At grave risk, and in story after story this book chronicles how powerful players have hijacked the language of science to the detriment of we, the people, the essential bedrock of our democracy. Attacks on science and democracy are not new, though todays Political Climate brings them into sharp relief. Were witnessing the denial of facts and evidence, the dismantling of science and scientific the expertise in our federal agencies and the rollback of evidencebased public protections. The bottom line is that when science is sidelined in government decisions, people get hurt. And this assault poses an additional threat to our democracy. Indeed, the very fundamental institutions of our democracy our elected officials, appointed officials, our laws, our regulatory system, even the courts are under threat. Government is increasingly responding to the interests of the few over the interests of the many. Trust and confidence in our governmental and Public Institutions are eroding. Voter suppression, gerrymandering and the unfetteredded role of money in politics is undermining the basic functions of our representational democracy. Specifically, representing the people, all the people. These assaults are intertwined with the outsized role of money in politics. Money and dark money that cant be traced back to its sources is part of the connective tissue here. As are the results that were seeing; growing disparities, inequities and inequalities in our health, our wealth and our voices as citizens. The union with of concerned scientists was founded right down the street at mit 50 years ago because the students and faculty were concerned that science was being used for destructive rather than constructive ends. Our concern has only broadened and grown. It is showered by our showered by our shared by our 500,000 members and supporters including the 25,000 members of our expert science network. If you dont know about ucs, take a look at our web site, ucsusa. Org, and i hope you will join us. We are definitely stronger together. So with that, let me kick off tonight by introducing our intrepid interviewer, lawrence lessig, who is a professor of law and leadership at Harvard Law School previously having taught at both stanford law and the university of chicago. Hes the founder of a group called equal citizens, a nonprofit with one very ambitious mission. Basically, fixing our democracy by establishing truly equal citizenship. Hes the cofounder of creative commons, a nonprofit thats devoted to expanding the range of creative works thats available for others to build upon and to share legally. Basically this organization is a leader in the copy left, not the copyright [laughter] movement. And in addition to his law degree, larry has a masters in philosophy from the university of cambridge in england, and he has the distinction of clerking for two conservative justices. Judge richard posener as a seventh Circuit Court of appeals in chicago and Justice Antonin Scalia at the supreme court. Larry is the author of ten books, he has a captivating presence on ted talks. If you havent heard it, go on there and look. And we are totally delighted to have him as an interviewer tonight. [applause] and it is my very personal pleasure to introduce you to the author of this important and fearless book, dr. David michaels. Hes a scientist, an epidemiologist to be exact, a professor at George Washington universitys school of public health. He is a scientist, yes, but he has an illustrious career in public service. Under president obama he was the assistant secretary for labor for the Occupational Safety and health administration, osha. He was the longest serving administrator in to in oshas history. Read his chapter on deadly dust in this book, it will take your breath away. [laughter] in the clinton administration, david served at the department of energy as the assistant secretary of energy for environment, safety and health. He was of charged with protecting the workers, the Community Residents and the environment in and around this Nations NuclearPower Plants Nuclear weapons facilities, sorry. [laughter] he crafted and then implemented a ken opinion sayings program a Compensation Program for workers whose health and lives and livelihoods were damaged by exposures at these facilities. This program has awarded more than 16 billion to these workers and their families. Throughout his career david has been a tireless advocate for public health, Worker Health and sciencebased public policies. This man knows the science. He has witnessed firsthand industry efforts to deny the science and the known dangers of those products. His work and now this book chronicles how product manufacturers have perfected the art of sowing doubt and deception all in service of delaying Government Action to protect public health. In other words, this man knows of what he speaks. [laughter] so i am proud to welcome my friend and my colleague to cambridge. Take it away. [applause] so thank you very much for that introduction and thank you so much, david, for this book and for everyone for coming. You know, ive been working in this field of corruption for about the last 12 years. And recently ive become increasingly optimistic. I can see paths to certain parts of them being solved and certain commitments that five years ago didnt exist in, for example, the political space. But i have to confess, when i finished this book so that i could provide a review and a blurb for the book, i felt like i had been punched in the gut. Because even though this has been my field in some sense not just in the concept of science, but in politics and the academy and all sorts of areas, this has been my field for so long, the profound extremity of this corruption i dont think has been better captured by anybody in any account than in this book. And its not just what i kind of talk about as good souls corruption where people are kind of led by incentives to go in the wrong direction and then i think thats a profoundly important problem. But well talk about the outrageous, selfconscious, intentional, unbelievable acts of wrong by entities that you would never imagine could engage in such wrongs. So heres my charge to you [laughter] of course, you come to an event like this, youre supposed to buy the book, and of course you should. But i dont think you should buy this book, i think you should buy five copies of this book [laughter] and you have to send four of them to friends who are not likely to understand or be sensitive to this especially if you happen to have any trump supporters. Im sure theres at least three in the audience. It is incredibly important that this message be spread. And it will only be spread for reasons were going to talk about from the bottomup. Because every powerful institution in our society has an interest in this perspective not being understood in the powerful and effective way that i think david has presented it here. So im honored to be in this conversation with you, david. And what were going to do is have david read a little bit at the beginning, and then well have a conversation, and then im eager to get to your questions. Larry, thank you so much. [inaudible] thank you all for coming out on this miserable night. For those of you watching on cspan, it is pouring outside and good to see everybody here. Ill read a little bit and then well dive in. Where is the ceo today who, in the face of public concern about a potentially dangerous product, says lets hire the best scientists to figure out the problem is real, and then if it is, stop making the stuff . [laughter] in fact, evidence from decades of corporate crisis behavior suggests exactly the opposite. The um we e discuss is to impetus is to take the low road and attack, attack, attack the science underpinning the concerns. Of course, idealogues will never say they value profits before the health of their employees or the safety of the public. Theyll never say that their care less about our water and air than environmentalists do, but their actuals belie the rhetoric. Most people have come to expect corporations to [inaudible] its in the corporate dna. We dont expect mercenary sign difficults. Scientists. Science is supposed to be above the fray. This book is about those science for sale specialists and the product Defense Industry that sustains them, the a cabal of [inaudible] and political lob bests who use lobbyists who use bad science. Its a version of the old joke, turn on the blue with light, the men want the blue suit. [laughter] much of their work involves production of scientific materials that purport to show the product the corporation uses or even discharges as air or Water Pollution is just not very dangerous. These useful experts produce impressive looking reports and publish the results of their studies in peerreviewed journals reviewed, of course, by [inaudible] writing the articles. I describe this Corporate Strategy as manufacturing doubt or manufacturing uncertainty. My objective is to identify, characterize and ill illuminatee strategy so readers can see exactly what these mercenary scientists and the firms that hire them are doing. In just about every coronerrer of the corporate world corner of the corporate world, studies and will be are deemed irrelevant, dismissed as not representative and discredited as unreliable. Always theres too much doubt about the evidence, not enough proof of harm, not enough proof of enough harm. Its Public Relations disguised as science. The companies pr experts provide scientists with contrarian sound bites that play well with reporters who are mired in believes there must be two sides to every story. The scientists are deployed to influence regulatory agencies or to defend against lawsuits by people who believe they were injured. The corporations and their higher guns market their studies and reports as sound science, but actually they just sound like science. [laughter] [applause] there you go. Okay. So this book is a continuation really of your earlier book, doubt is their product. Right. And whats common between these two books is the description of a Business Model which is perfected by really just a handful of really powerful and effective firms, the most prominent in the stories you tell is a firm called hill and nolton. When a business discovers they have a product or they have a chemical thats coming out of their product or they have something that is threatened as unsafe, this firm will come to them and pitch the idea that they can at least delay the inevitable. Its not like they really question the facts. In the earlier book you talked about lead e and chromium 6 and all these chemicals, which there was no tout about the harm no doubt about the harm. But there was a recognition that they could put off the regulators long enough and continue to earn millions of dollars for six or twelve or fifteen years, and the net benefit of that money would obviously be much greater than any cost they would face for continuing to do that harm. So twenty years down the road well finally figure it out, and maybe we can move on to something else. Whats so striking the about that Business Model, how do those people sleep at night . [laughter] i mean, you know, you can imagine like, i make lawyers for a living, right . Lawyers go into courtrooms and like, you know, they have a defendant. They might believe their defendants guilty, or theyre not going to ask that, and theyre going to work as hard as they can to get their defendant off. They can kind of feel good about themselves. But in this context, these people must know that what they are doing is acting to actually harm people. So as youve met these people, how have you understood their psychology . Well, thats a great question. Obviously, you have to wrestle with. I actually think theres a way that people rationalize their work. Go back to the 1994 hearings and the tobacco executives in front of congressman waxman. These ceos have college degrees, theyre lawyers in many cases who stood up with their right hands, said they swore to tell the truth, and the last question was do you think nicotines addictive. Ask theyd say no or i dont know. Where have were they lying . Actually, a lot of these people have convinced themself of, you know, sort of black is white. Theres a famous quote that i bin the book with begin the book with, its difficult to convince man of something when his philosophy depends on him not believing it. People clearly think that theyre doing the right thing, but the problem around this is hill and nolton started this with tobacco, but the reality of science firms that have figured out they can do the Public Relations and they can to science. Theyre very impressive. They look like theyre scientists. They produce, you know, all these reports that exonerate different chemicals. And its, you know, i can think theyve convinced themself whatever evidence they look at isnt real. Okay, but some of those people, well, the executives in a tobacco company, obviously, a lot hedges hinges on them getting thing it is right. You tell the story of volkswagen. I mean, the story of volkswagen which, again, i had known there was some scandal, and i just assumed it was some kind of fudging the numbers scandal. But the story, the actual story you tell is so astonishing because what volkswagen did on their diesel cars was to devise a mechanism that would detect when emissions were being measured. And when the emissions were being measured, they would turn down the emissions. And when they werent, it would go up 40 times from the amount that was coming out. Right. Now, theres way [inaudible conversations] were ambiguous about what they were doing. They clearly believed and clearly knew what they were doing was lying to regulators and the pluck about the harm being created. This wasnt ambiguous. It was intentional hi producing harm in the world. And it actually gets worse. [laughter] not only did they do that, and theres evidence the ceo knew exactly that, when the International Agency for research on cancer analyzed the studies on the effects of exposure to diesel particulates and determined that they cause lung cancer, volkswagen said, well, we need to respond. And so they said lets pay for a study that will, you know, respond to that. And so the first model was that they would put people into a chamber on bicycles and pump in some gas and show that it didnt have a big effect on the but the idea of a company pumping gas into a chamber [laughter] the optics were bad. So they finally decided to do a study in new mexico in a laboratory using nonhuman primates, using monkeys. But this paying for that study and doing it, thaw actually made sure to they actually made sure to bring in one of the volkswagen devices to rig the study. Is so they knew the study was going to in fact, they messed that the up as well. You know, i tend to be optimistic and see the best in people, so i think how could they possibly know exactly that theyre lying. But in this case, larry, youre absolutely right. They knew exactly what they were doing. Okay, so they knew what they were doing, but again these firms like hill and nolton, its got to be that they come home at the end of the week, and they think ive been in the business of making people sick or less safe or hurting people. Thats my job, to actually hurt people x. That idea, the idea that there are those people is just hard or to and, you know, a lot of these are firmses, theres a firm near cambridge called gradient. Their Business Model is based on turning out these reports saying these pollutants arent dangerous. They work for exxonmobil and companies [inaudible] so the fact that we allow those reports to go into, you know, government regulatory proceedings is really, to me, very questionable. We shouldnt we should just discard these because they were not produced reports that dont support exactly what whoever paid for it wanted. Its the golden rule of science, if you have the gold, you make the rules. And whats so striking is it doesnt actually take a lot of money in the end. You were talking about the test in new mexico. That contract was written so that there was a contingency amount that they would not get until they produced the results that they were supposed to produce. And so they were not able to produce those results. But they bent over backwards the produce conditions, to produce those results for 71,000, thats all that was at stake. But they completely sold their soul as a Testing Company for the purpose of just 71,000. Its a tiny, little amount of this corrupting influence here which is capable of distortion in a really mass i way. Another story i tell is about talc baby powder which is, you know, a common product that we all have used. We put it on ourselves, on our babies, marketed by Johnson Johnson to women for personal hygiene, especially africanamerican women. Its generally [inaudible] its very difficult to have talc without asbestos contamination. And weve known that for 40 years. Honestly, thats a problem for Johnson Johnson, companies that make baby powder that dont want to be labeled as having asbestos in it because youre [inaudible] you like the stuff, i mean, there have been times when the government has tried to characterize talcum powder as carcinogenic. One considered labeling talc. [inaudible] as causing cancer. The industry, the trade association Johnson Johnson belongs to belonged to, and the Money Company hired the same consultant who worked for the Tobacco Industry to essentially confuse the scientists on the board of sign scientific fox problem. One of the memos says time to come up with more confusion. And they were successful. The government sort of favor up. They were outgunned and, you know, that issue was still going on. Of and now there are these huge lawsuits, and Johnson Johnson actually is theres one lawsuit which i talk about in the book which 22 women with Ovarian Cancer sued john and johnson. The jury awards them each 25 million, but then they look at these documents that i talk about in the book, and they awarded 4. 1 billion against john and johnson because they were so appalled by what Johnson Johnson and their company had done. By the way, just as a fun fact, the president of that trade association was a man named ed kavanaugh, Brett Kavanaughs father. [laughter] you were saying nice things about lawyers. [laughter] okay. Lets talk about some of these other contextses though that werent in the old book. I mean, what i love about this book is out begins with tobacco which you also begin with in that book, but it ends in the story of [inaudible] which you name as kind of the before corruption story, even before tobacco. Yeah. The Sugar ResearchFoundation Actually was doing this stuff in the 40s. And, in fact, the president or the head of the civil Research Foundation retired, and then 1954 [inaudible] announced that they were going to do research into fact, convinced themselves to understanding the Health Impacts of tobacco. In fact, youve spent decades covering the whole thing up. But when they announced that, when the Sugar Research foundation wrote saying you need my help. I was doing this for sugar, and thaw hired him. And he became the Deputy Director of the Tobacco IndustryResearch Committee which was the one who did all this work for tobacco. So it goes back further because it really is in the dna of these corporations, and unless we figure out a way to really make sure that they dont produce the science is, were going to get science with no integrity. Thats the problem. So sugar, opioids [inaudible] in my most recent book, i sort of characterize opioids as the quintessential example of corruption in every dimension. Thats right. Because its not just the science which is corrupted by basically paying scientists to promote and fight opiate phobia, i guess thats the term which is used, its also the regulators, like the chief regulator at the fda who fasttracked the opioids into our bloodstream. Also marketed as less addictive than other kinds of painkillers. Can and and then after he left and then after he left the fda, went to work for one of these companies. So its in the corruption of the government. And if then the part that is less played here, and i want to push you a little bit on it, is that it was the most corrupt example of money in politics. You know, theres not a Single Member of congress who, when campaigning for his or her job, told an audience, look, we need to liberalize access to opioids. Thats what im going to go to washington to do. Like, there was not a Single Person for whom this was an eshoo that anybody cared about issue that anybody cared about. Yet the money that flows the congress, to the vast majority of congress, and democrats just as much as republicans indeed, the top two recipients were Joe Lieberman and chris dodd, two leading democrats is astonishing. Theres no capacity for anybody to do the right thing. And theres no outrage about these issues are enough below the radar screen that the legislators can certainly do what these companies needed without anybody complaining. And they crippled the regulatory agencies. We can begin with theyre underfunded and certainly its getting worse under trump, we can talk about that, but the problem is not at all unique to this administration. It goes back far longer and its, obviously, both parties. Right. But theres so you brought up Climate Change. I think Climate Change is a really important example to bring out the dynamic of the corrupting influence of money. Because, you know, its hard to remember, but republicans believed in Climate Change as democrats did all the way through the 2008 election. Remember both mccain and obama had Climate Change planks. You might not like them both equally, but they both committed to the idea of Climate Change. In 2010 that flipped, and it flipped because of a single family, the Koch Brothers. And the Koch Brothers announced that they are going to fund primary challenges for any republican who says anything supportive of the idea of Climate Science. And almost overnight they became a party that did not acknowledge Climate Science at all. Even people who used to just like that flipped. From that moment, 2010 on, you cant be a republican and survive in our political system given the literally billions of dollars that will be pushed into the system to stop fellow addressing it. So you want to understand what eventually might make this fixable, right, this is a very important this is exactly right. The big picture, i think we have a lot of ways we could make science better. But until we change the political situation as well, the the political system to be able to demand science with integ few, demand truth and then figure out exactly how do we protect people the best example the way we have all of our systems set up is you have to prove that theres a harm before we do anything about it. This idea that theres you know, all these chemicals, all these hazards have a presumptive innocence. Its like the criminal justice system. People are presumed to be innocent until theyre shown to be guilty, but, you know, Greenhouse Gases have to go through that. You know, the chemicals that go into teflon. Theres so much indication that these things are dangerous, but if youre an expert, if you and and i could do this if i decided to go over to the darked side, you can create uncertainty about any of these hazards, and then you have this debate. And then the press buys into it. And politicians just say, well, you know, we leave it up to the agencies, but they dont, obviously, and the agencies cant do anything. Theyre afraid to. So so you have a situation where we have paralysis in washington both politically and on protections of workers, protection of the environment. Its a system thats bound to fail. And, of course, its getting worse. I mean, the stories of the Trump Administration now, i mean, i wrote this book 12 years ago about these scientists that were trying to influence the regulatory agencies, and when trump came into power, they were given the regulatory agencies. Tony cox is a mathematician, you heard from kathy about oshas silica standard, causes lung cancer, oshas been work on standards for years and i was able to work on that. Cox showed up on behalf of the American Chemistry Council to represent companies that manufacture silica products. [inaudible] you didnt prove that silica caused silicosis. Saying ozone is not dangerous, particulates are not dangerous. Hes worked with the National Mining association against osha when they were trying to strengthen their standard around black lung. During the Bush Administration he was hired by bayer, the pharmaceutical companies, who wanted to market an antibiotic for poultry. We overfield chickens so is they grow overfeed chickens so so they grow faster. Bushs fda commissioner found he misquoted articles, and his testimony was so unreliable, it was inadmissible. Tony cox, now he is the chair of the Clean Air Science Advisory Committee for the epa, the but mare advisory primary Advisory Committee to help protect us from air pollution. Its a disaster. In some ways its been bad for a long time. Its gotten worse recently. And in some ways, i mean, we have to look at it this way. Maybe trump is doing us a favor. By pulling apart a regulatory system that wasnt working well to begin with, now is the time for us to think about how do we do this right. This is where we have to think about the electoral college, gerrymandering, we have to think about how our Government Works so we really protecter protect people. We shouldnt presume innocence. We say how do we use the best evidence thats available now to protect people, and where do we get that evidence. Right. I mean, one of the things i think its important people know because i think most people dont know, when Congress Finally passed the statute that was going to test these chemicals, it grandfathered all of the chemicals that were already in the marketplace if. Yeah. I mean, nobody had ever tested those chemicals. Theres no reason to believe they were safe. Right. But these are all grandfathered, and the only test is now for chemicals going forward, right . Well, actually, at the end of the Obama Administration congress, on a bipartisan basis, passed some real fixes to that which the Chemical Industry agreed to, but then once trump took power, they changed course and said we can get everything we wanted, and thats gone out the window. Its really disastrous. Okay. So lets think about structurally what you would do if you were trump [laughter] you know, trump for a day. You know, what are the changes that would work . Yeah. I mean, i think you begin to talk about some which are really important here, but i think we need to crystallize what is the basic well, the first question around how we use the Evidence Base to protect people. I think we have to say we need a new system to produce the science. You cant have science produced by scientists and firms that have a conflict of interest. On the other hand, the firms that make these products have to pay for it. Ecigarettes is a big issue, right . Weve gone from nothing to three million [inaudible] on a regular basis. We have no idea what the longterm effect is of breathing in this mucks mix of certain oils, certain fragrances and nicotine into your lungs. What is the longterm effects. We certainly dont need the Tobacco Companies to tell us, right . We need a system to pay for the research, and it should be done in a way that they have no role in it. That would be the bottom line, one of the first things to think about. The other is this idea with the revolving door and corporate [inaudible] if we dont pay regulators very much money. You can make, if youre in the government working on this, you could double your salary, quadruple your salary by going to the private sector. And at some point agencies give up. The whole boeing 737 max disaster is that the faa could not actually keep up with the work. They werent, they dont have the staff, they dont have the budget to be able to actually dealing with the oversight of safety of this new jet plane. And so they gave it to boeing. And look at the result. Boeings paying the price. Most companies dont pay the price. So you have to set up a system, again, where you really have a regulatory system that has the strength and the if integrity to be able and the integrity to be able to do that. Yeah. And this important point about supporting the people who work, i mean, we all have the intuitions about teachers, but its hard to say this, but we need to say this, and we need to also pay our bure9 accurates. Its important to recognize the vulnerability here and the change in incentives. So when i wrote my book about ten years ago, republic boss, the most amazing statistic i discovered in rig that book was in writing that book was in 1973 or 74 the average salary of a lobbyist on capitol hill was the psalm as the average the same as the average salary of a staffer. If you were a staffer, why would you ever go be a to be buttist . Because this is where the action is. You could with doing something. You stayeded on capitol hill. And capitol hill was filled with lots of people who knew things. Now its an order of magnitude different, and what people on capitol hill do is they time their exit. This is not an asset. This is an intentional design of Newt Gingrich beginning in 19 is 95 1995 when he basically suffocated the infrastructure of neutral or noninterested, disinterested support for congress and, therefore, drove everybody to go out to the lobbyists. And, of course, theyre just these hired guns. I ran osha for seven plus years, no one else has had that job for more than three and a half. Many people came up to me, especially the last years and said, you know, nows the time the cash out. [laughter] really go out and make some money now. And, you know, i had my tenured position at George Washington university, i was happy to say at osha until the last day to have Obama Administration, then go back. But for a lot of people in government, the and these are very good people, youre going to quadruple your salary is very appealing, and we shouldnt allow that. You know, you really have to pay more, and the only way you can do that is actually the charge the parties that youre regulating real money to be able to examine what theyre doing. You have to have people, you have to have engineers and scientists who are very well qualified to do that. Okay, so if we had a test, for example within industries, taxed everybody in the industry and put this money in a pool, disinterested scientists would allocate it to researching the effects of the productses in that industry, thats the kind of solution you describe. Exactly. And at the same time if you have a new product that is going to be reviewed by the safety commission, whatever it is, you should be paying them enough money for them to actually examine the efficacy and the safety of that product as well. I mean, thats you cant rely on these agencies that are just overwhelmed and outgunned to be able to do that well. Okay. But i didnt want see this number in the i didnt see this number in the book, maybe because its not a good number to have you articulate, but what would it cost . [laughter] a lot of money. To put together that kind of independent research to evaluate the effects of all of these products as theyre im sure a lot less than the last tax cut. Okay. Well, thats a number, 1. 6 trillion. Yeah. No, i dont know. You cant do out all at once, but certainly its worth trying on a trial basis. Ecigarettes, lets do that one. We dont know enough about it, and Everybody Knows its a potential problem. Lets set up a system where all those companies have to put in enough money to have the research done, but its totally at arms length from them. Okay. The last one i want to push on, and then im going to take some questions. Were just going to have people raise hands and ask questions. Okay, so theres one line in the book where youre talking about the nfl that the i was, i was surprised at. Because, you know, you might ask the question why isnt to shah regulating the nfl osha regulating the nfl. Because its hard. When i was a kid, i used to watch Football Games with mid dad. I kind of would feel guilty watching right now because of what we know about what the way the game does to the brains of those players. But in this passage in the book you were like, yeah, were not going to take on the nfl. Youve got to talk your shots. [laughter] osha is such a weak, small agency. Osha has enough inspectors to visit every business in its jurisdiction once every 165 years. We have workers who have no ability to protect themselves. Undocumented workers who are working [inaudible] with no fall protection. If they go on the football field and somebodys telling you how to play the game, wed be laughed out of the stadium and probably defunded. You pick your shots. I tell a story in the book about how [inaudible] president obama, the Second Amendment crowd thought that i was chosen because i would take guns away from workers. Because people who the nra people see the whole world through those eye glasses. Its actually possible because oil refineries, especially in oklahoma, have they tried to actually ban workers from bringing loaded firearms onto the oil refinery grounds. Why . [laughter] crazy idea. And when [inaudible] in oklahoma banned workers from bringing weapons, the nra went to the Oklahoma State legislature which unanimously voted employers cant do that. Osha could preempt that law, which was true. So, you know, so the Second Amendment folks thought that this was the opportunity, obama wants to preempt that law. I didnt even know that that was a possibility. And i was eager and happy to swear to these republicans i will not introduce any regulation taking guns away from workers, and i sailed through the confirmation [laughter] you have to pick your shots. We had other things to do, silica, violence in hospitals, things like that. But you are troubled by the nfl oh, yeah. And the stories i tell about how the nfl covered this up for ten the years by hiring scientists who were not only conflicted, but didnt have any skills. The mild traumatic brain injury committee, you can see how they named out, was the commissioners personal physician whos a rheumatologist. And they spent ten years pretending to study the issue. They got [inaudible] tapping them on their heads. And they delayed dealing with the problem for years. Now they acknowledge it, but they are no different than tobacco. Okay. And on that happy note [laughter] so, yes. Are there questions . Right over here. Hold on, hold on. Theres a mic coming down to you right now. Just above . Right above you. Literally coming down. [laughter] okay. On Climate Change, people put out Statement Like it isnt really real. Now, how can any sane person look at the Keeling Curve and believe that . The audience that these people are talking about . The socalled scientists who are Climate Change deniers, you know, Climate Changety hadties, you know jihadis, terrorists [inaudible] theyre not, you know, theres a very small group of them. I have no idea if theyre lying or if they truly believe it just because theyre so contrarian. But theres almost no one in the Scientific Community who really believes this, but you can see the power of the argument where if you argue the science, you dont have to actually argue the policy. [inaudible] how could the audience believe it . Well [inaudible] buys into it. Well, thats the question. Why . Well, because its an ideology, and, you know, its this is now, its almost like religion, i think, at this point. Yeah. Theres a great little, theres a great work by dan [inaudible] at yale. And what it says is, look, if you are a person who is a republican and all of your people in your tribe are climate deniers, what incentive do you have to be a Climate Change activist. Because you know your view about Climate Change is not going to make Climate Change happen or not. Youre not going to have any effect on the science, but if you announce yourself as not believe anything Climate Change, then youll alienate yourself from everybody in your tribe. And the point is that that personal psychological, social constraint turns out to be much more significant to than the sign tuck to people than the scientific fact. And the Science Community, there is no one in the Science Community who believes that. But theres enough money from the Koch Brothers and for a long time exxonmobil and some of the Coal Companies if that they can put that out widely. For a long time, the every journalist brought boo this idea that they had to present both sides of it. I think actually, you know, having a president who lies multiple times every day and reporters realizing they have to say that, thats really made the Climate Change argument different as well. They feel no obligation to say on one hand, on the other hand. They just simply say this is Climate Change. So its finally changing. Thank you. Hold on. How important is whistleblower protection . I mean, it is as useful as people tout it to be . Does it need to be changed . Why doesnt it have a greater role in having the Agency People themselves blow the whistle . Government whistleblowers. You know, i think a lot of Government People are very wellmeaning, and heir not told they have to theyre not told they have to find the one result. The legal structure and the way things work end up with [inaudible] its not that theyre hiding it. Certainly when i was in the government you couldnt do what you need to do because the way the laws were written were so, made it so difficult to work. Obviously now in the government there are whistleblowers who are talking about pretty outrageous things. But im not sure that protecting whistleblowers in the areas were talking about would make a huge difference. I think its important, but i think the overall system is so misshapen that we need to change the way the system works. Just getting the truth out wont be enough to change the system. But when the scientists are sent out to colorado from washington, i mean nobody sees that, thats the problem. Were seeing it in front of us and allowing it to happen. Thats the problem. Right here. Two things. One is did you find counterexamples where corporations waived ethically, and what was the consequences, and do you see differences across the world in the behavior . Well, i didnt try i put out on social media, the limited social media i have, give me examples. And [inaudible] but in terms of this bigger issue where companies asked the question is it dangerous [inaudible] and they stopped doing it, its few and far between. Patgonias an example. Patgonia has looked at some of the materials they make, theyre worried about micro fires. Theyre a privatelyheld company. But i had a lot of difficulty finding examples of companies that did the right thing. I mean, 3m stopped selling some of the [inaudible] chemicals, but it was long after they knew these chemicals were so dangerous. If youve seen the movie dark water, you see that in great detail. Its, sadly, not very common. I mean, you could change that though, right . You talk about, you say so long as there are severe penalties for lying about the results, cooking the books. But one thing you recognize about corporations is that they are rational. Unlike many people who commit crimes, no matter what you threaten them as punishment, they wouldnt change, corporations would actually change. If they really did face death penaltylike consequences and chair executives their executives were going to go to war which, of course, doesnt happen anymore since the Obama Administration, actually, but if they were faced with that, they would internalize that and they would begin youre absolutely right. It doesnt have to be this way. You have certain requirements that you have to do testing, that testing must be public. If nothing else, that transparency would make a huge difference. And, of course, criminal penalties, in other countries theres a lot of discussion about that. Even the world i work in terms of worker safety, if a worker is killed and clearly there are corporate corporations didnt do what was required of them. Members of the board of directors of a corporation are criminally liable. Here under osha if a worker is killed and its a willful violation, no individual is liable, and the corporation is liable at max i mum for a misdemeanor maximum for misdemeanor penalty. Look at the dumps. Although theres one counter in your book which i was surprised you were talking about which was the volkswagen executive who, after the report came out, didnt think anything would happen. He came to florida to vacation with his family, and he was arrested at the border and sent to jail. Because he lied to the epa. Lying to the government used. To. [laugher] right. For osha we never could go after an employer, but the justice [inaudible] for lying even to an osha inspector was far greater than killing a worker. Wow. Okay, other questions. In the back. The woman. Yeah. So the question is how likely it is to have a policy shift where scientists who have a conflict of interest may not be able to serve on those agencies. Like, how much would that help, for example, people who used to work in these, like, private firms. In the case of [inaudible] now they cant have on their Panel Scientists who have conflicts of interest real or apparent, and also like how much do you think shifting the consumer demand by informing about them, these companies and things that they do, i think consumer demand could be one of the ways that you could help. [inaudible] shifted their policy a number of years ago and said when we have put together a penalty to invest to decide whether or not something causes cancer, we only include scientists who have no substantial conflict of interest. In fact, the head of that program for a long time, he deserves our thanks for that. Where are you, kurt . [applause] but thats [inaudible] the minimum to saw on the Advisory Panel you shouldnt have people with conflicts of interest. We need to produce the evidence by scientists without conflicts of interest, and thats much bigger lift. Itll cost more money, but thats what we need. Okay, right here. Im wondering if theres any place in your [inaudible] if general problem something that was suggested 30, 40 years ago, something equivalent to an Environmental Audit that would mirror the financial audit that would put company on to require that they pass a certain level of scrutiny before they can operate publicly. Yeah. I think we need to be bomb. I mean, this is bold. I mean, this is the time to think about [inaudible] lets i assume that the winds of policy change very much and what we need to be ready to jump on things like that. I think this is a discussion we need to have. Yeah. What you said on the [inaudible] i think its good [laughter] on the diesel, the association tried to threaten journal editors not to publish any manuscript coming out of nci or [inaudible] that was needed. And we immediately to the editor of oncology, and he made a story, and afterwards the article was moved forward. On the talc, with we received [inaudible] from highest levels of dhhs that there is no need to make an evaluation of talc again. And you need to know in that context that half of the funding came from the u. S. Nci. So these are just little additions, and theres much more to say. But i wanted to puck up on the con puck up on the conflict of interest. I think the conflict of interest Management System is in some ways trying to get a handle on disclosing potential conflicts of interest. We all know that this is very kind of incomplete. Most of the disclosures are lacking detail. There has just been a recent big story here also on the meat analysis and undisclosed conflicts of interest again by the same person. But what i find most worrisome and that only came out in all the litigation following [inaudible] yet a novel twist, and that is from a confidential letter from hollingsworth, one of these companies. And in the contract with the scientist there out says you also agree to maintain the fact that you have been retained by hllp as instructly confidential and privileged. We had that scientist on one of our meetings, and he didnt disclose anything. Once we got from the discovery of [inaudible] if that information, we wrote to him and then we have collected that afterwards but im sure that this is not a single kind of example. There is much more of that. So i think we need a refinement and a strengthening of the conflict of interest procedures. A novel question, is there anything else like working as a consultant which youre not allowed to share . [laughter] i think its important though to recognize the relationship between the drop in government funding and the rise in this kind of corruption. Because if youre in a field, i meaning ive been doing work around cell phone technology. If youre in a field around cell phone technology, all of the research is funded by industry. And thats because the government just doesnt have money to be funding that kind of research. And so to extent we make that choice as a society not to have governmentfunded research, we make the choice to have the problems in this book even more severe. I think we have one more question. Right here. Yes. Is there any mechanism to counter these false claims by scientists . Otherwise you have [inaudible] and we always hear these politicians say that some scientist disagree. Now, there are facts, and i assume that theres some way of countering all this [inaudible] some attack mechanism to get at these people. We need to go to the institutions that we trust, and thats why im really happy to be here with the union of concerned scientists. To build both activist organizations and [inaudible] made up of scientists that are committed to protecting the public. Theyre getting good science to really make our lives better. We cant do this relying on corporate scientists, and we cant do this relying on Government Agencies right now. This is really what we need to do, and we need to become active around this. [inaudible] if we had any money. Much of academia is funded by corporations. Right. Academic scientists need outside funding, and Research Funding is as addictive as nicotine. [laughter] you know, you try and get the money, and then you keep using it. This is exactly the problem. Some of the worst offenders are professors. Yeah. And its also the motivations are very interesting because like once you are a University Researcher and you have a lab that youve set up thats been funded even by the government, you see if you dont get funding next year, your staff gets fired and people who depend on you for their livelihood thats right. You have a really strong the incentive to bring the money in however you can bring it in. Places like harvard are relatively immune to that influence because theres more money here than in second tier institutions. Other places i mean, not that there havent been great laws here too, but other places penn state has a Nutrition Center which is the hersheys Nutrition Center. [laughter] okay. I want to ask you to join me in thanking david. [applause] youre watching booktv on cspan2. Here are some programs to watch out for this weekend. On after words, netflix director of inclusion Michelle King examines what she calls the invisible barriers that prevent women from succeeding in the work plus. Booktv looks into our archives to bring you with author practice about pandemics. And the library of congress can hosts an author talk with i Tulane UniversityProfessor John barry about his book on the 1918ing influenza outbreak. This is the first of many virtual author programs that youll see on booktv. Check your program guyed or visit booktv. Org for more information. Here are some of the current best selling nonfiction books according to news max. Topping the list is abc News White House correspondent Jonathan Carls recounting of his coverage of the Trump Administration in hunt row at the trump show. Then in the house of kennedy, best selling author James Patterson and journal cynthia fagin recall the political lives of the kennedy family. After that is pulitzer prizewinning investigative journalist eric ayers look at the opioid with epidemic in death in mudlick. Thats followed by the sum of the people, Data Scientist andrew whitbys history of census talking. And wrapping up our look at some of the best selling nonfiction books according to news max is the sword and the shield, peniel josephs examination of the relationship between pam come x and Martin Luther king jr. And how they defined the civil rights movement. Some of these authors is have appeared on booktv, and you can watch them online at booktv. Org. Unfortunately do to