It’s too easy to become swayed to extreme sides when reporting issues like BPA. Reporters must comb through piles of scientific studies, some legitimate, some not. And it becomes very difficult to determine the nuances that make any study fair to quote. Take, for example, the complicated process of vetting government reports. In one part of his study, Butterworth argues that reporters didn’t adequately address international opinion on BPA:
EFSA [the European Food Safety Authority] took the exact opposite position to the Journal Sentinel reporters, junking much of the “independent” research that provide the grounds for the paper’s claims of regulatory mismanagement in the U.S. As EFSA told STATS, “the scientists considered that many of the studies indicating low dose effects of BPA were contradictory and not well conducted.”
This is hard. Sometimes, a single organization is reliable at one moment, and less so the next. The EFSA is the European Union’s equivalent to the U.S. FDA, so what makes Butterworth think that the EFSA made a better risk assessment than the FDA, which has been widely criticized for succumbing to influence from the chemical industry? In fact, last year Butterworth chided journalists for citing the EFSA’s ban on phthalates—in place since 2000—arguing that it was political in nature and should not guide American regulators. Butterworth has stated that it was partly the discrepancy the EFSA’s rulings on phthalates and BPA that prompted him to take an interest in the latter, and he clearly believes that, this time, science rather than politics is behind its position. Whether that is true or not, he is right that reporters should judge individual studies on their own merit.
Journalists need to spend more time reading materials and methods sections of research papers instead of sticking to their introductions, discussions, and conclusions. Doing so prevents uncertainties about the conflicts of interest; it also provides more useful information to readers about the science itself. Butterworth, for instance, took issue with the design of certain animal trials, which concluded that BPA is a health risk:
Much of the confusion evident in the Journal Sentinel article appears to stem from the fact that the authors failed to appreciate the differences in route of BPA exposure (ingestion vs. injection) and how the different routes of exposure influence the body’s metabolic detoxification and excretion of this substance.
This statement is key to understanding how confusing the BPA debate actually is. Many studies inject BPA into lab animals. Critics such as Butterworth argue that doing so provides little insight about how the chemical would affect humans, who are thought to mainly ingest it. When it comes to studying fetuses and newborns, however, there is an argument to be made that the route of administration doesn’t matter because fetal and neonatal animals don’t metabolize BPA as well as adults (in other words, even though they ingest it, it might as well have been injected). There is also concern that force-feeding animals to achieve ingestion could create stresses on their systems that affect test results; and that humans may, in fact, be absorbing more BPA directly into the bloodstream (through the skin or some other medium) than once suspected. The National Toxicology Program has gone back-and-forth (pdfs) on this debate, and the National Institutes of Health now says that injection studies are suspect. It may be right, but the point is that Butterworth, while right to stress the importance of methodology, is just as mistaken as any other reporter who has claimed that this stuff is clear-cut.
STATS’s report has gotten a lot of heat in the blogosphere. In fact, Butterworth has responded to some (mildly) inquisitive questions from the Journal Sentinel team about his funding and the methodology behind his research. The convolution never ends. Suffice it to say that if the Journal-Sentinel overplayed BPA’s threat, Butterworth did the same for its safety. Nonetheless, his critiques are important for journalists to hear. Such complicated stories call for an extra dose of skepticism and care.
- 1
- 2
I would first point out that I never wrote that EFSA banned pthalates in toys. I wrote that the European Parliament banned phthalates in toys over the objection of its own scientific risk assessment.
Second, I am not a toxicologist. I have an opinion on what the science says and how it has been covered, but that's only because I interviewed many toxicologists for this piece, notably Calvin Willhite, author of the NSF International paper on calculating a reference dose for BPA, and Wolfgang Dekant, lead author of the EFSA 2006 risk assessment on the science of BPA. I also cite the National Toxicology Program's 2001 paper which established experimental and statistical criteria for doing research on BPA, how those principles were followed through various risk assessments, and note how they have now been embraced by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (thus calling into question many of the studies which found that BPA was a risk).
This criticism makes it appear that I am a toxicologist. I am not. My 27,000 word piece is largely reported - and it is the sources I quote who argue that injecting BPA is problematic or irrelevant to assessing the health risks of BPA. I certainly point out that when multiple risk assessments around the world keep rejecting injecting BPA as a valid way of assessing human health risks, one must be wary of reporters who neglect to point this out and claim BPA is a risk purely on the basis of injection. As for CJR’s contention that “Critics such as Butterworth argue that doing so [injecting] provides little insight about how the chemical would affect humans, who are thought to mainly ingest it,” where in the literature on BPA is there evidence that we are absorbing it directly into the bloodstream?
My article was about giving voice to the many sources, studies, risk assessments that were ignored by the media, and by the Journal Sentinel in particular, and about pointing out what made them so compelling: experimental method and statistics.
The point is that this builds up to produce the weight of evidence. STATS mission is to explain why not all statistical or experimental results are equal - and why there are reliable and objective methods for distinguishing good from not so good studies. CJR may believe that it is evenhanded to call me as much of an extremist as the Journal Sentinel, but I merely noted how risk assessments and investigations by NSF International, EFSA, France, Germany, Switzerland, Australia and New Zealand and Japan all cohered on what counted as good science in terms of research methodology, and that BPA was safe. This is a remarkable level of consensus.
Moroever, our survey of almost 1,000 toxicologists (slightly oversampled for academic toxicologists relative to industry toxicologists) found that just 9 percent saw BPA as presenting a high risk. Unlike journalism, science proceeds on the weight of evidence, not by treating all sides equally – something CJR long ago advocated in reporting on global warming.
Posted by Trevor Butterworth on Thu 16 Jul 2009 at 04:58 PM
I note that a key paper has just been published in Environmental Health Perspectives on the arguments over how to determine what counts as rigorous research or not. It should be a must read for any journalist delving into this issue -
http://www.ehponline.org/members/2009/0900893/0900893.pdf
"During weight-of-evidence evaluations, experts evaluate relevant papers and reports, with certain study designs and/or endpoints assigned greater/lesser weight. A number of BPA weight of-evidence assessments (e.g., EFSA, 2006; Goodman et al. 2006, 2008a,b; Gray et al. 2004; Willhite et al. 2008) concur that studies do not support the hypothesis that low oral BPA adversely affects human reproductive/developmental health."
Posted by Trevor Butterworth on Thu 16 Jul 2009 at 05:43 PM
I really enjoy reading your blog. Keep up the good work.
Posted by Ethansen on Thu 16 Jul 2009 at 11:49 PM
Some short comments on the critisms on Trevors Butterworth article.
Credentials of Dr. vom Saal;
While Dr. vom Saal may have credentials in endocrinology, he does not have such credentials in toxicology and risk assessment, which is the issue here. He has no education in toxicology, has, to my knowlege, never served on a government appointed panel to perform an exposure and health risk assessment of chemicals, and most of his publications have not appeared in toxicology journals.
Implication of industry interference with the EFSA assessment:
It should be noted that all independent panels and government bodies evaluating BPA have rejected the low dose studies and come to very consistent conclusions. These panels include the European Chemicals Bureau, HealthCanada, the Japanese government, several European food safety agenies, Australia and New Zealand, and the US FDA.
The reliance on oral studies and the limited relevance of subcutaneous (sc) injection:
Oral studies are preferred form risk assessment from of BPA due to the specific toxicokinetics and biotransformation. EFSA has considered all sc studies, but did not consider them usefull due to the same issues as with most oral low-dose studies. The publication by Taylor is misinterpreted and no conclusions can be made based on this paper since most of the BPA administered is not accounted for and analytics are inconclusive (see EFSA opinion from 2008).
Politics and science:
EFSA makes conclusions based on the science available following specific guidance documents for risk assessment. Sometimes, such science-based assessments are overruled by politicians for a variety of reasons. See HealthCanada risk assessment and the political decisions there. In may cases, such decisions are justified with the "precutionary principle". However, this is often misused since it should only be applied to compounds with no toxicology information. This is definitely not the case with BPA, see a recent response of the French Food Safety Agency to requests from the French Parliament to apply the "precautionary principle" to BPA.
Posted by Prof. Wolfgang Dekant on Fri 17 Jul 2009 at 07:54 AM
FYI to readers, this exchange between Trevor Butterworth and a challenger is relevant -
http://stats.org/stories/2009/stats_responds_mjs_july7_09.html
Trevor, a question (and then a request) -
when, in that exchange, you said "For example, STATS contributors have documented the consensus of climate scientists on anthropogenic global warming"
...were you referring to the report "Climate scientists agree on warming, disagree on dangers, and don't trust the media's coverage of climate change", that appeared to conflate weathermen with climate scientists?
(Link: http://stats.org/stories/2008/global_warming_survey_apr23_08.html )
("Scientists still debate the dangers...A slight majority (56%) see at least a 50-50 chance that global temperatures will rise two degrees Celsius or more during the next 50 to 100 years.")
That writeup by Robert Lichter reports that the survey was administered to " a random sample of 489 self-identified members of either the American Meteorological Society or the American Geophysical Union..." and promises that " A detailed description of the study’s methodology as well as that of the earlier Gallup survey is available on request."
(Trevor, my request to you follows: )
- but when I asked for this information last December (I'm pretty sure it was via the Stats.org Contact form), I didn't receive a response. Perhaps the "submit" went awry; do you have suggestions as to how I might re-direct my request to make it more successful?
Thank you -
Anna
Posted by Anna Haynes on Fri 17 Jul 2009 at 08:16 PM
(A status fyi re my "do you have suggestions" Q above: aresolution appears to be in progress.)
Posted by Anna on Sat 18 Jul 2009 at 05:15 PM
Your article fundamentally misreads the state of the science on BPA. Regulatory agencies worldwide have concluded that levels of BPA exposure are very low and pose no health or safety concerns. This is the conclusion affirmed by regulatory agencies in Australia and New Zealand, France, Germany, Japan and Norway, as well as the European Food Safety Authority. While the US FDA is revising its draft risk assessment of BPA based on comments from its science advisory board, FDA indicate at its most recent SAB meeting (February) that the revisions were supporting their conclusion that exposure to BPA is low and poses no health concerns. Health Canada reached the same conclusion last year but continues to apply the precautionary principle to reduce BPA exposure levels. The US National Toxicology Program reviewed the available data on BPA and found some concern only for effects on the brain, behavior and prostate gland in the developing child, infants and children and recommended additional research in this area, which in fact is in progress. And just week, an expert advisory panel to the California EPA concluded that BPA is not a reproductive or developmental toxicant. How revealing it is that when bans are considered on BPA in the US, these are initiated in state legislatures and city councils, governing bodies known more for their sensitivity to political pressures than their scientific acumen.
The regulatory agency safety assessments are based on well conducted studies demonstrating harm to laboratory animals only at very large BPA doses, levels tens of thousands of times higher than any human exposure. The types of harm observed in laboratory animal studies – primary reduced body and organ weights – are not observed at even ten-fold lower dose levels. Because people are exposed to many thousands of times lower levels than those causing harm in laboratory animal studies, these levels pose no health concerns.
In short, Butterworth has a strong point in criticizing the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for ignoring the worldwide regulatory authorities and the scientific evidence on which their decisions are based. Isn’t ignoring this science, and focusing exclusively on studies that the regulatory agencies consider unreliable, the type of reporting for which the media should be criticized?
Posted by John Heinze, Ph.D. on Mon 20 Jul 2009 at 01:54 PM
CJR webmaster, please, consider providing a field in the comment form for "affiliation"!
Dr. Heinze is Senior VP at John Adams Associates, a Washington DC public relations firm with some interesting connections -
Listed as a JAA consultant (at O'Dwyers - http://bit.ly/OAX8g ) is Joseph L. Walker III, who, back in 1998 as an American Petroleum Institute PR rep, authored the infamous leaked "Global Science Communications Action Plan" memo (http://bit.ly/4uSSCA (pdf)) planning a multimillion dollar climate disinformation effort - which John Adams Associates was also at the table for. (fyi though, Walker has denied having any significant current connection to JAA.)
Walker came to my attention last year when he wrote a press release, "Efforts To Boost Climate Change Concern May Have Opposite Effect, Risk Analysis Study Shows" (http://bit.ly/10Nv5I) for a paper from Texas A&M (whose data didn't really support this, fwiw) that appeared in the journal Risk Analysis the week before (and was featured by John Tierney of the NYTimes, 2 days before) Heartland's 2008 "Skeptics Ball" in NYC.
(The journal's then-editorship were and are affiliated with a product defense firm - which no longer reveals its clients, but back in 2001 they included the American Petroleum Institute, ExxonMobil, National Mining Association, etc.)
More on that paper, and behind the scenes ties and timing, in a Daily Kos post here -
http://bit.ly/gZ5jz - including that JA himself had been a director of public affairs for Nixon during Watergate.
(Some loose ends - I've since asked the current president of the Society for Risk Analysis (which sponsors the journal) a rather pointed question about irregularities, that she was not willing to address. And I still need to file some FOIA requests involving the product defense firm, that I'm not sure how to structure and word - it sure would be nice if there was someone whose job it was, to help us neophytes...)
(and to return to more on-topic material - my comment above that "a resolution appears to be in progress" stemmed from Trevor Butterworth's telling me he was fwding my request (for the the survey methodologies) to two Center for Media and Public Affairs people who could provide this information. I look forward to hearing from them.)
Posted by Anna Haynes on Mon 20 Jul 2009 at 04:56 PM
(This comment is just a couple of actual and potential corrections. One's to my comment from yesterday (still stuck in moderation, as of this writing) - STATS _did_ send me the info on climate change survey methodologies. The 2nd: I may well be wrong in having implied that the pool of "climate scientist" respondents was polluted with people lacking climate expertise; it depends on how stringent the (empirical) criteria are, for inclusion in American Men and Women of Science (which I don't have local access to), and also on what proportion of American Meteorological Society scientists (i.e. not weathermen) study weather rather than climate. )
Posted by Anna Haynes on Tue 21 Jul 2009 at 12:47 PM
It is wrong and somewhat ironic to suggest Butterworth's work is merely the mirrored image of that of Kissinger and Rust. Contrary to the author's conclusions, Butterworth does not overplay BPA's safety. His criticisms are in line with the overwhelming international scientific consensus. He has been careful in the way he has considered studies of BPA, applying the standards journalists ideally should when reporting scientific studies, looking at their sample size, statistical strength, reproducibility, over all design and whether they come from a reliable, peer-reviewed source.
By contrast, Kissinger and Rust's critical assessment of scientific research seems to extend no further than questioning the source of its funding - though it should be noted this concern for conflict of interest evaporated when they used Vom Saal's lab to determine how much BPA transfers from containers for their reports. Indeed, their depressingly predictable response to Butterworth's criticisms has not been to deal with them directly - or at all - but to demand to know how STATS is funded.
Journalists need to be sensitive to the dangers social scripts, of fitting reality into a preconceived notion of How Things Are. In this case the story line is a rehashing of the story of the tobacco industry's attempts to cover up the dangers of smoking. And let's not forget, the intrepid investigative reporters’ role in exposing the danger to the public. But is this really the case? We may never know.
Coverage like the MSJ’s, for they are only the most extreme example, has worked to close down debate, to frighten the public, parents in particular and to create a climate of hysteria in which any one who dares to question the received wisdom about the dangers of BPA is instantly suspect. Truth takes a back seat to dramatic reportage. It is really a disgrace that the Columbia has recognised this reporting awards but perhaps it is understandable in light of the sorry state of science reporting today.
.
Posted by Nancy on Wed 22 Jul 2009 at 10:40 AM
I always appreciate CJR for demanding accountability in the news. The author brings up a very valid point in the need to identify conflicts of interest.
One question that warrants exploration is whether or not STATS has recently, or ever, received money from the BPA chemical or canning industry? Where has their funding come from in recent years?
In the past, STATS has been critical of efforts to address other toxic chemicals of concern (for example phthalates and PVC), and in the past STATS received funding from a foundation tied to the industry that manufactures chemicals used to make said plastic.
In the past, STATS received funding from the John Olin Foundation, a foundation whose money apparently came from Olin Chemical. Olin chemical is one of the biggest manufacturers of chlorine (used to make PVC) in the United States. According to their website, "Olin Chlor Alkali Products is the world's fifth largest producer of chlorine, caustic soda and related products...Our products make PVC and other plastics possible". Between 1995 and 2002, STATS received at least $400,000 from the John M. Olin Foundation. STATS also has past ties to the Center for Media and Public Affairs (CMPA) which also received $730,000 from the same John Olin Foundation between 1986 and 2001. Since then, STATS has been very critical of environmental concerns associated with phthalates and PVC (i.e. see: http://thestatsblog.wordpress.com/?s=phthalate )
In the past, STATS has received funding from industry it later went on to defend publicly. Is this also true for BPA? We know the history, but today’s question remains: has STATS ever or recently received funding from the BPA industry or American Chemistry Council?
Is STATS really an independent un-biased voice in this debate?
Mike Schade
Center for Health, Environment and Justice
www.chej.org
Posted by Mike Schade, CHEJ on Fri 24 Jul 2009 at 04:57 PM
Stats.org and Trevor Butterworth are a FRAUD. If anybody were to actually take the time to read the body of work reported by Rust & Kissinger and Butterworth & Lichter's 'analysis' of their reporting, the journalistic fraud put together by stats.org report is glaring. They mislead readers into the thinking the Journal Sentinel made claims they absolutely never did, they quote entirely out of context and they fail to accurately portray what the stories actually said or where even about. These guys are spin-masters who will lie, bully, and misrepresent the facts in order to make their point. If they were as careful in their reporting as they claim to be, then why haven't they vetted the their own two primary sources including the kook toxicologist from "NSF International" named Cal Wilhite.
Nancy, from you comments, it is quite clear that you are unfamiliar with the "international scientific concensus". What could have possibly led you to make your comment. Your statement cannot have been made on a unbiased reading of the scientific literature. Given the strength of your statement, it is difficult to except any of your statements as having much substance or validity behind them. Somebody please dig into this group stats.org. They embody the absolute dregs of the PR industry. They are clever though in terms of hiding their mission behind a cloak of academic affiliations and scientific objectivity.
Posted by Bill Trundel on Sun 26 Jul 2009 at 01:43 AM
One further observation,
Dr Dekant, you are misleading readers into thinking that because Vom Saal is a trained endocrinologist that his studies and other published studies on low dose responses and nonlinear response curves are somehow irrelevant to the discussion of BPA. Seems to be that you may have the wrong credentials to evaluate potential endocrine disrupters if the same standard is applied to your academic background.
Dr. Heinze,
Most people in CA know that what you term experts (ie. politically appointed doctors) are ill-equipped to place new substances on Prop 65. They didn't even list second-hand smoke on the list when it came up. And your statement that they "concluded that BPA is not a reproductive or developmental toxicant" is an outright lie Dr. Heinze and you know it. You PR types with fancy degrees are pathetic. Nice try though in trying to misrepresent reality and the substance of those hearings. This is how these folks operate. They lie, misrepresent the facts, and mostly do both.
Posted by Bill Trundel on Sun 26 Jul 2009 at 02:34 AM
As a scientist, I will not enter the debate about journalism. However, the author of this article made the following statement, which I believe is the lynchpin of the scientific debate:
"What journalists need to communicate to readers is that while the science is unsettled (at least as far humans are concerned – there’s ample evidence that BPA can harm animals), there are reasons to doubt BPA’s safety (other endocrine disruptors are clearly dangerous to humans), and that governments and citizens alike will have to make decisions in the face of uncertainty."
1) Why is there so much uncertainty where humans are concerned? An international panel of scientists that met in Germany in March 2009 (including myself, vom Saal and Dekant) agreed that humans are exposed to BPA, and that measurable levels of free BPA (the active form) are found in the bodies of humans, including infants and children. The problem with human studies is that we are all exposed. In drug studies, you can easily compare a group of people that took Drug X with those that never took Drug X (the negative control group.) There is no such group in humans. We are all exposed, continually, without knowledge of the levels, and often the sources. This makes it very hard to determine what BPA might be doing to us, and which populations are most affected.
2) The author states that there is ample evidence that BPA affects animals. In fact, the NTP expert panel agreed that there was evidence that the prostate is affected, largely because of work by vom Saal, and others that HAVE replicated - and advanced - his work. The NTP panel, and others, agree that the brain and behavior have also been shown to be significantly affected by BPA exposure.
If BPA were a drug, the FDA would first test it on animals. If there were "ample evidence" that this drug was harmful, it would never be tested on humans. Further, rodents have historically been excellent models for other endocrine disruptors such as DES, and even correctly predicted which organs would be affected in human DES daughters.
3) Thus, there are reasons to doubt BPA safety. These have also been highlighted by several government panels.
Posted by Laura Vandenberg, PhD on Sun 26 Jul 2009 at 12:00 PM
One more comment on Dr. Dekant,
A cursory review of Dr. Dekant reveals that some of his work on BPA
(see "Human exposure to bisphenol A by biomonitoring: Methods, results, and assesment of environmental exposures")
was funded by the Polycarbonate / BPA Global Group. This is the global industry group representing BPA manufacturers. Given Dr. Dekant's strong comments on this blog and his questionable ties to the BPA industry, it does raise some questions about his motivations and his ability to provide an objective scientific commentary. I cannot judge the science behind his comments, but his tone and nonprofessional manner on this webblog suggest that he is not the objective scientist/expert he would have you believe.
Given Dekants direct monetary ties to BPA global and Cal Wilhites links to industry vis-a-vis "NSF International", it really shines a light on how stats.org operates. Mr. Butterworth himself admits that he relied primarily on these two for his "critical analysis" and "giving voice to the other side". Butterworth's most ridiculous comment though is this one:
"STATS mission is to explain why not all statistical or experimental results are equal - and why there are reliable and objective methods for distinguishing good from not so good studies."
Talk about a complete 180 spinning of what you actually do, this statement is so far from the truth that it is laughable. Trevor is one of those 'journalists' - who would argue that up is down and feel good about it afterwards.
Posted by Bill Trundel ~ concerned citizen tired of industry spin/influence on matters of public health on Mon 27 Jul 2009 at 01:31 PM
STATS appears to be yet another "risk-downplaying" organization whose founders (Drs. Robert Lichter and the late Linda Lichter) have a "national defense" background - both of them had been with Columbia U.'s Research Institute on International Change, formerly the Research Institute in Communist Affairs.
(Another is the Environmental Literacy Council, many of whose directors have had backgrounds in the U.S. National Labs - Brookhaven etc.. And other inactivist orgs like the Hudson Institute started out as defense think tanks.)
Posted by Anna Haynes on Tue 25 Aug 2009 at 12:05 PM