Presently every paper dating back to 1967 is available online and the availability of full articles published sequentially over the past half-century is historically invaluable. As the official journal of the national organization involved in the medical licensing and regulation of doctors, this archival organization allows for an unskewed and impartial examination in both historical and cultural context. We can identify when particular issues and problems were presented, who presented them and how.
In Bending Science: How Special Interests Corrupt Public Health Research 1 Thomas McGarity and Wendy Wagner describe how special interest groups scheme to advance their own economic or ideological goals by using distorted or “bent” science to influence legal, regulatory and public health policy.
The authors describe a “separatist view” of science and policy that assumes scientific research is sufficiently reliable for public policy deliberations and legal proceedings when it reaches them. This is illustrated as a pipeline in which it is presumed the scientific community has properly vetted the information flow through rigorous peer-review and professional oversight. The final product that exits the pipeline is understood to be unbiased and produced in accordance with the professional norms and procedures of science. The reliability, integrity and validity of the final product is indubitably accepted.
The separatist view does not consider the possibility that the scientific work exiting the pipeline could be intentionally shaped and…
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Disrupted Physician 