On defending "sound science"

Perhaps the American Council on Science and Health was created by Whelan, Stare, and Borlaug with earnest idealism. The problem is that it is impossible to do what ACSH was designed to do without industry funding, and that funding is a corrupting force. Either you are transparent and honest about the pressures from funding sources, or you are oblique and dishonest, as ACSH has been for too long.

I know too well the trouble in defending "sound science" (a favorite ACSH cliche) because I created a 501(c)(3) after I quit ACSH. I was hired to do the fundraising for ACSH, a task to which I was (am) ill-suited, and I quickly took on other tasks and the title of administrative director, which divided my time and energies. To most funders Elizabeth Whelan was ACSH, and she was the person who should have devoted her full energies to fundraising, but she did little of anything that I could detect. (Frankly, I never saw her do a damned thing that amounted to work, unless you count a couple of hours on TV shows.) She answered to no one regarding her scant work output.

Of necessity, the organization that I created would have needed to accept corporate and industry-related funding. Like ACSH, it would have had to work hand-in-glove with funders, as ACSH did when it allowed two of them to participate in the funding and editing of pamphlets on sugar and alcohol. Funders are more interested in promoting their products than in "sound science," so even though Beth Whelan sold her soul at the company store, ACSH has never received much money. ACSH could have done better by having only one employee and using contractors to do specific projects, but it seemed important to Beth to be perceived to be in charge of an organization that seemed substantial. ACSH has always been a sort of Potemkin village of activism.

At the other end are those who attack industries. They are disproportionately funded by trial lawyers who stand to gain a great deal by convincing the media and public that they are threatened by products, which is quite easily done since few Americans know much about science. If anything, the anti-industrialists engage in an even more corrupt grift. The products of industrialization, which make us safer and give us longer and healthier lives, are under constant attack in the courts, and few judges are savvy about science. I'm pessimistic about the future, and I believe that ACSH's paranoid and hostile approach to profound issues and its critics does more harm than good.