Using old tactics to keep dangerous products on the market
ANDY ROWELL for Oil Change International
We have known for decades that both the tobacco and fossil fuel industry have used scientists to defend their products and spread doubt and confusion over the health and environmental impact of smoking or burning oil and gas.
Both industries peddle a deadly product. Both have used the same
playbook to conjure uncertainty and, in the words of the ground-breaking book written by Naomi
Oreskes and Erik Conway, be the merchants of doubt.
A central tenet of this strategy has been the so-called “third party technique,”
where a distrusted or discredited industry buys credibility by using someone to
speak on their behalf. It is no surprise that the fossil fuel and tobacco
puppet masters have used scientists as one group of third parties to spin
science on their behalf.
One now infamous project by tobacco giant Philip Morris was the
“Whitecoat Project”, where scientists would
help “resist and roll back smoking
restrictions” but also “restore the social acceptability of
smoking.” Hence paid-for scientists have been named white-coats.
One white-coat who has worked for both the oil and gas industry and the tobacco industry is Dr. Julie Goodman, an epidemiologist and board-certified toxicologist, from the consultancy Gradient.
Gradient says it is a U.S.-based risk
consultancy science firm “committed to excellence in scientific analysis on
complex environmental, health, and safety issues.” Goodman’s clients have
included the American Petroleum Institute,
American Chemistry Council, and Philip Morris, among many others.
Dr. Goodman is the subject of a recent highly revealing New York Times expose by
Hiroko Tabuchi outlining how the scientist is helping front the gas industry’s
pushback against the growing evidence of how harmful gas stoves can be to
health.
The issue of polluting gas stoves is currently raging in the
U.S. and represents a growing public relations crisis for the industry. Hardly a day now goes by
without another story showing how polluting gas stoves can affect health.
For example, yesterday, the results of a study from the Bronx were
released where households with electric ovens showed a 35% decrease in daily
concentrations of the pollutant nitrogen dioxide and
a nearly 43% difference in daily concentrations of carbon monoxide,
compared to gas stoves.
The issue also became more prevalent after a peer-reviewed
article in the international journal of Environmental
Research and Public Health was published last December.
This concluded, “12.7% of current childhood asthma nationwide is attributed to
gas stove use, which is similar to the childhood asthma burden attributed to
secondhand smoke.”
Responding to this, the gas industry spin doctors, the American Gas Association,
(AGA) issued a press release trying to argue that the research was “not
substantiated by sound science.”
Walking into this polarized debate has been Dr. Goodman. As she
has done before, her job appears to be to downplay the health risks for her
clients. To spread the doubt. To create uncertainty.
As Tabuchi reports: “When Multnomah County in Oregon convened a
recent public hearing on the health hazards posed by pollution from gas stoves,
a toxicologist named Julie Goodman was the first to testify.”
Dr Goodman said that “studies linking gas stoves to childhood
asthma, which have prompted talk of gas-stove bans in recent weeks and months,
were ‘missing important context.’”
However, the New York Times reports that “what
Dr. Goodman didn’t tell the crowd was that she was paid to testify by a local
gas provider.” The Times added that in recent months, Dr.
Goodman had also been working with the spin doctors at the American Gas
Association, to help it “counter health concerns linked to gas.”
Indeed, back in August 2022, Dr. Goodman wrote a
letter that the current evidence did not “provide a reliable scientific
basis…to make causal inferences regarding the relationship between the use of
gas-fired residential cooking appliances and childhood asthma.”
Sentences like this should set the alarm bells going. Years
ago, I wrote a report on the tobacco
industry’s decades of denial. Having studied thousands of documents, I wrote
that the industry statements are peppered with fudging comments such as “no
clinical evidence,” “no substantial evidence,” “no laboratory proof,”
“unresolved,” and “still open.” Nothing has been “statistically proven,”
“scientifically proven,” “or “scientifically established.” There is no
“scientific causality,” “conclusive proof,” or “scientific proof.”
The industry was buying time, as thousands died from their
deadly product. As one tobacco scientist conceded:
“a demand for scientific proof is always a formula for inaction and delay and
usually the first reaction of the guilty.”
But Gradient and Goodman have a history of controversial
research and of playing down the health risks. As Tabuchi outlined: “Gradient
has a track record of working on behalf of its clients to push back against
research on health risks associated with a range of products.”
Goodman has, for example, acted as an expert witness for Philip
Morris, when Judge Edward Leibensperger from the Massachusetts Superior Court
said Gradient’s analysis “was shown to be inconsistent and contrary to the
consensus of the scientific community.”
Documents from the tobacco archive also show Dr.
Goodman co-authored an article sponsored
by the now-defunct American Plastics Council, criticizing dozens of academic
studies that had raised concerns over the controversial chemical Bisphenol-A ,
or BPA, which is an endocrine disruptor and
linked to reduced fertility,
and behavioralproblems in children as well as diabetes,
cancer, and heart disease.
The New York Times article is not the first
time Goodman and Gradient have been under the spotlight either. In 2016, the
Centre for Public Integrity published a series entitled: “Science for Sale,” outlining how
“industry-backed research has exploded — often with the aim of obscuring the
truth — as government-funded science dwindles”.
Some of the “white-coats” in the article were employed by
Gradient, including Dr. Goodman. The Centre outlined how one “group of academic
researchers were so outraged by an article on BPA written by Gradient’s Julie
Goodman and Lorenz Rhomberg that they wrote a lengthy response with a table
listing all the “false statements” in it.
Frederick vom Saal, a University of Missouri professor who has
investigated BPA for more than two decades, told the Centre that “In this
article, there is nothing that is true. It’s ridiculous. And that’s how they
operate.”
Goodman’s colleague, Peter Valberg, was also exposed for
promoting the idea from a lawyer who defended asbestos claims that maybe
tobacco smoke was the cause of higher rates of mesothelioma, not asbestos,
despite decades of evidence to the contrary. He went on to testify in a court
proceeding to that effect too. The Tobacco document archives also show that
Valberg appeared as an expert witness for Philip Morris using research from
Goodman.
Scientist after scientist approached by the Centre criticized
Goodman and Gradient. One scientist, Bert Brunekreef, director of the Institute
for Risk Assessment Sciences at Universiteit Utrecht in the Netherlands, said
that “Mrs. Goodman and the company she works for have a reputation of
misrepresenting the science consistently.” Another, Bruce Lanphear, a
Simon Fraser University Professor, added “They truly are the epitome of rented
white coats”.
Undeterred, Goodman and Gradient will
carry on representing their corporate clients. Yesterday, Goodman was due to
testify before California’s Bay Area Air Quality Management District, appearing
on behalf of the Western States Petroleum Association, a fossil fuel industry
lobby group.
Meanwhile the AGA is trying to argue that concern about gas
stoves is all one conspiracy by green groups and has nothing to do with
peer-reviewed science. The diversionary messaging could have come straight from
a spin doctor for the tobacco industry:
© 2023 Oil Change International
ANDY ROWELL is a staff blogger for Oil Change International in addition to working as a freelance writer and investigative journalist who specializes in environmental, health and lobbying issues. He is a senior Research Fellow at the University of Bath and Director of the Tobacco Tactics team at the Tobacco Control Research Group, which is a partner in the global tobacco industry watchdog, STOP.