Persuasive Communication about Matters of Great Urgency

Environ. Sci. Technol. 2008, 42, 7555–7558

ments matter to people everywhere, I will focus on the American academic context since this is what I best comprehend.

Persuasive Communication about Matters of Great Urgency: Endocrine Disruption

Toxicity matters of great urgency

TERRENCE J. COLLINS Carnegie Mellon University

GETTY IMAGES/RHONDA SAUNDERS

Scientists should be free to interpret scientific information for the public on all matters, especially those of great urgency, and to suggest appropriate courses of action.

Carnegie Mellon University is anything but monolithic in its faculty opinions. In a recent Viewpoint focused on the climate, my colleague, Baruch Fischhoff, explained to scientists his views on the importance of nonpersuasive communication about “matters of greatest urgency”, cautioning them against resorting to persuasive communication which he also called science advocacy (1). I respectfully do not support his enjoinder against science advocacy by scientists. It would bring a chilling effect on the creativity, openness, and energy needed to solve sustainability challenges. While some science advocacy may be counterproductive, it’s also important to recognize that the scientist is like an expeditionary, looking always for new understanding of nature, but also warning civilization of dangers in its path. In this companion Viewpoint, I will argue that it is constructive for a scientist to interpret the meaning of scientific findings on urgent and important subjects, including giving advice on the wider context and advancing appropriate options for corrective action. While the argu10.1021/es800079k

 2008 American Chemical Society

Published on Web 10/13/2008

As Hans Jonas has explained (2), the extraordinary powers over the ecosphere that mankind has acquired through science and technology in the last 150 years bring transgenerational justice to the center of the ethical stage. Future humans need living scientists who are experts on sustainability subjects to advocate on their behalf. The climate is not the only matter of great urgency. For example, other matters relate to the health and environmental impacts of synthetic chemicals. Currently, the most serious is the disruption of the endocrine system by synthetic compounds called “endocrine-disrupting chemicals” or EDCs (some natural compounds are also EDCs). EDCs induce changes in the hormonal signals controlling cellular development that can lead to impaired organisms at environmentally relevant concentrations (3, 4). Animal evidence for EDC impairments is abundant and irrefutable. Humans are known to be subject to developmental impairments by certain drugs [diethylstilbestrol (DES), thalidomide]. While these are considered high-dose effects, animal evidence of EDC damage appears to be mirrored in humans for ambient exposures to certain widely dispersed chemicals, e.g., phthalates (5, 6), and after many years of looking, DDT (7). In the 1980s, Theo Colborn grasped the broad significance of chemicals that disrupt animal and human development, and she orchestrated the public definition of EDCs in 1991. Colborn, a scientist and a powerful health and environmental advocate, is our modern-day Rachel Carson. Without the engagement over the last 18 years of Colborn and other natural scientists in explaining the need to address the bonechilling evidence of impairments, we would be much further behind in public understanding of EDC hazards. This advocacy has often involved vigorous disagreement with industrial spokespersons. It does not dishonor a higher order code of professional conduct or equate with transgressions that will forever mark the advocates as untrustworthy. On the contrary, the advocacy represents vital service to the welfare of living things. The proposition has an appealing ring to it that scientists should only do the science, allow it to speak for itself, and leave others to decide what else to do with it. It flatters scientists as being self-disciplined when they maintain distance on controversial issues. It borrows credibility from the maxim that steadfast loyalty to data and scientific competence are inseparable. It assumes authority by echoing that scientists should always get things right. But in reality, using science’s powers only nonpersuasively is often inadequate. In health-related fields, the principles that underlie codes of conduct are beneficence, or the duty to do good; nonmaleficence, or the duty to do no harm; and justice (8). With EDCs there is no line between the chemistry and the health impacts. It is the chemistry of EDCs that produces the impairments such that the duties to do good, to do no harm, VOL. 42, NO. 20, 2008 / ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

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and to pursue justice are consistent with persuasive communication by scientists. Consider the case of Tyrone Hayes, an environmental biologist at UC Berkeley. In studying the reproductive biology of frogs, he has found that the herbicide atrazine is a potent EDC. According to Professor Hayes, atrazine is produced by the Swiss company Syngenta, yet it is not approved for use in Europe. It is used extensively in the United States, especially on cornfields where it eliminates weeds and produces a small increase (≈1%) in the grain yield. Hayes has found that there is enough atrazine in U.S. rainwater to chemically castrate male frogs. The amphibians become hermaphrodites developing both ovaries and testes. Eggs may attempt to develop and burst out of the testes. Some humans carry millions of times this rainwater concentration. Shanna Swan, a reproductive epidemiologist at the University of Rochester, has demonstrated a strong negative correlation between atrazine (together with other pesticides) in human male urine and sperm counts, implicating atrazine as a contributing cause (9). With commendable transparency, Professor Hayes publicly proclaims that he is crossing the line into advocacy when he says that atrazine should be banned in the U.S. (10). According to Fischhoff’s dictum, Hayes could claim that atrazine is damaging frogs based on his scientific evidence. He could also assert that he loves frogs because Fischhoff distinguishes values advocacy (“speaking about the things that they [scientists] cherish”) from science advocacy with the former deemed allowable. But he must not state the obvious that atrazine should be banned in America. And what about Robert Webster at Saint Jude Hospital in Memphis, Tenn.? This famous “flu hunter” worked persuasively to check outbreaks of SARS and avian influenza in Asia to prevent a lethal pandemic (11). Should he have stayed in Memphis studying viral respiratory diseases instead of traveling throughout Asia inspiring governments to suppress local outbreaks? I do not agree with Fischhoff that “advocacy comes at a price, turning scientists into peddlers rather than arbiters of truth.” While perhaps no one can claim to be a totally reliable “arbiter of the truth,” once scientists have obtained convincing objective information on matters of great urgency they have no less of a moral obligation to confront its meaning than anyone else. We are human beings first and scientists second, not vice versa. Best-efforts science advocacy is not peddling. But if scientist-advocates err by crossing the line into deliberate distortion of facts, they obviously do so at great risk to their reputations and they will imperil their case.

Honoring tenure A call to advocacy resides in the privileges and responsibilities involved in being a tenured professor in an American university. I will now draw from Rachel E. Fugate’s excellent article on the history of American academic tenure and the challenges it currently faces (12). In 1915 the Association of University Professors formalized in a declaration their concept of tenure. It was based on the German antecedent of Lehrfreiheit (the freedom to teach), one of three principles behind the German code of academic freedom for guidance. As Fugate explains, “In the late 1800s, ‘fueled by Darwinian controversies and populist turmoil’, professors were often fired for something they wrote or said.” In the 1950s McCarthy era, government efforts to purge allegedly insurgent teachers brought academic freedom to the forefront of a constitutional debate. In 1957, the majority of the Supreme Court resolved the case of Sweezy v. New Hampshire in which language emphasizing the importance of protecting academic freedom was stated in dicta by Chief Justice Warren (see inset for part of a widely cited quotation). In 1967 the Court declared that academic freedom is a “special concern of the First Amendment.” 7556

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“The essentiality of freedom in the community of American universities is almost self-evident. No one should underestimate the vital role in a democracy that is played by those who guide and train our youth. To impose any straight jacket upon the intellectual leaders in our colleges and universities would imperil the future of our Nation.... Teachers and students must always remain free to inquire, to study and to evaluate, to gain new maturity and understanding; otherwise our civilization will stagnate and die.” —Earl Warren, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, 1953-1969 Importantly, the American concept of academic tenure was designed primarily to protect the rights of the individual professor and not those of the collective academe or of academic governance and was later supported by the Court. Let us hope it stays this way. Moreover, “the 1915 Declaration’s umbrella of protection did not extend merely to fields in which a professor was trained and qualified, but also included protection for academic utterances that did not fall within a professor’s expertise” (12). While Fischhoff does not suggest that a scientists’ tenure ought to be at risk by engagement in advocacy, his injunction runs contrary to the spirit of tenure which was formulated precisely to provide sanctuary to academics wishing to speak their minds on contentious issues. Tenure will become redundant if professors do not remain true to its raison d′eˆtre. Today, much discontent surrounds the inappropriate corporate influence on science and science-based public policy (13). In such a world, important and urgent subjects such as the climate, the rapid use of nonrenewable resources, and EDCs are tests of tenure’s contemporary value. Professor Fischhoff asserts, “With long-term problems, like climate change, communication is a multiple-play game. Those who resort to advocacy might lose credibility that they will need in future rounds.” However, important advances in science have so often come when courageous individuals have stepped away from the warm fireside of peer acceptability into the cold night of isolation for the sake of perceived truth, all the way back to Galileo. Any denial of the right of a scientist to advocate for what she or he believes is true is inimical to the welfare of civilization.

Communication and green chemistry This contest of ideas also touches to the core of my discipline of green chemistry, a new field named and most effectively defined by Paul Anastas, in which chemists design chemical products and processes that reduce or eliminate the use and generation of hazardous substances. Most chemists are not educated in toxicity and ecotoxicity. So if you are a chemistry professor who has decided to go green, you will have to read broadly in these areas to develop your understanding of the hazards you must teach and design against. You may first be inspired by the meticulous mechanistic toxicology in conventional textbooks such as Toxicology (14). But as you dig in, you may also read Our Stolen Future (15), Pandora’s Poison (16), Deceit and Denial (17), and Living Downstream (18). And you may watch “Trade Secrets” (19) and visit www.ourstolenfuture.com. From these less orthodox curriculum resources, it will become clear that scientific discourse on subjects of great importance and urgency is often plagued by well-financed corporate public relations or “spin”. In fact, as David Michaels has pointed out both in Scientific American (20) and in his new book, Doubt Is Their Product: How Industry’s Assault on Science Threatens Your Health (21), spin has become an elaborate industry running amok in the U.S. government and paralyzing regulatory agencies.

The scientist’s role in building a sustainable future How in general should scientists approach the great challenges of our civilization’s sustainability? In the end, I think it’s less about a competition of ideas and more about a comprehensive quest for a common direction. Disengaging from public discourse on obstacles and strategies is the wrong course. Fischhoff imagines that scientists who are thinking of engaging in persuasive communication are asking “What good is taking the moral high ground in a collapsing world?” Here his moral high ground means avoiding science advocacy. On critical sustainability matters, persuasive communication is the moral high ground for tenured academics whose concerns so direct them. In pursuing sustainability, there may be value in defining, cataloging, and analyzing determinants that control civilization’s course toward or away from a sustainable future. There are two classes apparent to me (see Figure 1). Ecospherical determinants (below the white timeline) are shown with my suggested timescales before our civilization becomes dysfunctional from failing to address the determinant’s constraints. Societal determinants (above the white timeline) are shown with suggested representative timescales for how long it takes for sustainability orienting decisions or achievements to begin impacting the ecospherical deter-

T. COLLINS/NASA

Should independent tenured scientists stand by and let the trade associations monopolize the public landscape of expert opinion? So much damage has been inflicted on America by trade associations and related spin that there may never have been a more important time for independent scientists to openly confront it. Consider the history of scientific dialogue on tobacco and health. Consider also the 20th century case of Felix Wormser, General Secretary of the Lead Industries Association from 1928-1947, who led his industry’s campaign against negative publicity, bullying doctors who were pointing out that lead is especially hazardous to children and funding compliant, imperious academics (17). As just one deadly consequence of such activities, appreciable quantities of lead remained in U.S. household paint for almost seven decades longer than the first European restrictions (17). Thousands of children must have died as a result, and few Americans can have escaped some degree of intellectual impairment (17). And the poisoning is not yet oversall just so that the lead and allied industries could maintain their cash streams. Because comprehensive human studies usually cannot be carried out for ethical and/or practical reasons, certainty on the health impacts of chemicals can rarely be achieved. Honest debates over chemical hazards are obviously perfectly appropriate. But as Michaels affirms (20), “manufactured uncertainty is another matter entirely.” The U.S. simply cannot wait seven decades to deal with the EDCs as with lead in household paint. With EDCs such as phthalates and bisphenol A that contaminate people worldwide (22, 23) we are often only one to two and occasionally three or four generations into widespread exposures. Numerous human impairment problems possibly lie ahead. Today, trade association representatives repeatedly assert that there is a lack of credible evidence that chemicals that obviously impair animals at environmentally relevant concentrations are also harming humans. They often attempt to trivialize their opponents’ work as “misinformation and myth” (24). Because green chemists need to understand the underlying science of chemical hazards, they must learn how to dampen out spin as a prerequisite for building a scientifically rigorous field. In working through the quagmire, one trade association tenet strikes me as an especially insidious trap for civilization, specifically that only humans should count when money and jobs are at stake.

FIGURE 1. Societal determinants (above the white timeline) are shown with author-suggested representative timescales for how long it takes for sustainability orienting decisions or achievements to begin impacting the ecospherical determinants (below the white timeline) that ultimately control our civilization’s sustainability. minants. Clearly the nature and number of determinants and their suggested timescales are open to refinement; the presentation is intended to provoke debate. The ecospherical determinants decide our civilization’s sustainability. These are currently moving against sustainability, some irreversibly. The societal determinants set the degree of alignment of the ecospherical determinants with sustainable trajectories. Greening our societal determinants is the key to a new world order based upon the vigorous pursuit of sustainability. For example, sustainability can be advanced by advocacy aimed at terminating polluting technologies, by entrepreneurial activity aimed at developing green technologies, by investment aimed at backing such entrepreneurial activity, by education emphasizing sustainability’s challenges and goals, and by certain forces of internationalism such as the EU’s chemical regulations. Because politics is both powerful and so subject to the vision of the leaders, it is as a wild trump card in the sustainability quest. The development of a research determinant that can adequately address sustainability is contingent upon the insight and leadership prowess of the political determinant. Baruch Fischhoff also counsels us that pooling individual expertise is an important approach for solving sustainability problems. He is right in this, but the individual scholar’s freedom of expression must never be subordinated to the power of the collective will. This could happen if, as he suggests, communications should only occur following the input of “domain scientists, to represent the research about climate change and its effects; decision scientists, to identify the information critical to specific choices; and social scientists, to identify barriers to communicating that information and to create and evaluate attempts to overcome those barriers.” But haven’t climatologists repeatedly expressed surprise about how much faster the polar ice is melting than they expected? Fischhoff’s case against science advocacy is based on societal dynamics. Resolving urgent environmental problems requires arguments and actions focused on environmental dynamics. In the end, the ecosphere does not care about our social and economic needs, or our expert opinionssas we destroy it, we crush our civilization. Regulation of U.S. chemical companies has been suffocated under the spin blanket of the corporate lobbyists. Europe is now setting the worldwide agenda (25). Let us hope the U.S. rediscovers its former regulatory abilities. In VOL. 42, NO. 20, 2008 / ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

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a world with manufactured EDCs, good regulations can only help to steer companies toward that component of economic strength that resides in long-term stability. But the U.S. can certainly provide leadership through green chemistry and similarly motivated science in other fields. If it chooses this course, America will rapidly develop new sustainable industries that advance economic growth while gaining the admiration and gratitude of the world. And while green chemistry is based on hard science, persuasive communication is also necessary for its healthy development. Terrence J. Collins is the Thomas Lord Professor of Chemistry and the Director of the Institute for Green Science at Carnegie Mellon University. He is one of the founders of green chemistry. He is the designer/inventor of TAML activators, small synthetic catalysts that effectively mimic peroxidase enzymes in activating the natural oxidizing agent and commodity chemical hydrogen peroxide and can easily destroy recalcitrant pollutants and hardy pathogens in water. He thanks William Chadwick Ellis for helpful suggestions and the Heinz Endowments for support of his work. He dedicates this Viewpoint to his principal EDC teachers, Theo Colborn and J. Peterson Myers. Address correspondence about this article to Collins at [email protected].

Literature Cited (1) Fischhoff, B. Nonpersuasive communication about matters of greatest urgency: climate change. Environ. Sci. Technol. 2007, 41, 7204–7208; Available at http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/ journals/esthag/41/i21/html/110107viewpoint_fischhoff.html. (2) Jonas, H. The Imperative of Responsibility: In Search of an Ethics for the Technological Age; University of Chicago Press: Chicago, IL, 1984. (3) Myers, J. P.; Hessler, W. Does ‘the dose make the poison’? Extensive results challenge a core assumption in toxicology; Available at http://www.ourstolenfuture.com/NewScience/ lowdose/2007/2007-0525nmdrc.html. (4) Myers, J. P.; vom Saal, F. S. Time to update environmental regulations: should public health standards for endocrinedisrupting compounds be based upon 16th century dogma or modern endocrinology? San Francisco Med. 2008, 81, 301–131; Available at http://www.sfms.org/source/members/magazine_ archive_list.cfm?theme)January/February%202008%20Linked %20For%20Life:%20Health,%20Human%20Beings, %20and%20 the%20Environment§ion)Article_Archives. (5) Marsee, K.; Woodruff, T. J.; Axelrad, D. A.; Calafat, A. M.; Swan, S. H. Estimated daily phthalate exposures in a population of mothers of male infants exhibiting reduced anogenital distance. Environ. Health Perspect. 2006, 114, 805–809; Available at http:// www.ehponline.org/members/2006/8663/8663.html. (6) Swan, S. H.; Main, K. M.; Liu, F.; Stewart, S. L.; Kruse, R. L.; Calafat, A. M.; Mao, C. S.; Redmon, J. B.; Ternand, C. L.; Sullivan, S.; Teague, J. L. Study for Future Families Research Team. Decrease in anogenital distance among male infants with prenatal phthalate exposure. Environ. Health Perspect. 2005, 113, 1056–1061; Available at http://www.ehponline.org/ members/2005/8100/8100.html. (7) Cohn, B. A.; Wolff, M. S.; Cirillo, P. M.; Sholtz, R. I. DDT and breast cancer in young women: new data on the significance of age at exposure. Environ. Health Perspect. 2007, 115, 1406– 1414; Available at http://www.ehponline.org/members/2007/ 10260/10260.html.

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(8) Breslow, L. Encyclopedia of Public Health; MacMillan Reference: New York, 2001. (9) Swan, S. H.; Kruse, R. L.; Lui, F.; Barr, D. B.; Drobnis, E. Z.; Redmon, J. B.; Wang, C.; Brazil, C.; Overstreet, J. W. Study for the Future of Families Research Group. Semen quality in relation to biomarkers of pesticide exposure. Environ. Health Perspect. 2003, 111, 1478–1484; Available at http://www.ehponline.org/ members/2003/6417/6417.html. (10) Hayes, T. Silent Spring to Silent Night: Hermaphroditic Frogs, Breast Cancer and Pesticides. Presented at Women’s Health and the Environment: New Science, New Solutions, Pittsburgh, PA, 2007; Available at http://www.womenshealthpittsburgh.org/ 2007/podcasts/html#. (11) Brown, D. Scientists race to head off lethal potential of avian flu; Washington Post, August 23, 2005, p A01; Available at http:// www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/ 22/AR2005082201365.html. (12) Fugate, R. E. Choppy waters are forecast for academic free speech. Florida State University Law Review, 1998; Available at http://www.law.fsu.edu/journals/lawreview/frames/261/ fugatxt.html. (13) Integrity in Science; Center for Science in the Public Interest. Available at http://www.cspinet.org/integrity/. (14) Klaassen, C. D. Casarett & Doull’s Toxicology: The Basic Science of Poisons; McGraw-Hill: New York, 2008. (15) Colborn, T.; Dumanoski, D.; Myers, J. P. Our Stolen Future; Penguin Group: New York, 1996. (16) Thornton, J. Pandora’s Poison: Chlorine, Health, and a New Environmental Strategy; MIT Press: Boston, MA, 2000. (17) Markowitz, G.; Rosner, D. Deceit and Denial: The Deadly Politics of Industrial Pollution; University of California Press: Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA, 2002. (18) Steingraber, S. Living Downstream: A Scientist’s Personal Investigation of Cancer and the Environment; Random House: New York, 1997. (19) Moyers, B. Trade Secrets: A Moyers Report; PBS, 2001; Available at http://www.pbs.org/tradesecrets/program/program.html. (20) Michaels, D. Doubts their product. Sci. Am. 2005, 292 (6), 96– 101; Available at http://www.powerlinefacts.com/sciam_ article_on_lobbying.htm. (21) Michaels, D. Doubt Is Their Product: How Industry’s Assault on Science Threatens Your Health; Oxford University Press: Oxford, UK, 2008. (22) Blount, B. C.; Silva, M. J.; Caudill, S. P.; Needham, L. L.; Pirkle, J. L.; Sampson, E. J.; Lucier, G. W.; Jackson, R. J.; Brock, J. W. Levels of seven urinary phthalate metabolites in a human reference population. Environ. Health Perspect. 2000, 108, 979– 982; Available at http://www.ehponline.org/docs/2000/108p972982blount/blount-full.html. (23) Calafat, A. M.; Ye, X.; Wong, L.-Y.; Reidy, J. A.; Needham, L. L. Exposure of the US population to bisphenol A and 4-tertiaryoctylphenol: 2003-2004. Environ. Health Perspect. 2007, 116, 39–44; Available at http://www.ehponline.org/members/2007/ 10753/10753.html. (24) Hentges, S.; vom Saal, F.; Bucher, J.; Clement, T. BPA exposure and human health concerns. The Diane Rehm Show, Washington, DC, 2008; Available at http://wamu.org/programs/dr/ 08/04/29.php#19037. (25) Schapiro, M. Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products and What’s at Stake for American Power; Chelsea Green Publishing: White River Junction, VT, 2007.

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