Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Senior Scientist.
My recent post about the new American Chemistry Council (ACC)-sponsored website, Kids + Chemical Safety, engendered some comments that go directly to the issues of scientific objectivity and independence.
The website says “TERA [Toxicology Excellence for Risk Assessment, manager of the site] was founded on the belief that an independent non-profit organization can provide a unique function to protect human health by conducting scientific research and development on risk issues in a transparent and collaborative fashion and communicating the results widely.” The “non-profit” descriptor – which TERA uses to describe itself no fewer than eight times on the site, including four times on this one page alone – seems intended to convey that TERA provides information that is purely objective and that it operates in a manner that is independent of who pays it to do its work.
It’s critical to recognize that being a non-profit does not conflate to, or somehow confer the right to claim, objectivity or independence. The National Rifle Association is a non-profit that clearly has strongly held and expressed opinions. EDF is also a non-profit, but I don’t pretend, as does TERA, that we don’t have a particular perspective and position.
So putting the issue of non-profit status entirely aside, we should judge TERA’s claim that its website provides information that is objective and independent based on its content, and that’s where it becomes quite clear that the information is neither. Read More