Another book that's been in my pile for a while...

This is an excellent book on how a small group of people constructed a lobbying and obfuscation industry that distorted the science on tobacco, SDI, acid rain, etc., etc.

Lots of footnotes.

They present an very strong case.

The only quibble I have so far (I'm still reading it) is on page 30-31 of the paperback version:

When asked point blank in the Norma Broin case, "Does cigarette smoke cause lung cancer?" attorneys for Philip Morris objected to the "form of the question."[117] When asked, "Does direct cigarette smoking cause lung cancer?" the attorneys objected on the grounds that the question was "irrelevant and immaterial." When finally instructed to answer, Cline was evasive. [...]

IANAL, but from my reading of Groklaw discussions during the various Linux / IBM cases, this sounds like the reporting on a transcript of a deposition. "Object to the form" is boiler-plate. It doesn't mean the question is wrong, it's just what they do so they have the right to object at the trial later (IIRC). Similarly with the other "objections". So the authors should have had a little more help on discussing the trial evidence and the significance (or lack thereof) in the back-and-forth in the depositions.

But I especially like this passage (p.32-33):

Cline and Prusiner were reputable scientists, so one might ask, Didn't they have the right to be heard? In later years Seitz and his colleagues would often make this claim, insisting that they deserved equal time, and their ability to invoke the Fairness Doctrine to obtain time and space for their views in mainstream media was crucial to the impact of their efforts. Did they deserve equal time?

The short answer is no. While the idea of equal time for opposing opinions makes sense in a two-party political system, it does not work for science, because science is not about opinion. It is about evidence. It is about claims that can be, and have been, tested through scientific research -- experiments, experience, and observation -- research that is then subject to critical review by a jury of scientific peers. Claims that have not gone through that process -- or have gone through it and failed -- are not scientific, and do not deserve equal time in a scientific debate.

A scientific hypothesis is like a prosecutor's indictment; it's just the beginning of a long process. The jury must decide not on the elegance of the indictment, but on the volume, strength, and coherence of the evidence to support it. We rightly demand that a prosecutor provide evidence -- abundant, good, solid, consistent evidence -- and that the evidence stands up to scrutiny of a jury of peers, who can take as much times as they need.

Science is pretty much the same. A conclusion becomes established not when a clever person proposes it, or even a group of people begin to discuss it, but when the jury of peers -- the community of researchers -- reviews the evidence and concludes that it is sufficient to accept the claim. By the 1960s, the scientific community had done that with respect to tobacco. In contrast, the tobacco industry was never able to support its claims with evidence, which is why they had to resort to obfuscation. Even after decades and tens of millions of dollars spent, the research they funded failed to supply evidence that smoking was really OK. But then, that was never really the point of it anyway.

I wasn't aware that the Fairness Doctrine was being twisted this way. If that's what happened, it's probably good that it is gone.

http://www.amazon.co...ed/dp/1608193942/

Highly recommended.

Cheers,
Scott.