Toyota Litigation Update - Monday, August 9, 2010 16:19 - 0 Comments

Toyota Has A New Product

In his book, Doubt is Their Product, former Assistant Secretary of Energy, David Michaels, explains his firsthand account of how clever public relations by corporations and industry used multi-million dollar tactics to magnify scientific uncertainty and influence policy decisions related to dangerous products. Mr. Michaels quotes a cigarette executive as saying, “Doubt is our product, since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of facts’ that exists in the minds of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy.”

According to Mr. Michaels, defense consultants have increasingly worked to skew scientific literature and magnify scientific uncertainty to distort public opinion and prevent public policy changes that would require manufacturing and products to become safer. Continue…