butterworth, trevor sas smc

<div></div><div><div>=</div><div><a href="http://archive.jsonline.com/watchdog/watchdogreports/54195297.html">http://archive.jsonline.com/watchdog/watchdogreports/54195297.html</a></div><div>
</div><div>bpa fights back</div><div>by Meg Kissinger and Susanne Rust of the Journal Sentinel</div><div>
</div><div><div class="date" style="top: inherit; left: inherit; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); position: relative !important; width: auto !important; height: auto !important;">Published on: 8/22/2009</div><div class="body" style="top: inherit; left: inherit; position: relative !important; width: auto !important; height: auto !important;">Bill Carteaux paced the stage with the intensity of a general about to send troops into bloody battle.He is at war against mounting momentum to ban bisphenol A, a key ingredient in hard, clear plastic products. Studies have linked BPA to breast cancer, testicular cancer, reproductive deformities and neurological defects.Carteaux, president of the Society of the Plastics Industry, represents manufacturers of thousands of products made with BPA. Sales of that chemical now top $6 billion a year.For decades, the chemical industry has been able to control the debate on whether BPA is harmful to human health. Now the Food and Drug Administration, which had relied on industry-financed studies to declare the chemical safe, is reconsidering its determination. The decision is expected by Nov. 30."We are under attack from all fronts," Carteaux told the audience at the group's annual meeting in June.And with increasing urgency, the industry is pushing back - hard.The industry has launched an unprecedented public relations blitz that uses many of the same tactics - and people - the tobacco industry used in its decades-long fight against regulation. This time, the industry's arsenal includes state-of-the-art technology. Their modern-day Trojan horses: blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Wikipediaand YouTube.A four-month investigation by the Journal Sentinel reveals a highly calibrated campaign by plastics makers to fight federal regulation of BPA, downplay its risks and discredit anyone who characterizes the chemical as a health threat. The newspaper examined thousands of pages of Internal Revenue Service reports, disclosure forms and e-mails between government scientists and lobbyists as well as the industry's own public relations materials.The documents offer a rare glimpse at the hardball politics of chemical regulation, where judgments about safety are made not necessarily on the merits of science but because of the clout of lobbyists working the system.In May, the Journal Sentinel reported e-mails obtained from the FDA showed how federal regulators deferred in recent years to chemical industry lobbyists, allowing them effectively to write public policy on the chemical's safety.The newly discovered documents show agency scientists have relied on chemical industry lobbyists to help draft public safety standards on BPA for much longer, more than a decade.Details of meetings between federal regulators and chemical industry lobbyists are found in the archives of the Tobacco Institute, the lobby group of the tobacco industry. A court settlement in 1998 disbanded the institute and opened the records to the public.Lobbyists for tobacco closely followed the government's assessment of BPA because of concerns that a ban on the chemical would affect cigarette filters and plastic packaging. The two industries share the same lobby firm, the Weinberg Group.The Tobacco Institute documents show administrators from the FDA routinely turned to chemical industry scientists to establish the government's safety level for BPA. Government scientists relied on test results performed by industry scientists without independent confirmation.A 1997 briefing by lawyers for plastics industry executives confirms how government regulators looked to industry scientists to determine how much BPA was safe in food packing. After discussions with government scientists on their conclusions, Jerome Heckman of the Washington, D.C., law firm Keller and Heckman wrote: "We believe FDA relied heavily on original data supplied by (the association)."<h3 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">'Tipping point'</h3>Carteaux, the industry official who spoke at the June convention, declined to be interviewed. But the urgency of his message is clear in the videotape of his presentation to association members."We are at the tipping point," Carteaux said. "Legislation and regulation threaten to fundamentally change our business model."At another point, he noted: "We can't continue to fight back just at the reactive stage when things are emotionally charged. We have to take the offensive and react quicker."New public relations materials show how the chemical industry is getting more aggressive about protecting its image as worries about chemicals in plastics mount - often in new and subtle ways.Chemical makers and plastics industry executives are putting up their own versions of news clips on social media outlets such as YouTube, MySpace, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphenol_A">Wikipedia</a>, Twitter and blogs. Often, they are disguised as neutral, unbiased information and rarely reveal the source.So what might look to consumers researching BPA on the Internet as independent information are often stories written by chemical industry public relations writers.Allegiances are not always explained. The most impassioned defense of BPA on the blogs comes from Trevor Butterworth, editor of Statistical Assessment Service,also known as STATS. He regularly combs the Internet for stories about BPA and offers comments without revealing his ties to industry.Butterworth explained his stealth public relations campaign in a 2006 article in Chemical Week magazine."Companies need to develop a public information policy that is proactive in educating the public and tackling the claims of activist groups in real time," Butterworth said. "Most of the companies are like a deer in the headlights, and traditional PR is useless in dealing with these problems."In June, Butterworth authored a 27,000-word review of the media's coverage of BPA that is featured on plastics industry Web sites.STATS claims to be independent and nonpartisan. But a review of its financial reports shows it is a branch of the Center for Media and Public Affairs. That group was paid by the tobacco industry to monitor news stories about the dangers of tobacco.Media managers for the plastics industry also monitor the Internet for negative stories about chemicals, including BPA. They post their own version of the stories, significantly downplaying any potential danger and dismissing concerns about BPA safety as "e-rumors."For instance, in April 2008, after Canada announced it was declaring BPA a toxin and moving to ban it from baby bottles, chemical makers launched their own Web site, www.factsonplastic.com. It features nine videos, all posted on YouTube and intended to debunk worries about BPA.One video shows Liz Weiss, a registered dietitian, discussing how to microwave with plastic."If it says 'microwave safe' or 'microwavable,' feel confident that you can use that plastic wrap in the microwave," she says.The Journal Sentinel reported last year that 10 products labeled "microwave safe" or marketed for children's use actually leached the chemical when heated. The label "microwave safe" is not a government designation or a guarantee the product does not contain BPA.In the video, Weiss smiles into the camera and says of plastic containers: "You can make beautiful vegetables, high in nutrition."What's more, her recipes are featured on a Web site, <a target="blank" href="http://plasticsinfo.org/">plasticsinfo.org</a>, sponsored by the American Chemistry Council.In another video, Sharon Kneiss, vice president of the organization's plastics division, criticizes a report that had aired on NBC-TV's "Today" show, advising parents to discontinue using certain plastic food containers."That report clearly confused and frightened the public, and they hurt the integrity of the products," she says.Kneiss says the FDA declared the chemical to be safe for all use - but does not mention that this determination is under review or that another government group, the National Toxicology Program, found some concern for infants and fetuses exposed to BPA."Parents should be confident in that affirmation and that we are safely using these products," Kneiss says.Industry image makers also plan to link to search engines such as Google and Yahoo, so their items will pop up when readers are searching the Internet for information about BPA, public relations materials show.The group also plans to launch a Web site aimed at helping consumers, particularly young shoppers, find information about plastic products."It is a targeted sharpshooter approach as opposed to spray and pay," Tracy Cullen, senior vice president of marketing and communications for the plastics association, told Plastics News Reports, a trade publication.<h3 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">$10 million campaign</h3>Carteaux's group - the Society of the Plastics Industry - has launched a $10 million campaign to sell the benefits of plastic to people ages 18 to 28 who are the likeliest to be buying baby products in the next decade. The association has committed $400,000 to the effort and hopes to raise the rest in the next few years.This is running in conjunction with efforts by the group's sister organization, the American Chemistry Council, which represents the chemical makers that supply the raw materials.<a href="http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/news/46630742.html">Notes</a> obtained by the Journal Sentinel of a meeting last May by food packaging association executives and chemical industry lobbyists showed how desperately they are trying to downplay concerns about BPA's safety.The newspaper reported they talked about how to find "the holy grail" - a pregnant woman to serve as spokeswoman for the industry. The plan called for the woman to talk about the benefits of BPA, presumably to undermine concerns about the chemical's damaging effects on fetuses and infants.Industry executives also discussed scare tactics that they might use to discourage government bans of BPA, such as spreading word of infant formula shortages if the chemical were outlawed in food packaging.That report led to an ongoing congressional investigation.In that meeting, lobbyists talked about the importance of "befriending people who are able to manipulate the legislative process."The Journal Sentinel also has found numerous examples of the plastics industry lobby exaggerating claims of BPA's safety and using outdated studies to support their position.For instance, the industry's Web site - www.bisphenol-a.org - claims that "potential human exposure to BPA from polycarbonate plastic and epoxy resin food contact applications is minimal and poses no known risk to human health." That statement is based on a 1983 assessment.The Web site, which is not labeled as being owned and operated by the chemical lobby group, makes no mention of hundreds of studies conducted since 1983 that linked the chemical to harm. In 2007, the Journal Sentinel reviewed 258 scientific studies of BPA and found that the overwhelming majority determined the chemical is harmful.The chemical industry also typically overstates safety assessments in statements it sends out.In early July, industry association lobbyists issued a press release about studies done by the Canadian government claiming that they proved BPA to be safe."The ACC applauds new data from Health Canada confirming the safety of BPA in bottled water, baby food and infant formula," said Steven Hentges, chief lobbyist for the American Chemical Council.But Hentges failed to distinguish between these findings and earlier studies that found the concern about BPA is in polycarbonate bottles and in liquid formula stored in cans lined with BPA."Those are two very different things," said Philippe Laroche, media relations officer for Health Canada. This study was "not related to polycarbonate, for which we have a proposed ban," he said.David Rosner, professor of public health and history at Columbia University, watched Carteaux's 52-minute June speech and saw striking similarities between the plastics and tobacco industries. Rosner is the author of several books on industry efforts to control government regulation, including "Deceit and Denial: the History of Industrial Pollution.""If I hadn't studied how this industry has operated in the past, I would say I was shocked," Rosner said. "But this attempt to deflect and distort public opinion is par for the course. They will ultimately do virtually anything to protect their product, even attack the messengers."He added: "We're watching a propaganda campaign in the making."</div></div><div>
</div><div>=</div></div><div></div><div>intercept</div><div>...Sense About Science does not always disclose when its sources on controversial matters are scientists with ties to the industries under examination. And the group is known to take positions that buck scientific consensus or dismiss emerging evidence of harm. When journalists rightly ask who sponsors research into the risks of, say, asbestos, or synthetic chemicals, they’d be well advised to question the evidence Sense About Science presents in these debates as well.</div><div data-reactid="212" style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box;"> iN 2002, DICK TAVERNE, an English politician and business consultant, founded Sense About Science “to expose bogus science,” he explains in his memoir, “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=ghSuAwAAQBAJ&pg=PT195&lpg=PT195&dq=%22dick+taverne%22+AND+%22bogus+science%22&source=bl&ots=OZGR2OtqVb&sig=xeCz8LvmrEYtwmqnk2HrOD0_15o&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjQkNHXx93PAhUFwVQKHQkxBIcQ6AEIHjAA#v=onepage&q=%22dick%20taverne%22%20AND%20%22bogus%20science%22&f=false" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; letter-spacing: 0.01em; box-sizing: border-box;">Against the Tide</a>.” Through his consulting work, Taverne had cultivated relationships with energy, communications, food, and pharmaceutical companies. Sense About Science’s early sponsors included some of Taverne’s former clients and companies in which he owned stock.</div><div data-reactid="215" style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box;">Taverne must have known the power of media narratives about science firsthand, because he had experience with the tobacco industry, which labored mightily to change the conversation about its product in the face of evidence that cigarettes were lethal. According to internal documents released in litigation by cigarette manufacturers, Taverne’s consulting company, PRIMA Europe, helped British American Tobacco <a href="https://www.industrydocumentslibrary.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docs/#id=tllb0192" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">improve relations with its investors</a> and <a href="https://www.industrydocumentslibrary.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docs/#id=njpd0116" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">beat European regulations on cigarettes</a> in the 1990s. Taverne himself worked on the investors project: In an <a href="https://www.industrydocumentslibrary.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docs/#id=tllb0192?" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">undated memo</a>, PRIMA assured the tobacco company that “the work would be done personally by Dick Taverne,” because he was well placed to interview industry opinion leaders and “would seek to ensure that industry’s needs are foremost in people’s minds.” During the same decade, Taverne sat on the board of the British branch of the powerhouse public relations firm Burson-Marsteller, which claimed Philip Morris as a client. The idea for a “sound science” group, made up of a network of scientists who would speak out against regulations that industrial spokespeople lacked the credibility to challenge, was a pitch Burson-Marsteller made to Philip Morris in a <a href="https://www.industrydocumentslibrary.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docs/#id=ygjm0128" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">1994 memorandum</a>.It’s not hard to identify traces of this approach in Taverne’s later work. Writing in his 2005 book, “<a href="http://emilkirkegaard.dk/da/wp-content/uploads/0192804855.Oxford.University.Press.USA.The.March.of.Unreason.Science.Democracy.and.the.New.Fundamentalism.May.2005.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">The March of Unreason</a>,” Taverne complained that “eco-fundamentalists” and fearmongers had fomented a backlash against science and technology, which had in turn produced a “multiplication of health and safety regulations.” That year British Petroleum donated 15,000 pounds to Sense About Science, and Taverne <a href="http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200405/ldhansrd/vo050223/text/50223-24.htm" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">argued in the House of Lords</a> that as much as 80 percent of global warming might be attributable to solar activity, even though that theory had been <a href="http://www.heatisonline.org/contentserver/objecthandlers/index.cfm?id=4361&method=full" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">discredited</a> two years earlier. Taverne, who stepped down as chairman of Sense About Science in 2012, did not respond to The Intercept’s requests for comment.Sense About Science established an American affiliate in 2014, under the direction of a Brooklyn-based journalist named Trevor Butterworth. In financial documents, Sense About Science claims Sense About Science USA as a sister organization “with close ties and similar aims.” <a href="http://www.elsevier.com/about/corporate-responsibility/sense-about-science" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">High-profile scientific publishers</a>, as well as such reputable institutions as the <a href="http://journalistsresource.org/tip-sheets/reporting/math-journalist-numbers-statistics-research?utm_campaign=9f242baf8c-2015_Sept_1_A_B_split3_24_2015&utm_term=0_12d86b1d6a-9f242baf8c-79990993&utm_content=buffer3951f&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy</a> and the <a href="http://www.cjr.org/analysis/statistical_advisory_board.php" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">Columbia Journalism Review</a>, have promoted Butterworth’s services to scientists and journalists.From 2003 to 2014, Butterworth contributed to the website of an organization called STATS, a nonprofit that promoted statistical literacy. STATS had its own connections to the tobacco industry, in this case through founder Robert Lichter, a conservative political scientist and now a communications professor at George Mason University. Lichter also co-founded and continues to run the Center for Media and Public Affairs, which Philip Morris hired in 1994 to survey news reports about tobacco as part of its strategy, <a href="https://www.industrydocumentslibrary.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docs/#id=hhyh0062" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">outlined in a memo from March of that year</a>, to counter “personal and public bias” in stories about cigarettes’ health risks.</div><div class="img-wrap align-right width-fixed" data-reactid="216" style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0.5em -184.438px 1em 1.5em; line-height: 1; max-width: 50%; width: 227px; float: right;"><div data-reactid="217" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><p class="caption" andale="Andale" mono="Mono" monospace="monospace" line-height="line-height" margin="margin" px="px" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" em="em" font-size="font-size" color="color" rgb="rgb" word-spacing="word-spacing" display="display" inline="inline" style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; box-sizing: border-box;">[pix “Why Scientists Disagree About Global Warming” by Craig D. Idso, Robert M. Carter, S. Fred Singer. <p class="caption source" andale="Andale" mono="Mono" monospace="monospace" line-height="line-height" margin="margin" px="px" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" em="em" font-size="font-size" color="color" rgb="rgb" word-spacing="word-spacing" display="display" inline="inline" style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; box-sizing: border-box;">Photo: Heartland Institute</div></div><div data-reactid="218" style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box;">Lichter, like Sense About Science’s Tracey Brown, has argued that industry money doesn’t necessarily taint the science it supports. In 2003, a <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20031202184233/http:/www.house.gov/reform/min/politicsandscience/pdfs/pdf_politics_and_science_rep.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">congressional report charged</a> the George W. Bush administration with stacking a government committee on childhood lead poisoning with industry scientists. Lichter appeared as an analyst on <a href="http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0308/08/se.17.htmlhttp:/www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0308/08/se.17.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">CNN and said</a>, “Studies have found that scientists who have consulted for industry do not differ in their assessment of risks, of health risks, from scientists who have not consulted for industry.” Lichter did not respond to The Intercept’s requests for comment or citations to these studies.Before STATS was dissolved in 2014, and its web site adopted by Sense About Science USA, it received regular grants from free-market sources. Between 1998 and 2014, STATS received $4.5 million, 81 percent of its donations, from the Searle Freedom Trust, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, Donors Trust (a fund largely sustained by Charles Koch), and other right-wing foundations. Searle, which <a href="http://www.searlefreedomtrust.org/daniel-c-searle-1926-2007/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">describes its mission</a> as promoting “economic liberties,” gave STATS $959,000 between 2010 and 2014. Anti-regulatory foundations, including these, spent over half a billion dollars between 2003 and 2010 to “manipulate and mislead the public over the nature of climate science and the threat posed by climate change,” according to a 2013 study by Drexel University sociologist Robert Brulle.</div><div class="img-wrap align-center width-fixed" data-reactid="219" style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 2em 0px 2.25em; line-height: 1; max-width: none; width: 1000px;"><div data-reactid="220" style="box-sizing: border-box;">
</div><div data-reactid="220" style="box-sizing: border-box;">wITH THESE ROOTS, Sense About Science should not surprise anyone when it promotes anti-regulatory voices on issues like asbestos. In a 2006 brochure called “Science for Celebrities” and purporting to correct misperceptions about synthetic chemicals, Sense About Science offers John Hoskins, a toxicologist formerly of the <a href="http://www.rsc.org/Membership/Networking/InterestGroups/Toxicology/Committee.asp" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; letter-spacing: 0.01em; box-sizing: border-box;">Medical Research Council Toxicology Unit</a> at the University of Leicester. Under the rubric “Toxic effects depend on dose,” Hoskins reassures us: “Away from the high doses of occupational exposure a whole host of unwanted chemicals finds their way into our bodies. Most leave quickly but some stay: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20120917080945/http:/www.senseaboutscience.org/data/files/resources/47/ScienceForCelebrities.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; letter-spacing: 0.01em; box-sizing: border-box;">asbestos and silica in our lungs</a>, dioxins in our blood. Do they matter? No!”</div></div><div data-reactid="221" style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box;">More than two decades ago, the <a href="https://www3.epa.gov/airtoxics/asbes/biddocs/EPA-600-8-84-003F_June%201986_Health%20Assessment.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">U.S. Environmental Protection Agency</a> and the <a href="http://monographs.iarc.fr/ENG/Monographs/vol1-42/mono14.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">International Agency for Research on Cancer</a> declared asbestos a proven human carcinogen. Since then, as countries continue to mine asbestos, industry groups have argued that certain varieties, including chrysotile and crocidolite, are not so toxic. In response, several groups, including the <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19338241003776104" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">Collegium Ramazzini</a>, an international body of occupational and environmental health experts, have issued consensus statements warning that no form of asbestos is safe at any dose. In calling for a universal ban on all forms of asbestos in 2010, the <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19338241003776104" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">Collegium Ramazzini</a> observed that the asbestos industry’s attacks on evidence that “irrefutably” links its product to cancer “closely resemble those used by the tobacco industry.”Brown maintains that Sense About Science has not disagreed with the scientific consensus on asbestos, and she notes that dose and type of exposure are the issue. But when I asked Hoskins why his position differed from the scientific consensus, he shrugged over email, “Once upon a time the consensus was that the earth is flat.” Hoskins further replied, “Unfortunately, to say that within a population low-level exposure of many chemicals must be dangerous is not borne out by reality, much to the chagrin of those who live in the fantasy world of ‘chemical-free.’ ”Hoskins’s résumé states that he has represented the Chrysotile Institute in “discussion with the governments of several countries.” But he did not disclose this relationship to the Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Public Health journal when he co-authored two scientific papers disputing claims that <a href="http://ebph.it/article/view/10125" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">chrysotile</a> or <a href="http://ebph.it/article/view/11167" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">crocidolite</a> caused a rare cancer in exposed populations. When his industry ties came to light, the journal issued errata for <a href="http://ebph.it/article/view/11450/10606" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">both</a> <a href="http://ebph.it/article/view/11452/10607" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">papers</a> to disclose this competing interest. (Hoskins denies any conflict of interest, insisting that his role in authoring the papers was confined to providing information the other authors requested. Yet all but one of the other authors had also failed to disclose their asbestos interests, which now appear in the errata.)Soon after the first paper appeared, eight public health researchers wrote a letter to the editors of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Public Health <a href="http://ebph.it/article/view/11367/10623" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">expressing outrage</a> that the journal would publish a paper with “<a href="http://ebph.it/article/view/11367/10623" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">gross mistakes</a>” and “no scientific content.” A group that included many of the letter’s signatories asked the journal to consider retracting the second paper, citing “<a href="http://ebph.it/article/view/11590/10868" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">seriously misleading information</a>.” But the journal’s editors declined to retract the papers, which remain in the technical literature, casting doubt on the scientific consensus <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajim.10300/epdf" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">that all forms of asbestos</a> are hazardous to human health.</div><div data-reactid="224" style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box;">IT’S HARD TO make a case for the safety of a substance like asbestos, which most people know causes cancer. Other commercial products are easier to defend, not because they are less hazardous, but because consumers are not as familiar with the evidence questioning their safety and utility. Scientists have known since 1997 that flame retardants, for example, can cause cancer. These brominated and chlorinated chemicals are used in a wide range of consumer products, including nursing pads and car seats. For more than three decades, studies in animals and humans have linked them to cancer, developmental delays, and other serious health problems. By 2010, the evidence was so persuasive that <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3002201/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">nearly 150 scientists from 22 countries</a> signed a statement warning that flame retardants “are a concern for persistence, bioaccumulation, long-range transport, and toxicity.” Flame retardants’ fire safety benefit not only remains unproven, the scientists asserted, but the chemicals form highly toxic byproducts when burned.Sense About Science has long relied on dubious numbers to insist on the efficacy of these chemicals.  In 2006 it published a pamphlet on “<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20120325143525/http:/www.senseaboutscience.org/data/files/resources/5/MakingSenseofChemicalStories_July08-Reprint.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">misconceptions about chemicals</a>” in which it claimed that British laws requiring flame retardants in furniture had <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20150413142432/http:/www.senseaboutscience.org/data/files/resources/5/MakingSenseofChemicalStories_July08-Reprint.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">reduced fire deaths by 20 percent, citing</a> a 2000 European Commission report called “Flame Retardants.” A European Commission press officer told me she knows of no such report. “The reference to the 20 percent reduction in fire deaths is repeatedly quoted in papers and publications from flame retardant industries and associations, and they always refer to ‘Flame Retardants, DG Environment Video 2000,’ which we cannot find.” On the contrary, she told me, it is simply “not possible to correlate fire deaths to non-flammability requirements.”Who did make the claim? Flame retardant industry trade groups, including the <a href="http://slidegur.com/doc/1163534/efra-european-flame-retardant-association" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">European Flame Retardant Association</a> and the <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20150501142126/http:/www.bsef.com/uploads/Documents/documents/10%20facts%20about%20flame%20retardants.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">Bromine Science and Environmental Forum</a>, run by Philip Morris’s longtime PR firm Burson-Marsteller. The U.S.-based <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20091203075408/http:/www.cffsi.org/news.aspx" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">Citizens for Fire Safety</a> also repeated the claim until it disbanded, <a href="http://www.prwatch.org/news/2012/09/11749/citizens-fire-safety-smoked-out-front-group-folds-after-expos%C3%A9" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">following revelations</a> in 2012 that leading flame retardant producers ran the organization, not the grassroots group of “<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20091203075348/http:/www.cffsi.org/about.aspx" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">staff and volunteers committed to national fire safety</a>” its literature asserted.The same year, Sense About Science again called on John Hoskins, identified as an independent toxicologist, this time to fact-check a <a href="http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1021/es303471d" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">study</a> that found potentially carcinogenic flame retardants in sofas. In his response, Hoskins wrote: “<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20150928075112/http:/www.senseaboutscience.org/resources.php/107/do-flame-retardants-in-sofas-cause-cancer" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">The bottom line</a> is that danger of fire is many, many times greater than any imagined danger from chemicals used to prevent it.”“Everything I wrote about flame retardants was taken from published works,” Hoskins told me. “Reviewers at the time found nothing to criticize and I have had no comment from the thousands of people who must have read the pieces.”Sense About Science reprinted its guide on chemicals in 2014. “The trade-off between fire risk and toxicology is changing, and we represented that newer precautionary thinking in our most recent publications,” Brown, the group’s director, told The Intercept in an email. The new guide acknowledged “allegations of side effects” from flame retardants, including persistence in the environment and toxicity to humans and animals. But it also retained the <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20160729205537/http:/www.senseaboutscience.org/data/files/resources/154/MakingSenseofChemicalStories2.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">unsupported claim</a> that regulations requiring the chemicals saved lives. The guide even retained the text that countered concerns about traces of flame retardants found in children’s bodies by asserting that because the chemicals protected children from death or injury from fire, “To fail to expose them to such chemicals could be regarded as negligent.”<a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0045653513017293" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">Scientists who reviewed human studies</a> had come to a different conclusion the year before. They warned that although such links were impossible to prove conclusively, the evidence suggested that children’s exposure to flame retardants could have serious health consequences, including neurobehavioral and developmental problems. The scientists called for regulatory oversight.</div><div data-reactid="227" style="font-size: small; box-sizing: border-box;">
OF ALL THE controversial chemicals in the public eye, the one Trevor Butterworth, Sense About Science USA’s director, has most fervently defended is bisphenol A, a <a href="https://www.niehs.nih.gov/health/topics/agents/sya-bpa/" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; letter-spacing: 0.01em; box-sizing: border-box;">compound used to make plastics</a>. BPA is found in hard plastics, the lining of canned drinks and foods, thermal receipts, and other consumer and industrial products, including <a href="https://ehjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12940-016-0131-2" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; letter-spacing: 0.01em; box-sizing: border-box;">cigarette filters</a>. Manufacturers <a href="https://mcgroup.co.uk/news/20131108/bpa-production-grew-372000-tonnes.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; letter-spacing: 0.01em; box-sizing: border-box;">produce billions of pounds</a> of BPA each year. Its market value is projected to <a href="http://globenewswire.com/news-release/2014/11/12/682387/10107790/en/Global-Bisphenol-A-BPA-Market-Demand-Is-Expected-To-Grow-At-CAGR-of-4-7-From-2014-To-2020-New-Report-By-Grand-View-Research-Inc.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; letter-spacing: 0.01em; box-sizing: border-box;">reach $20 billion by 2020</a>. And numerous studies and scientific <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2726844/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; letter-spacing: 0.01em; box-sizing: border-box;">consensus statements</a> have linked BPA, which can interfere with hormone signaling, to developmental and reproductive disorders.Leading reproductive biologists released a <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2967230/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">consensus statement</a> in 2007 warning that “the wide range of adverse effects of low doses of BPA in laboratory animals exposed both during development and in adulthood is a great cause for concern with regard to the potential for similar adverse effects in humans.”Two years later, while working for STATS, Butterworth published a 27,000-word <a href="http://www.metal-pack.org/docs/pdf/00047081.PDF" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">investigation</a> sharply questioning the validity of the scientific studies and news reports about BPA’s health effects. Butterworth’s central claim was that a handful of scientists, journalists, and environmental activist groups had ignored good science in a crusade to paint BPA as “the biological equivalent of global warming.” He singled out a <a href="http://cironline.org/person/susanne-rust" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">widely acclaimed</a> <a href="http://www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/40037607.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">special report</a> by Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reporters Susanne Rust and Meg Kissinger called “<a href="http://www.jsonline.com/watchdog/34405049.htmlhttp:/www.jsonline.com/watchdog/34405049.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">Chemical Fallout</a>.” These reporters, he claimed, relied on flawed studies by independent researchers and unfairly dismissed the industry-funded studies that found no harm. But the independent studies were not, in fact, flawed. Regulators just <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19337501" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">didn’t consider them useful</a>, because, like many such academic studies, they didn’t measure toxicity but tested hypotheses about how BPA could alter living systems.<a href="http://www.bisphenol-a.org/human/herMetabolism.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">BPA trade groups</a> have long insisted that the substance is metabolized too quickly to cause harm. Butterworth cites a 2009 <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19440505" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study</a> that measured BPA concentrations in newborns to make the same case. The study, he argues, “provides important evidence that infants — even those born prematurely — are able to detoxify BPA in the same way as adults.”The CDC study he cited was designed to gauge exposure, not metabolism. BPA has been detected in the urine of nearly every American tested. Premature babies’ fragile systems make them particularly vulnerable to environmental contaminants. The researchers suspected that the use of plastic medical devices in neonatal intensive care units might expose premature infants to higher than average levels of BPA. And that’s exactly what they found: Average BPA concentrations in hospitalized premature babies were about 10 times higher than those measured in adults. The authors noted that although premature babies appear to have some ability to metabolize BPA, their detoxification pathways “are not expected to be functional at adult rates until months after birth.”Butterworth ended his critique of what he called “the BPA is dangerous thesis” by suggesting that banning the chemical could result in greater harm: “What if some parents who turned to glass bottles for fear of … ‘leaching’ BPA drop and break them, causing injury to their babies?”Butterworth’s arguments have reverberated across an echo chamber of <a href="https://www.consumerfreedom.com/2014/04/anti-bpa-crusaders-baseless-fearmongering/" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">free-market organizations</a>, including <a href="https://www.industrydocumentslibrary.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docs/#id=yxhb0089" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">Philip Morris</a>’s <a href="http://www.masstortdefense.com/2009/08/articles/bpa-update/" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">product defense law firm</a>, <a href="http://www.aei.org/publication/the-troubling-case-of-bisphenol-a/" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">Koch-funded think tanks</a>, chemical and <a href="http://www.metal-pack.org/thirdparty.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">food-packaging</a> industry <a href="http://www.thermalpaperfacts.org/archives/158" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">trade groups</a> in <a href="http://www.bisphenol-a-europe.org/index.php?mact=Mediaroom,cntnt01,default,0&cntnt01language=en_GB&cntnt01orderby=published_on%20DESC&cntnt01limit=10&cntnt01type=article&cntnt01page=5&cntnt01returnid=44" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">Europe</a> and <a href="http://www.canmaker.com/online/who-will-watch-the-watchdogs/" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">the U.S.</a>, and an ostensibly neutral <a href="http://www.ehrf.info/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/UpdateBisphenolA_5_23_11.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">environmental health research foundation</a> run by a <a href="http://www.odwyerpr.com/profiles/profiles_february_2009_evniron_pa.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">chemical industry PR firm</a>.Reached by email for comment, Butterworth did not account for his questionable characterization of the CDC study. He said that his critique relied on the work of scientists from regulatory agencies involved in risk assessment, and that these scientists had criticized smaller studies that claimed adverse effects. He maintained that studies assessing the effects of low doses of BPA are inconsistent and unlikely to capture significant results because of methodological and statistical problems.The year after Butterworth’s 2009 investigation, the anti-regulatory Donors Trust awarded STATS $86,000 for its “research efforts,” and the Grocery Manufacturers Association, which belongs to the BPA Joint Trade Association, gave Lichter’s Center for Media and Public Affairs $10,000 for “research support.” Butterworth continued to <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/trevorbutterworth/2014/04/09/bpa-the-scientists-the-scare-the-100-million-dollar-surge/#66f8f69463c3" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">defend BPA in news outlets</a> and in 2013 made his case on a blog <a href="http://www.coca-colacompany.com/coca-cola-unbottled/is-bpa-safe-why-some-are-still-confused-despite-evidence" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">for Coca-Cola</a>, another BPA Joint Trade Association member.That year Coca-Cola <a href="http://www.coca-cola.co.uk/investments-in-health-and-wellbeing/list-of-organisations" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">gave more than $30,000</a> to Butterworth’s future partner, Sense About Science, which hosted a BPA forum the next year. (Since then, Sense About Science has not received corporate donations, which “represented less than 3 percent of our income,” Brown wrote in an email.) In the forum, a <a href="http://www.senseaboutscience.org/pages/live-plastic-packaging-qa.html" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">Q&A on</a> social media, Sense About Science put forward a representative of the British Plastics Federation and a toxicologist <a href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:6qYGxPSB7QoJ:https://archive.apvma.gov.au/application_summaries/60514.pdf+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">whose longstanding ties to the chemical industry</a> the organization did not disclose. Participants were assured that BPA posed no risk to human health. Several <a href="http://www.foodpackagingforum.org/news/qa-twitter-session-on-plastics" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">plastic industry</a> trade sites <a href="http://www.britishplastics.co.uk/News/q-and-a-makes-sense-of-science-behind-plastics-packaging/" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">praised</a> the event. One welcomed Sense About Science’s efforts, reporting that “<a href="http://www.plasticsnews.com/article/20140417/NEWS/140419934/using-social-media-to-answer-consumer-questions-about-plastics" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">plastic packaging</a> was stoutly defended.”</div><div data-reactid="230" style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box;"><span data-shortcode-type="dropcap" class="dropcap" andale="Andale" mono="Mono" monospace="monospace" font-weight="font-weight" bold="bold" font-size="font-size" em="em" color="color" rgb="rgb" line-height="line-height" float="float" left="left" margin-bottom="margin-bottom" px="px" margin-top="margin-top" margin-right="margin-right" box-shadow="box-shadow" white="white" style="box-sizing: border-box;">THE TOBACCO INDUSTRY pioneered tactics to fight regulations by manufacturing doubt about the scientific consensus that cigarettes kill. So it should be no surprise to encounter a strategy among defenders of the e-cigarette that also centers around doubt. ...</div><div>=</div><div><a href="https://usrtk.org/food-for-thought/trevor-butterworth-spins-science-for-industry/">https://usrtk.org/food-for-thought/trevor-butterworth-spins-science-for-industry/</a></div><div>
</div><div><div class="col-md-9 col-article col-blog" style="box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; min-height: 1px; padding-right: 60px; padding-left: 15px; float: left; width: 727.5px; padding-top: 20px;"><main id="main" class="site-main" role="main" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><article id="post-2254" class="post-2254 post type-post status-publish format-standard has-post-thumbnail hentry category-food-for-thought category-our-investigations tag-sense-about-science tag-trevor-butterworth" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><header class="entry-header" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="entry-meta" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 20px;"><a href="https://usrtk.org/food-for-thought/trevor-butterworth-spins-science-for-industry/" title="9:44 pm" rel="bookmark" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">January 22, 2018</a> by <a class="url fn n" href="https://usrtk.org/author/stacymalkan/" title="View all posts by Stacy Malkan" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">Stacy Malkan</a></div></header><div class="entry-content" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Trevor Butterworth and his colleagues at Sense About Science/STATS have written for prominent news outlets and been quoted as independent experts on science and media.This fact sheet provides evidence that these groups and writers have long histories of using tobacco tactics to manufacture doubt about science and push for deregulation of products important to the chemical, drug and junk food industries.Related groups: <a href="https://usrtk.org/hall-of-shame/jon-entine-the-chemical-industrys-master-messenger/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">Jon Entine/Genetic Literacy Project</a>, <a href="https://usrtk.org/our-investigations/science-media-centre/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">Science Media Center</a>, <a href="https://theecologist.org/2016/jan/22/why-cornell-university-hosting-gmo-propaganda-campaign" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">Cornell Alliance for Science</a><h4 style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.1; margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;">Overview</h4><ul style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 25px;"><li style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 10px;"><a href="https://usrtk.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/72-Document-Details-Monsantos-Strategy-Regarding-IARC.pdf" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">This Monsanto document</a> describes Sense About Science as a “Tier 2 Industry Partner” in Monsanto’s <a href="https://usrtk.org/pesticides/how-monsanto-manufactured-outrage-at-iarc-over-cancer-classification/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">PR plan to discredit</a> the World Health Organization’s cancer panel, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). The Monsanto plan proposes Sense About Science for “leads industry response and provides platform for IARC observers and industry spokesperson.”</li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 10px;"><a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/statistical-assessment-service" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">Statistical Assessment Service</a> (STATS) <a href="http://senseaboutscienceusa.org/stats/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">merged with</a> Sense About Science USA in 2014. Journalists have reported STATS is a “<a href="https://www.statnews.com/2018/01/30/pharmaceutical-industry-fake-news-tobacco/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">disinformation campaign</a>” that <a href="https://theintercept.com/2016/11/15/how-self-appointed-guardians-of-sound-science-tip-the-scales-toward-industry/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">tips the scales toward industry</a> and plays a key role for the chemical industry in the  “<a href="http://archive.jsonline.com/watchdog/watchdogreports/54195297.html" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">hardball politics of chemical regulation</a>.”</li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 10px;">Sense About Science, STATS and its former parent group, the Center for Media and Public Affairs, have <a href="https://theintercept.com/2016/11/15/how-self-appointed-guardians-of-sound-science-tip-the-scales-toward-industry/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">roots in the tobacco industry PR wars</a> and have received funding from anti-regulatory foundations, dark money channels and industries they have defended.</li></ul><h4 style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.1; margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;">Intercept Exposé on Sense About Science: Reporters Be Wary</h4><a href="https://theintercept.com/2016/11/15/how-self-appointed-guardians-of-sound-science-tip-the-scales-toward-industry/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">A November 2016 exposé in The Intercept,</a> “Seeding Doubt: How Self Appointed Guardians of ‘Sound Science’ Tip the Scales Toward Industry,” details the tobacco ties and industry connections of Sense About Science.“Sense About Science claims to champion transparency” but “does not always disclose when its sources on controversial matters are scientists with ties to the industries under examination,” wrote Liza Gross. “When journalists rightly ask who sponsors research into the risks of, say, asbestos, or synthetic chemicals, they’d be well advised to question the evidence Sense About Science presents in these debates as well.”<h4 style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.1; margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;">History of Defending Chemicals, Junk Food and Drugs </h4>Sense About Science was founded as a lobby group in the UK in 2002 by Dick Taverne, an English politician and businessman with <a href="https://theintercept.com/2016/11/15/how-self-appointed-guardians-of-sound-science-tip-the-scales-toward-industry/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">ties to the tobacco industry</a> and other industries Sense About Science has defended.<a href="http://www.senseaboutscienceusa.org/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">The US version of the group</a> launched in 2014 in Brooklyn under the directorship of Trevor Butterworth. From 2003 to 2014, Butterworth was an editor at <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/statistical-assessment-service" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">STATS,</a> which is now <a href="http://senseaboutscienceusa.org/stats/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">merged with Sense About Science USA.</a>  Over his career, Butterworth has amassed a large body of work arguing for deregulation and attacking scientists and journalists who raise concerns about products important to the chemical, junk food and drug industries — for example <a href="http://www.forbes.com/2009/11/18/plastic-gender-study-media-opinions-contributors-trevor-butterworth.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">phthalates</a>, <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/trevorbutterworth/2014/04/09/bpa-the-scientists-the-scare-the-100-million-dollar-surge/#23693c3163c3" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">BPA</a>, <a href="http://www.southcoasttoday.com/article/20081005/news/810050333" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">vinyl plastic</a>, <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/chrisprandoni/2015/03/05/when-the-left-peddles-bad-science/#46b570db425d" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">fracking</a>, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/28/fashion/28skin.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">lead in lipstick</a>, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/28/fashion/28skinside.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">formaldehyde in baby soaps</a>, <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/trevorbutterworth/2014/02/06/sweet-and-sour-the-media-decided-fructose-was-bad-for-america-but-science-had-second-thoughts/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">corn syrup</a>, <a href="http://www.theawl.com/2012/10/the-sugar-wars" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">sugary sodas,</a> <a href="http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/sweetener-sucralose-probably-doesnt-cause-leukaemia/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">artificial sweeteners</a> and <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevorbutterworth/2012/12/13/is-the-era-of-oxycontin-abuse-over/#48877cb773a8" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">Oxycontin.</a>Butterworth is also a <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/trevor-butterworth-522b5048/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">visiting fellow</a> at Cornell University Alliance for Science, a communications campaign housed at Cornell University that is funded by the Gates Foundation to <a href="http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2986952/why_is_cornell_university_hosting_a_gmo_propaganda_campaign.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">promote GMOs.</a> Butterworth runs <a href="http://allianceforscience.cornell.edu/blog/qa-sense-about-science-usa-partnership" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">a workshop at Cornell</a> to teach his brand of media relations to students and young scientists.Rebecca Goldin, a professor of mathematics of George Mason University, is the Director of STATS and appears on the Sense About Science USA <a href="http://senseaboutscienceusa.org/who-we-are/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">staff page</a>.STATS was previously housed at George Mason University and filed joint tax returns with the Center of Media and Public Affairs (CMPA), a group that was hired by Phillip Morris in the 1990s to <a href="https://www.industrydocumentslibrary.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docs/#id=hhyh0062" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">pick apart media reports about tobacco</a>. STATS and CMPA have been vague about their funding. The bulk of <a href="https://usrtk.org/food-for-thought/trevor-butterworth-spins-science-for-industry/#STATSfunding" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">funding for STATS</a> appears to have come from a small group of anti-regulatory foundations that are leading funders of climate change denier groups.<h4 style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.1; margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;">OxyContin Defense </h4>The tactics of Butterworth, Goldin and STATS are evident in their work to defend Oxycontin; they wrote articles denying the problem of doctor-prescribed opioid addiction, criticized media coverage and argued against regulations to reign in prescriptions. See articles in <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevorbutterworth/2012/12/13/is-the-era-of-oxycontin-abuse-over/#48877cb773a8" target="blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevorbutterworth/2012/12/13/is-the-era-of-oxycontin-abuse-over/%2348877cb773a8&source=gmail&ust=1521228826414000&usg=AFQjCNFZah-BIWab4bO7o94-GrBjGwpe3A" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">Forbes</a> (Butterworth), <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20140702203653/http://www.stats.org/stories/2012/attack_painkillers_misusing_statistics_jan31_12.html" target="blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://stats.org/&source=gmail&ust=1521228826414000&usg=AFQjCNHqzXV35UtO44M3S2tIKPQgcyP6Rw" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">STATS.org</a> (Goldin), and <a href="https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/mind-guest-blog/opioid-addiction-is-a-huge-problem-but-pain-prescriptions-are-not-the-cause/?wt.mc=SA_Twitter-Share" target="blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/mind-guest-blog/opioid-addiction-is-a-huge-problem-but-pain-prescriptions-are-not-the-cause/?wt.mc%3DSA_Twitter-Share&source=gmail&ust=1521228826414000&usg=AFQjCNHSRJ5xB5K2--C9MWv7qbj1TVZH8Q" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">Scientific American</a>, <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/maia-szalavitz/the-medias-not-telling-th_b_48239.html" target="blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://www.huffingtonpost.com/maia-szalavitz/the-medias-not-telling-th_b_48239.html&source=gmail&ust=1521228826414000&usg=AFQjCNEWehL8WSruZKadqHIsbvruor4G_A" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">Huffington Post</a> and <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2004/03/the_accidental_addict.html" target="blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2004/03/the_accidental_addict.html&source=gmail&ust=1521228826414000&usg=AFQjCNFiEVzeBM1CryeMsl6AMOp_LNT86w" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">Slate</a> (former STATS Fellow Maia Szavalitz). A new analysis by <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2018/03/11/health/prescription-opioid-payments-eprise/index.html" target="blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://edition.cnn.com/2018/03/11/health/prescription-opioid-payments-eprise/index.html&source=gmail&ust=1521228826414000&usg=AFQjCNGGfYtmEmYxcMYmPf8-uDDerOCJyA" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">Harvard researchers and CNN</a> found that doctor opioid prescriptions are indeed a problem: “opioid manufacturers are paying physicians huge sums of money, and the more opioids a doctor prescribes, the more money he or she makes.”<h4 style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.1; margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;">Climate Science Denial</h4>A 2002 <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Aint-Necessarily-So-Picture-Reality/dp/0142001465" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">book</a> by STATS/CMPA founder Robert Lichter, David Murray of STATS and Joel Schwartz of the Hudson Institute denied climate science, among other science stories, and employed many “disingenuous maneuvers” to attack the media, including omitting findings that didn’t fit their agenda and using shallow statistical analyses, according to a <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170313025504/http://www.salon.com:80/2001/07/02/murray_4" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">review in Salon by David Appell</a>. Paraphrasing the book, Appell wrote: “Are you worried about species dying out as a result of global warming? Don’t. Those scare stories are the doing of green scribblers who cherry-pick the scientific journals for alarming factoids and who work in cahoots with Volvo-driving scientists who skew their results in an effort to oppose progress and capitalism.” See below for more information about <a href="https://usrtk.org/food-for-thought/trevor-butterworth-spins-science-for-industry/#STATSfunding" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">STATS’ funding</a> from the climate change denial dark money network.<h4 style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.1; margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;">Chemical Industry Public Relations Writer</h4>Sense About Science USA Director Trevor Butterworth played a key role in the chemical industry’s propaganda campaign to discredit health concerns about the chemical bisphenol A (BPA) when he was at STATS, according to a 2009 <a href="http://archive.jsonline.com/watchdog/watchdogreports/54195297.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">investigation</a> by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.Journalists Meg Kissinger and Susanne Rust described Butterworth as an example of “chemical industry public relations writers” who do not explain their allegiances. They described the stealth role he played in industry’s “unprecedented public relations blitz that uses many of the same tactics – and people – the tobacco industry used in its decades-long fight against regulation”:“The most impassioned defense of BPA on the blogs comes from Trevor Butterworth… He regularly combs the Internet for stories about BPA and offers comments without revealing his ties to industry.”In companion article, Kissinger and Rust <a href="http://archive.jsonline.com/watchdog/watchdogreports/54195302.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">described STATS</a> as “a major player in the public relations campaign to discredit concerns” about BPA. Although the group, “claims to be an independent media watchdog,” they wrote:“a review of its finances and its Web site shows that STATS is funded by public policy organizations that promote deregulation. The Journal Sentinel found documents that show that its parent organization, the Center for Media and Public Affairs, was paid in the 1990s by Philip Morris, the tobacco company, to pick apart stories critical of smoking.”They noted that Butterworth’s 27,000-word STATS report criticizing media coverage of BPA – which was widely featured on plastic industry websites – “echoed the approach used in the tobacco analysis.”<h4 style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.1; margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;">“Friend” of Coke</h4>In 2014, a Coca-Cola executive described Butterworth as “our friend” to members of a Coke-funded front group, and pitched him as a person who could help fulfill their “need for good scientific journalists,” according to emails <a href="https://usrtk.org/gmo/our-investigation-of-big-food-and-its-front-groups/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">obtained by U.S. Right to Know</a>.The email exchanges involved Rhona Applebaum, then-chief science and health officer for Coca-Cola, and the leaders of the Global Energy Balance Network (GEBN), which was exposed by <a href="http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/08/09/coca-cola-funds-scientists-who-shift-blame-for-obesity-away-from-bad-diets/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">The New York Times</a> and <a href="http://www.usnews.com/news/business/articles/2015/11/24/apnewsbreak-emails-reveal-cokes-role-in-anti-obesity-group" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">Associated Press</a> as a Coca-Cola front group that worked closely with Coke executives to shift blame for obesity away from sugary drinks. Applebaum <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-24/coca-cola-s-chief-science-officer-retires-after-obesity-outcry" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">resigned her position</a> at Coke and <a href="http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/12/01/research-group-funded-by-coca-cola-to-disband/?r=0" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">GEBN closed down</a> after the scandal broke in 2015.In a <a href="https://usrtk.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/GEBN-Butterworth-march-2014.pdf" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">March 2014 email</a>, Applebaum forwarded the GEBN leaders a Harvard Business Review <a href="https://hbr.org/2014/03/when-research-should-come-with-a-warning-label" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">article by Butterworth</a> that attempts to discredit research linking sugar to weight gain, and described him as “our friend.” In a <a href="https://usrtk.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/GEBN-Butterworth-Nov-2014.pdf" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">November 2014 email chain</a>, Applebaum and the GEBN leaders discussed the need to recruit scientific institutions and get more scientists “on the circuit.” Applebaum recommended “the need for good scientific journalists as part of GEBN who focus on the evidence. Presenting for consideration Trevor Butterworth. Need that type of cross-fertilization.”GEBN vice president Steven Blair wrote, “I agree with Rhona about Trevor. I am pretty sure he is on my list of potential members.” Applebaum replied, “He’s ready and able.”<h4 style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.1; margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;">Ally of Many Industry Groups</h4>Butterworth’s extensive writings defending chemicals, sugar and sugar substitutes have attracted the praise of many industry groups over the years.Trade groups that have promoted Butterworth’s work include the <a href="http://www.ameribev.org/blog/tag/trevor-butterworth/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">American Beverage Association</a>, the <a href="https://phthalates.americanchemistry.com/Research-Phthalates/Reproductive-Studies/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">American Chemistry Council</a>, the <a href="http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20131010006601/en/Journalistic-Imbalance-USA-Today-Continues-Report-Selectively" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">North American Metal Packaging Alliance</a>, the <a href="http://www.bottledwater.org/health/container-safety/what-is-bpa" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">International Bottled Water Association</a>, the <a href="http://sucralose-org.co.uk/2011-international-sweeteners-association-conference-consensus-experts-recommend-low-calorie-sweeteners-such-as-sucralose-to-help-manage-weight/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">International Sweeteners Association,</a> the <a href="http://spotidoc.com/doc/355374/2014-food-packaging-summit---society-of-the-plastics-indu..." style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">Plastics Industry Trade Association</a>, the <a href="http://www.ctpa.org.uk/content.aspx?pageid=273" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">cosmetics industry trade association</a>, the chemical industry’s <a href="http://www.safechemicalpolicy.org/suggests/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">policy website</a>, the <a href="https://cei.org/search/node/trevor%20butterworth" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">Competitive Enterprises Institute</a>, the <a href="https://www.cato.org/events/cato-connects-trevor-butterworth-director-sense-about-science-usa" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">Cato Institute</a> and the <a href="https://www.consumerfreedom.com/2014/04/anti-bpa-crusaders-baseless-fearmongering/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">Center for Consumer Freedom</a>.The <a href="https://usrtk.org/hall-of-shame/why-you-cant-trust-the-american-council-on-science-and-health/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">American Council on Science and Health</a>, an industry front group that <a href="http://acsh.org/search?search_api_views_fulltext=butterworth" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">frequently promotes</a> Butterworth’s work, has described him as “a master junk science debunker” and also “our friend.”Butterworth is also listed as <a href="http://nationalpress.org/about-npf/funders/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">a friend</a> of National Press Foundation. The chair of Sense About Science USA, <a href="http://www.senseaboutscienceusa.org/about/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">Heather Dahl</a>, is “<a href="http://nationalpress.org/board/heather-dahl/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">immediate past chair</a>” of the National Press Foundation, and sits on NPF’s executive committee.<h4 style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.1; margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;">Sucralose Echo Chamber</h4>Butterworth is a prominent defender of artificial sweeteners whose safety is questionable. In 2011, Butterworth spoke at the International Sweeteners Association Conference and was featured in their <a href="http://sucralose-org.co.uk/2011-international-sweeteners-association-conference-consensus-experts-recommend-low-calorie-sweeteners-such-as-sucralose-to-help-manage-weight/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">press release</a> titled, “Experts Recommend Low-Calorie Sweeteners such as Sucralose to Help Manage Weight.”Identified as a journalist who regularly contributes to the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal, Butterworth said about sucralose, “The weight of considered scientific evidence, the result of careful, independent, expert scrutiny, again and again shows that there is no evidence of a risk to health.”As an example of how the industry echo chamber works to spin reporters: In 2012, Butterworth <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/trevorbutterworth/2012/04/24/controversial-italian-scientist-says-splenda-causes-cancer/#6188ef4856cc" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">wrote an article for Forbes</a> attacking a study that raised concerns about sucralose by Dr. Morando Soffritti, director of the Ramazzini Institute, which he described as “something of a joke.”In a 2016 <a href="http://www.foodinsight.org/splenda-sucralose-ramazzini-soffritti-safety-cancer-study" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">press release</a>, in response to another Soffritti study, the food industry front group <a href="http://webiva-downton.s3.amazonaws.com/877/fe/a/6001/FOE_Top11FrontGroups_1.pdf" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">International Food Information Council</a> featured Butterworth’s 2012 piece and attack quotes, and they were picked up by reporters at the <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/splenda-sucralose-sweeteners-linked-to-leukemia-in-new-study-a6930556.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">The Independent</a>, <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3491310/Could-artificial-sweeteners-Splenda-trigger-cancer-Experts-warn-s-no-safe-dose.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">The Daily Mail</a>, <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/12192163/Low-calorie-sweetener-linked-with-increased-risk-of-leukemia-study.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">The Telegraph</a> and <a href="http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865647310/Consumer-group-sounds-new-alarm-on-Splenda.html?pg=all" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">Deseret News</a>, all of whom identified Butterworth as a source from Forbes.<a id="STATSfunding" style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><a id="STATSfunding" style="box-sizing: border-box;">A Google search for the Ramazzini Institute turns up Butterworth’s 2012 Forbes hit piece as the first item.</a><h4 style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.1; margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><a id="STATSfunding" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Funded by Climate Change Denier Dark Money Network</a></h4><a id="STATSfunding" style="box-sizing: border-box;">While STATS claims to be nonpartisan, the bulk of funding has come from a handful of conservative, anti-regulatory foundations that have played a key role in funding organizations that try to discredit climate science.</a><a id="STATSfunding" style="box-sizing: border-box;">According to </a><a href="https://theintercept.com/2016/11/15/how-self-appointed-guardians-of-sound-science-tip-the-scales-toward-industry/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">The Intercept investigation</a>:“Between 1998 and 2014, STATS received $4.5 million, 81 percent of its donations, from the Searle Freedom Trust, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, Donors Trust (a fund largely sustained by Charles Koch), and other right-wing foundations. Searle, which <a href="http://www.searlefreedomtrust.org/daniel-c-searle-1926-2007/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">describes its mission</a> as promoting ‘economic liberties,’ gave STATS $959,000 between 2010 and 2014.Anti-regulatory foundations, including these, spent over half a billion dollars between 2003 and 2010 to ‘manipulate and mislead the public over the nature of climate science and the threat posed by climate change,’ according to a 2013 study by Drexel University sociologist Robert Brulle.”In the <a href="http://drexel.edu/now/archive/2013/december/climate-change/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">press release</a> about his study, Brulle identified the Scaife and Searle foundations as among “the largest and most consistent funders of organizations orchestrating climate change denial” and foundations that “promote ultra-free-market ideas in many realms.”The Scaife Foundation and Searle Freedom Trust have been key funders of STATS, with Scaife providing nearly all funding for the group between 2005 to 2007,according to a Greenpeace <a href="http://polluterwatch.com/jon-entine" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">investigation of STATS funding</a>, and Searle stepping up with almost a million dollars in funding between 2010 and 2014.The President and CEO of Searle Freedom Trust, <a href="http://donorscapitalfund.org/AboutUs/KimberlyDennis.aspx" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">Kimberly Dennis</a>, is also chairman of the board of directors of Donors Trust, the group Mother Jones called the “<a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/02/donors-trust-donor-capital-fund-dark-money-koch-bradley-devos" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">dark-money ATM of the conservative movement</a>,” and a <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/who-donors-trust" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">leading funder</a> of climate change denier and skeptic organizations. Under Dennis’s leadership, the Searle Foundation and Donors Trust sent a collective $290,000 to STATS in 2010, Greenpeace <a href="http://polluterwatch.com/jon-entine" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">reported</a>.<h4 style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.1; margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;">Koch Industries / George Mason University Foundation</h4>Charles Koch, CEO of the petrochemical conglomerate Koch Industries, gave over $100 million to 361 college campuses from 2005 to 2014, according to a Greenpeace <a href="http://polluterwatch.org/charles-koch-university-funding-database" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">analysis of IRS filings</a>. The <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/connor-gibson/to-charles-koch-professor_b_9100904.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">George Mason University Foundation</a>, which received $45.5 million, was by far the largest beneficiary of this largesse.Students at GMU raised concerns about Koch funding <a href="http://powershift.org/blogs/gmu-students-question-koch-funding" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">in a 2014 letter</a> to the GMU president, noting that the university has been “criticized as being a subsidiary of Koch Industries.” In response to a public records request for information about Koch funding, the students “were told that all financial donations are funneled through the GMU Foundation, which does not have to respond to our FOIA request as a distinct private entity.”The GMU Foundation funded STATS sister organization CMPA $220,990 <a href="https://usrtk.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/GMUF2012.pdf" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">in 2012</a>, and $75,670 <a href="https://usrtk.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/GMUF2013.pdf" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">in 2013</a>, according to tax records. In those years CMPA also helped finance STATS. <a href="https://usrtk.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/CMPA-2012.pdf" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">In 2012</a>, STATS reported a $203,611 loan from CMPA that “due to inadequate funding” has “not been reimbursed.” <a href="https://usrtk.org/sas2013-2/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">In 2013</a>, STATS reported a loan from CMPA for $163,914.Tax records for 2014 show no loans between the groups or donations from GMU Foundation. <a href="https://usrtk.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/CMPA2014-.pdf" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">CMPA’s 2014 tax filing </a>shows compensation of $97,512 for Butterworth and$173,100 for Jon Entine, a longtime <a href="https://usrtk.org/hall-of-shame/jon-entine-the-chemical-industrys-master-messenger/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">public relations operative with deep ties to the chemical industry</a>, who runs the <a href="https://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/author/trevor-butterworth/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">Genetic Literacy Project</a>, an <a href="http://polluterwatch.com/jon-entine" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">agrichemical industry front group</a>.<h4 style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.1; margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;">Wholly Independent?</h4>STATS now shares a website with Sense About Science USA, and provides this <a href="http://www.stats.org/about/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">note about funding</a>:“STATS.org is run by Sense About Science USA; it is funded grants from the Searle Freedom Trust and a donation from the American Statistical Association. Sense About Science USA is funded by the Laura and John Arnold Foundation and donations from members of the public. Sense About Science USA does not accept industry funding or support. Sense About Science USA is wholly independent of any university, society, or other organization.”The <a href="http://www.senseaboutscienceusa.org/donate/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">website conveys</a> a sense of grassroots support, noting that its campaign calling for the registration of clinical drug trials has drawn 30,000 donors. “We don’t have fancy offices. Sense About Science USA is in the back of a bakery and cafe. We put our money into doing, and every little bit helps.”<h4 style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.1; margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;">Tobacco Ties</h4>Both STATS and Sense About Science have roots in the tobacco industry PR wars.STATS and CMPA were founded by Robert Lichter, PhD, a former Fox news commentator and professor of communications at GMU. Phillip Morris contracted with CMPA and Lichter during the 1990s, according to documents from the Tobacco Institute made available by the UCSF tobacco industry documents library.In 1994, Phillip Morris sought CMPA’s help dealing with the “recent onslaught of attacks on the tobacco industry” in the media, according to an <a href="https://www.industrydocumentslibrary.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docs/#id=hhyh0062" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">internal memo</a> proposing strategies to “refocus the media’s attention on the need for objectivity.”In an email dated February 8, 1999, Phillip Morris vice president Vic Han referred to CMPA as “a media watchdog group that we have contributed to over the last several years,” the <a href="http://archive.jsonline.com/watchdog/watchdogreports/54195302.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">Milwaukee Journal Sentinel</a> reported.The founder of Sense About Science, Dick Taverne, also appears in the UCSF tobacco industry files. As Liza Gross explains in <a href="https://theintercept.com/2016/11/15/how-self-appointed-guardians-of-sound-science-tip-the-scales-toward-industry/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">The Intercept</a>:“According to internal documents released in litigation by cigarette manufacturers, Taverne’s consulting company, PRIMA Europe, helped British American Tobacco <a href="https://www.industrydocumentslibrary.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docs/#id=tllb0192" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">improve relations with its investors</a> and <a href="https://www.industrydocumentslibrary.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docs/#id=njpd0116" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">beat European regulations on cigarettes</a> in the 1990s. Taverne himself worked on the investors project: In an <a href="https://www.industrydocumentslibrary.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docs/#id=tllb0192?" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">undated memo</a>, PRIMA assured the tobacco company that ‘the work would be done personally by Dick Taverne,’ because he was well placed to interview industry opinion leaders and ‘would seek to ensure that industry’s needs are foremost in people’s minds.’During the same decade, Taverne sat on the board of the British branch of the powerhouse public relations firm Burson-Marsteller, which claimed Philip Morris as a client. The idea for a “sound science” group, made up of a network of scientists who would speak out against regulations that industrial spokespeople lacked the credibility to challenge, was a pitch Burson-Marsteller made to Philip Morris in a <a href="https://www.industrydocumentslibrary.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docs/#id=ygjm0128" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">1994 memorandum</a>.”Taverne stepped down as chairman of Sense About Science in 2012. Sense About Science USA launched in 2014 in Brooklyn under the direction of Butterworth. The two groups are described as sister organizations with “close ties and similar aims.”<h4 style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.1; margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;">Exposing ‘Bogus Science’ Through the Living Marxism Network </h4>Lord Taverne founded Sense About Science in 2002 to “expose bogus science,” according to <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=ghSuAwAAQBAJ&pg=PT195&lpg=PT195&dq=%22dick+taverne%22+AND+%22bogus+science%22&source=bl&ots=OZGR2OtqVb&sig=xeCz8LvmrEYtwmqnk2HrOD0_15o&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjQkNHXx93PAhUFwVQKHQkxBIcQ6AEIHjAA#v=onepage&q=%22dick%20taverne%22%20AND%20%22bogus%20science%22&f=false" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">his memoir</a>. As Liza Gross explained in <a href="https://theintercept.com/2016/11/15/how-self-appointed-guardians-of-sound-science-tip-the-scales-toward-industry/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">The Intercept</a>, early sponsors of the group included some of Taverne’s former business clients and companies in which he owned stock.As its first projects, Sense About Science organized a letter from <a href="http://www.gmwatch.org/news/archive/2003/5134-these-are-the-scientists-who-wrote-to-blair" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">114 scientists</a> lobbying the British government to “contradict false claims” about GMOs, and <a href="http://www.chronicle.com/article/vandalism-devastates-britains/14207" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">conducted a survey</a> highlighting the problem of vandalism against GMO crops.In 2000, Taverne helped create the “<a href="http://www.sirc.org/publik/cop_guidelines_q.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">Code of Practice: Guidelines on Science and Health Communication</a>,” a manifesto from the Social Institute Research Center and the Royal Institution on the procedures journalists and scientists should use to avoid unjustified “scare stories” in the media.The Guidelines were the foundational document for Sense About Science and its sister organization, the <a href="http://www.cjr.org/the_observatory/science_media_centers_the_pres.php" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">Science Media Centre</a>, a group that has been called <a href="http://www.nature.com/news/science-media-centre-of-attention-1.13362" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">“science’s PR agency.”</a> Partly funded by corporations, the Science Media Centre often promotes the views of scientists who downplay risk about controversial technologies and chemicals, and its earliest work involved <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2002/jun/02/gm.observersciencepages" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">defending GMOs using stealth tactics</a>.As writers <a href="http://www.monbiot.com/2003/12/09/invasion-of-the-entryists/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">George Monbiot</a>, <a href="http://www.theecologist.org/blogs_and_comments/commentators/other_comments/268982/sense_about_science.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">Zac Goldsmith</a>, <a href="http://www.lobbywatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=151" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">Jonathan Matthews</a> and others have documented, both Sense About Science and the Science Media Centre originated from and are directed by a network of people connected to the Revolutionary Communist Party, which later morphed into <a href="http://www.lobbywatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=78" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">Living Marxism</a>, <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20000607160440/www.informinc.co.uk/LM/LM97/index.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">LM magazine</a>, <a href="http://www.spiked-online.com/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">Spiked Magazine</a> and the <a href="http://www.instituteofideas.com/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">Institute of Ideas</a>, which promote an idealized vision of technology, extreme free-market views and <a href="http://www.monbiot.com/1998/11/01/far-left-or-far-right/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">disdain for environmentalists</a>.[// USA]As <a href="http://www.monbiot.com/2003/12/09/invasion-of-the-entryists/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">Monbiot wrote</a> in 2003, “the scientific establishment, always politically naive, appears unwittingly to have permitted its interests to be represented to the public by the members of a bizarre and cultish political network.”<h4 style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.1; margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;">Further reading:</h4><a href="https://theintercept.com/2016/11/15/how-self-appointed-guardians-of-sound-science-tip-the-scales-toward-industry/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;"> The Intercept</a>: How Self-Appointed Guardians of ‘Sound Science’ Tip the Scales Toward Industry<a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2011/09/how-lobbyists-are-spinning-weak-science-to-defend-bpa/245657/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">The Atlantic</a>: How Lobbyists are Spinning Weak Science to Defend BPA<a href="http://www.cjr.org/the_observatory/bpa_health_and_nuance.php" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">Columbia Journalism Review</a>: BPA, Health and Nuance: STATS report criticizes media coverage but has its own faults<a href="http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2009/11/industry-reacts-to-consumer-reports-bpa-report/index.htm" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">Consumer Reports</a>: Industry Reacts to Consumer Reports BPA Report<a href="http://www.cjr.org/analysis/statistical_advisory_board.php" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">CJR</a>: Meet the man who wants to help journalists with numbers<a href="https://usrtk.org/hall-of-shame/jon-entine-the-chemical-industrys-master-messenger/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">USRTK</a>: Jon Entine: The Chemical Industry’s Master Messenger<a href="http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2986952/why_is_cornell_university_hosting_a_gmo_propaganda_campaign.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">The Ecologist</a>: Why is Cornell University Hosting a GMO Propaganda Campaign?<h4 style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.1; margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;">More on funders:</h4><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/stories/scaifemain050299.htm" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">Washington Post</a>: Scaife: Funding Father of the Right<a href="http://drexel.edu/now/archive/2013/december/climate-change/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">Drexel University</a>: Not Just the Koch Brothers: New Drexel Study Reveals Funders Behind the Climate Change Denial Effort<a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/scaife-family-foundations" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">DeSmog Blog</a>: Scaife Family Foundations<a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/directory/vocabulary/14789" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">DeSmog Blog</a>: Charles G. Koch; Richard Mellon Sciafe; Searle Freedom Trust; Donors Trust: Study Details Dark Money Flowing to Climate Science Denial<a href="http://bigstory.ap.org/article/613470e79eb64a5f9a4880996e0fd7c5/george-mason-university-becomes-favorite-charles-koch" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">Associated Press</a>: George Mason University Becomes a Favorite of Charles Koch<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/connor-gibson/to-charles-koch-professor_b_9100904.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">Huffington Post</a>: To Charles Koch, Professors are Lobbyists<div class="clearfix" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><footer class="entry-meta" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 20px;"><div class="entry-meta-category-tag" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="categories-icon glyphicon glyphicon-th-list" title="Posted in" style="box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; top: 1px; display: inline-block; line-height: 1; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased;"> <a href="https://usrtk.org/category/food-for-thought/" rel="category tag" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">Food For Thought</a>, <a href="https://usrtk.org/category/our-investigations/" rel="category tag" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">Our Investigations</a>   <a href="https://usrtk.org/tag/sense-about-science/" rel="tag" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">Sense About Science</a>, <a href="https://usrtk.org/tag/trevor-butterworth/" rel="tag" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">Trevor Butterworth</a></div></footer></div></div></article></main></div><div class="col-sm-3" style="box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; min-height: 1px; padding-right: 15px; padding-left: 15px; float: left; width: 242.5px;"></div></div>