In her review of their book Bending Science, Professor Lisa Heinzerling praises Thomas O. McGarity and Wendy E. Wagner for producing an "immensely important book" that is both frightening and constructive. It is frightening because it provides a detailed account of the various ways in which the scientific process can be, and has repeatedly been, bent to produce a result consistent with economic or ideological motives. When scientific research in the areas of public health and the environment is bent in the ways described by McGarity and Wagner, the impact is often dangerous and lives can be lost. The book is constructive, according to Heinzerling, for several reasons.
First, McGarity and Wagner provide a useful taxonomy of the ways in which science can be bent—by shaping science, hiding science, attacking science, harassing scientists, packaging science, and spinning science—which aids the public in identifying the practice of science bending when it occurs. Second, by documenting examples of bent science within the context of this taxonomy—documentation which Heinzerling praises as being decidedly evenhanded—McGarity and Wagner make clear how pervasive the practice of bending science is and how early in the scientific process it can begin. Finally, McGarity and Wagner bring the useful perspective of lawyers to the problem of bent science. They illuminate the ways in which the law now promotes, or at least does not discourage, scientific distortions, and they offer numerous suggestions for legal reform.
Notwithstanding her praise of the work of McGarity and Wagner, Professor Heinzerling suggests that they may not go far enough in their condemnation of the practice of bending science, and asserts that there is an element of violence at the heart of bent science which may implicate criminal laws against murder. She argues that characterizing bent science in the realm of public health as violence, and perhaps even murder, reveals the practice for what it is: "a circuitous but sure way to watch people fall ill and die."
