Whelan commentary

Elizabeth Whelan, in "Public Healths Credibility Crisis" (Comment and Opinion, May/June 2006), says the "public health community" is losing credibility because it appears to be "promoting politics and ideology over sound science." As evidence, she mentions recent national awards, given to people who were engaged in lawsuits with corporations, rather than primary health matters. I agree with Whelan that public health should deal with public-health matters and that it should practice good science. But I see no conflict between good science and politics. Public-health organizations must address political and ideological issues. They should help form policies and laws.

Scientists have in the past not been very good at advocating--they have felt that perhaps their facts should speak for themselves. But it just doesn't happen. For example, corporations have no motivation to work for the public good. They introduce thousands of chemicals into the environment and our bodies. And a corporation will never quit using a chemical or even test one without pressure. Nothing is easier than to say that no ill effects have been demonstrated from something--if you don't bother to test it! Sometimes, public health requires pressure on powerful social institutions.

As an example of what public-health organizations should promote, Whelan mentions the danger of cigarette smoking. Has she forgotten how many lawsuits over how many years had to take place before the facts about its effect on health finally became public knowledge? And it took a lot of political pressure to get our meat industry regulated, by creation of the FDA. Most public-health issues are not individual lifestyle choices, though often they are treated as such--they really require concerted, unified politicalization. Public-health agencies can operate like social-service workers--mopping up the results of bad social policies. But it's much better to address the problem by helping create the policy, rather than trying to cope with the results of someone else's bad policy: And you have to get down and dirty, political and ideological, to do that.

Myra Jones

Bradenton, Florida

Elizabeth Whelan, president of ACSH, argues among other things that the Harvard School of Public Health was besmirching the whole public-health profession by granting its 2005 Julius Richmond Award to Erin Brockovich. Reading further, I found ad hominem attacks, containing amazing statements such as "there was never any evidence to support Brockovich's claim that chromium 6 [sic] made people sick." The scientific meaning (as opposed to the legal meaning) of such a statement is pretty clear. (Scientific evidence is not "beyond a reasonable doubt," nor can it ever be, which is why science honors skeptics.) Claims of "no evidence at all" are pretty rare in science--as those of us who practice science are well aware. Science (and skepticism) are involved in weighing evidence, while "debunking," itself discredited, is an advocacy role focused on discrediting people--which seems to be what CSICOP is tending to do these days, rather than evaluating claims.

So as a skeptic, I turned one of my skeptical tools (an Internet search engine) on Whelan's claim and then on Whelan herself (merely for contextual understanding of what motivations might explain her commentary's attacks). I found quickly that there is quite a bit of published, peer-reviewed evidence that chromium (VI) is quite serious in its effects on humans and can impact them when breathed or absorbed through the skin via water. Why did Whelan not cite such evidence, as a careful skeptic might, even when disputing that evidence?

I gained some clarity by noting that Whelan is not a "concerned public health worker" but the head of an advocacy organization. Her ACSH Web site (at www. acsh.org) speaks for itself. Rather then "doing science," the ACSH promotes causes. It raises money from corporate sponsors to do so. Not surprisingly, among those corporate sponsors are chemical companies that stand to benefit from her stands against science. Perhaps she is scientifically right on some of her issues, since mere advocacy is not a disqualification from doing science. That is not my point here.

My point is that CSICOP brought a political advocate who is not a practicing scientist into its pages, did not identify her as such, while accepting and helping to promote claims that are not founded in science but merely in advocacy.

Skeptics deserve better.

David P. Reed

Needham, Massachusetts

Elizabeth Whelan responds:

Myra Jones is right that it sometimes takes time for science to recognize the truth, but it has not traditionally been lawsuits that have led to scientific discovery. The dangers of cigarettes were made apparent by epidemiology--the statistical study of the health of different subsets of the population, in this case smokers vs. nonsmokers--not by subsequent decades of lawsuits. Similarly, we should look first to epidemiology--which typically reveals that the anti-chemical scares pushed by people like Brockovich are baseless not to jury verdicts or political action when deciding whether a problem of this sort warrants action. It is simply false to say that studies on trace levels of chemicals have not been performed, though activists like Brockovich will always claim that not enough study has been done, or that a few dubious studies (there will always be some) call into doubt everything we know about toxicology.