NATURE|Vol 453|12 June 2008 OPINION

that these trials are unsuitable. Some of these

M. GATTO
practitioners’ arguments are easily dismissed,
for example, the idea that alternative treat-
ments are beyond science. Other criticisms
come from respectable commentators and
are harder to ignore; for instance, the difficul-
ties of designing trials to investigate complex
treatments with multiple variables, or whether
these trials use test conditions that differ from
a treatment as practised. Randomized con-
trolled trials are powerful tools, but they are
imperfect and it would have strengthened the
argument of Trick or Treatment? had the book
discussed these downsides.
Scientific research is intrinsically provi-
sional; it may asymptotically approach a truth,
but it is never unequivocal. Singh and Ernst,
however, make repeated claims that they pro-
vide the truth, and have even included this
word in the title of every chapter. The balance Saving water and sustainable water
management. The festival’s
water conservation, climate
change and development.
of evidence from randomized controlled trials Water and sustainable 140 pavilions — including A series of essays has
supports their arguments, but the authors are development is the theme architect Zaha Hadid’s sinuous been commissioned by the
not tendering a disprovable hypothesis. Many of Expo Zaragoza 2008, bridge (pictured), clad in steel Expo from global figures,
science communicators argue that to present a biennial international scales that mimic shark skin, including ex-president of
science as the only truth does it a disservice. festival of culture to be held and a glass tower shaped like the former Soviet Union
For now, the certainty expressed in Trick or in Saragossa, Spain, from a water droplet — will house Mikhail Gorbachev, EU High
Treatment? mirrors that of the proponents of 14 June to 14 September. exhibitions and events. Representative Javier Solana
alternative therapies, leaving each position as Inside a meander of the A platform for technical, and Nobel Peace prize winners
entrenched as ever. ■ river Ebro, a park has been scientific and social debate, Rigoberta Menchú and
Toby Murcott is a freelance science writer and built displaying ecological the Expo will host nine weeks Wangari Maathai. J.B.
broadcaster based in the UK. He is author of The materials, renewable energy of themed seminars on www.expozaragoza2008.es
Whole Story: Alternative Medicine on Trial?

Suppressing science dishonesty and incentives to ensure that

Doubt Is Their Product: How Industry’s
Assault on Science Threatens Your Health
by David Michaels
Oxford University Press: 2008. 384 pp.
$27.95, £14.99
David Michaels has written a powerful,
thorough indictment of the way big busi-
ness has ignored, suppressed or distorted
vital scientific evidence to the detriment of
the public’s health. Doubt Is Their Product
catalogues numerous corporate misdemean-
ours, especially in the United States, from
the criminal neglect of the dangerous nature
of asbestos and the lies told by the tobacco
industry, to the suppression of adverse find-
ings of deaths caused by the anti-inflamma-
tory drug Vioxx and the increased risk of
suicide among teenagers taking selective
serotonin re-uptake inhibitors for depres-
sion. The book concludes with a list of
prescriptions for securing better regula-
tion and greater protection for the public,
mainly through increased public disclosure
of vested interests.
The central question Michaels raises is
whether our dependence on corporate fund-
ing in Western society can be reconciled with
the integrity of scientific research and, if so,
how. It can be argued that the importance of
the motivation of a company or a scientist
tends to be exaggerated. Our present system
contains a strong element of self-regulation
through self-interest. Companies make profits
by manufacturing successful products that are
useful to the public, and are damaged if their
products are shown to be ineffective or harm-
ful. They may face ruin if they cause disaster, as
in the case of thalidomide. From time to time
they err, but regulation keeps aberrations to
a minimum. Big pharmaceutical companies,
for example, have served public interest by
producing a stream of drugs that has greatly
improved the quality and length of our lives,
as Michaels acknowledges.
Individual scientists have reason to avoid
their research stands up to scrutiny. Their
reputations — and careers — depend on
doing good science and suffer if findings
are discredited. Corporate research is peer
reviewed and results are accepted only when
shown to be reproducible. Whatever its limi-
tations, peer review is the best guarantee we
have of research quality. These incentives and
safeguards apply whether scientists work for
companies, universities or the government.
If the science is good, it survives; if not, it
does not, whatever the funding source or the
scientist’s personal motive.
Yet, as Michaels demonstrates, motivation
cannot be ignored. Canadian scientists exam-
ined papers on the controversial question of
whether calcium-channel blockers used to treat
high blood pressure increased the risk of heart
attack. They found that, of those who supported
the use of such blockers, 96% had a financial
connection with the manufacturers. This com-
pared with 60% of those who were neutral and
37% of those who were critical. Many studies
of other drugs have found similar correlations
between sponsorship and conclusions.
857
OPINION NATURE|Vol 453|12 June 2008

PLAYING THE BUILDING In an ideal world, profit would not influence

Artist and musician David Byrne,
lead singer of the rock group Talking
Heads, has transformed New York’s
Battery Maritime Building into a giant
musical instrument. By tapping on
the keys of an antique organ, visitors
to the historic disused ferry terminal
— open Fridays to Sundays until 10
August — can make its pipes, beams
and spaces sing out harmoniously as
installed devices strike, vibrate and
blow through the building’s structure.
www.davidbyrne.com
EYEING THE UNIVERSE
An inspirational array of astronomy
photographs graces the Albert Dock in
Liverpool, UK, this month. The exhibit
will tour the world as part of the
International Year of Astronomy 2009
celebrations after marking Liverpool’s
status as this year’s European Capital
of Culture. Pictures of planets,
stars, nebulae and galaxies from
observatories on Earth and in orbit,
including the Hubble Space Telescope,
were chosen by astronomers to
convey the beauty of the Universe.
http://tinyurl.com/6meufd
H. GARCIA ROSSI
research. As a banner carried by an anti-glo-
balization demonstrator at an international
trade conference in Genoa proclaimed: “Capi-
talism should be replaced by something nicer.”
However, the socialist alternative, as exempli-
fied by the former Soviet Union, did not prove
to be ‘nicer’. By stifling opposition to his ideas,
Stalin’s director of biology, Trofim Lysenko, did
not promote good science, nor did he benefit
the Soviet public.
Profit-pursuing corporations are not the
only sinners to disrespect the integrity of sci-
ence. Polls show that whereas the public dis-
trusts scientists funded by industry, it respects
those who work for environmental non-gov-
ernmental organizations such as Greenpeace
and Friends of the Earth. They are assumed
to be objective and public spirited. Yet those
bodies also have their own agendas, namely to
promote their causes by increasing member-
ship; they know that the most effective appeal
is through scare stories. They too ignore and
distort evidence, but in their case there is no
self-regulatory mechanism. The more sen-
sational the scare — for example, “Franken-
foods!” — the greater the publicity.
Michaels describes how defenders of the
tobacco industry exploited the uncertain-
ties of science by promoting doubt: they
demanded that tobacco should be positively

proved to cause harm. Green lobbyists make Despite scientific evidence, environmentalists
the equally unjustifiable demand that geneti- oppose transgenic crops such as modified rice.
cally modified crops should be positively
proved to be safe. Reports on transgenic crops need for independent regulation. Michaels

by the World Health Organization, by every
national academy of science and their world-
wide cultivation for more than ten years pro-
vide no evidence of harm to human health.
Yet environmental organizations ignore this.
They constantly recycle discredited findings
by Árpád Pusztai in 1999 and Irina Ermakova
CULTURE DISH
O. TORRES/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
records how George W. Bush’s administra-
tion applied political pressure to undermine
the independence of regulators in the United
States, and demonstrates the perils of trusting
corporations themselves to protect the public
interest. In Europe, the threat to science comes
from another quarter: the excessive influence

PAINTING WITH PERCEPTION
French optical artists from the
Group of Visual Arts Research, who
explored visual effects in painting
in the 1960s, are the subject of an
exhibition at the State Hermitage
Museum in St Petersburg, Russia,
running until 14 September. The
artists painted optical effects and
illusions on canvas, such as Horacio
Garcia Rossi’s Electric Colour Light
(above), using knowledge of how
the human eye works. By focusing
on physiology and physics, their aim
was to produce art that anyone can
experience, regardless of cultural
origin, status or education.
www.hermitagemuseum.org
858
in 2007 that transgenic crops cause harm to
rats, and continue to make long-disproved
claims that transgenic maize is destroying
monarch butterflies.
The motives of these green activists are ideo-
logical not financial, based on fears that science
has gone too far and we must go ‘back to nature’,
and that transgenic crops benefit only big cor-
porations. More than ten million small-scale
farmers have benefited from transgenic crops,
mainly farmers of genetically modified cotton,
who saw improvements in health and income
from the reduced need to spray pesticides. Con-
fident of the virtue of their cause, Greenpeace,
Friends of the Earth and the Soil Association
feel no need for peer-reviewed papers and show
less regard for evidence than the large corpora-
tions they denounce.
Doubt Is Their Product underlines the
of over-zealous green campaigners, who have
virtually driven agricultural biotechnology
into exile.
The moral is that we must all recognize our
tendency to judge evidence with a bias towards
our own interests and beliefs. This makes it
especially incumbent on those with corporate
connections to ensure that respect for evidence
predominates in industry-financed research.
Equally, those of us who care passionately
about the environment must be on our guard
to ensure that green causes do not ignore or
distort the scientific evidence on which their
success depends. ■
Dick Taverne is chairman of Sense About
Science, a member of the UK House of Lords
Committee on Science and Technology and
author of The March of Unreason — Science,
Democracy and the New Fundamentalism.