A 2005 investigation in Environmental Health Perspectives raised
questions about the boundaries that Anderson and her firm
were willing to cross in service of their clients. the journal
focused on sciences’ defense of the pesticide phosphine. In the
for a
few Dollars
More
“scIeNce MaY Be fOr sale
at these consulting
firms,” says Congressman
Dingell. “If supposedly
reputable scientists are
paid to cast doubt
on valid data, the public’s
health aNd safet Y are
BeING eNdaNGered.”
late 1990s, the ePA proposed stricter standards for phosphine
after several people died near fumigated warehouses. the tobac-
co industry determined that the restrictions would cost millions
and turned to sciences for help. Correspondence between
Anderson and R.J. Reynolds, obtained from the UC san Fran-
cisco tobacco archives, reveals that Anderson lobbied her for-
mer colleagues at the ePA to reconsider. then, with input from
her clients, she drafted a report arguing for the old standards
and offered to get it published in a peer-reviewed journal. “My
experience is that consultant reports funded by those being
regulated, and written expressly for the ePA, are easily and fre-
quently ignored,” she wrote in a memo to Joel seckar, a toxicolo-
gist at R.J. Reynolds. “since I am currently editor-in-chief of the
international journal Risk Analysis, perhaps the peer-review
process could be expedited.” For this, “sciences would need an
additional $35,000 over and above the $50,000 provided by the
original contract,” the letter concluded. When the ePA eventu-
ally decided not to change the exposure standard for phosphine,
the agency cited the review by sciences International as justifi-
cation. (Risk Analysis’s board—which included HCRA’s george
gray—later tightened its conflict-of-interest standards, after
examining the sciences-phospine episode, but allowed Ander-
son to remain editor. Anderson declined to talk with Fast
Company about the matter.)
Among the first tasks in sciences’ examination of BPA was to
draft a review of previous studies. that draft would serve as a
foundation for a panel of scientists who would judge the com-
pound. According to biologist Pete Myers, chief scientist of the
nonprofit environmental Health sciences, who analyzed the
330-page report, it shared flaws with the discredited Harvard
review. “they contained similar biases, both giving undue weight
to flawed industry studies and dismissing a wealth of research
funded by the national Institutes of Health,” he says. In its own
investigation, the environmental Working group, a D.C.-based
consumer advocate, found that the sciences draft failed to note
