking the politics out of science and ensuring that concern for public safety, rather than private profits, guides our regulatory policy.
MoreLong description:
"Doubt is our product," a cigarette executive once observed, "since it is the best means of competing with the 'body of fact' that exists in the minds of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy."
In this eye-opening expose, David Michaels reveals how the tobacco industry's duplicitous tactics spawned a multimillion dollar industry that is dismantling public health safeguards. Product defense consultants, he argues, have increasingly skewed the scientific literature, manufactured and magnified scientific uncertainty, and influenced policy decisions to the advantage of polluters and the manufacturers of dangerous products. To keep the public confused about the hazards posed by global warming, second-hand smoke, asbestos, lead, plastics, and many other toxic materials, industry executives have hired unscrupulous scientists and lobbyists to dispute scientific evidence about health risks. In doing so, they have not only delayed action on specific hazards, but they have constructed barriers to make it harder for lawmakers, government agencies, and courts to respond to future threats. The Orwellian strategy of dismissing research conducted by the scientific community as "junk science" and elevating science conducted by product defense specialists to "sound science" status also creates confusion about the very nature of scientific inquiry and undermines the public's confidence in science's ability to address public health and environmental concerns Such reckless practices have long existed, but Michaels argues that the Bush administration deepened the dysfunction by virtually handing over regulatory agencies to the very corporate powers whose products and behavior they are charged with overseeing.
In Doubt Is Their Product Michaels proves, beyond a doubt, that our regulatory system has been broken. He offers concrete, workable suggestions for how it can be restored by taking the politics out of science and that concern for public safety, rather than private profits, guides our regulatory policy.
In Doubt Is Their Product, David Michaels gives a lively and convincing history of how clever public relations has blocked one public health protection after another. The techniques first used to reassure us about tobacco were adapted to reassure us about asbestos, lead, vinyl chloride-and risks to nuclear facilities workers, where Dr. Michaels' experience as the relevant Assistant Secretary of Energy gave him an inside view. And if you're worried about climate change, keep worrying, because the same program is underway there.
Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements
Introduction: "Sound Science" or "Sounds Like Science?"
1. "Doubt Is Our Product"
2. Waiting for the Body Count
3. America Demands Protection
4. Why our Children are Smarter Than We Are
5. The Enronization of Science
6. Tricks of the Trade: How Mercenary Scientists Mislead You
7. Defending Secondhand Smoke
8. Still Waiting for the Body Count
9. Chrome-Plated Mischief
10. OSHA Gives Up
11. Defending the Taxicab Standard
12. The Country has a Drug Problem
13. Daubert: The Most Influential Supreme Court Ruling You've Never Heard Of
14. The Institutionalization of Uncertainty
15. The Bush Administration's Political Science
16. Making Peace with the Past
17. Four Ways to Make the Courts Count
18. Sarbanes-Oxley for Science: A Dozen Ways to Improve Our Regulatory System
References
Abbreviations
