Science is not sufficient: Irving J. Selikoff and the asbestos tragedy

Our plain-English summary of Science is not sufficient: Irving J. Selikoff and the asbestos tragedy, by J. McCulloch, G. Tweedale (New Solutions, 2007).

The study

• Authors: J. McCulloch, G. Tweedale
• Journal: New Solutions
• Published: 2007;17(4):293-310
• Type of article: Historical article
• Cited by: 8 articles, as counted by NIH iCite
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher

Abstract

Professor Irving J. Selikoff (1915-1992) was America's foremost medical expert on asbestos-related diseases between the 1960s and early 1990s. He was also well known to the public for his media appearances on the burgeoning asbestos problem. Yet his reputation has been strikingly mixed. On the one hand, he has been portrayed as a mischief maker and irresponsible demagogue, who exaggerated the risks of asbestos and so destroyed an industry; on the other, as a pioneer in asbestos epidemiology, whose landmark studies of insulation (and other) workers demonstrated the severity of a modern occupational and public health tragedy. Drawing upon unprecedented access to the Selikoff archive at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, this article demonstrates that the most serious criticisms of Selikoff are either ill-founded or simply false. It also shows that Selikoff, in the highly politicized world of asbestos science, was a far more complex and conservative individual than previous studies have suggested.

In plain English

This article was a historical assessment of Irving J. Selikoff (1915-1992), a New York physician known for research on asbestos-related disease, including studies of insulation workers. It was not a medical study. The authors drew on Selikoff's own papers in the Mount Sinai Hospital archive, which they said earlier critical accounts had not used, and on interviews with colleagues. They reported that Selikoff personally received no funds to direct a union-supported program, that he favored controlling asbestos hazards rather than campaigning for a ban, and that by the early 1970s he had decided to stay out of litigation. They also described misjudgments in his dealings with industry scientists, and wrote that some of his ideas, such as a link between asbestos and gastrointestinal cancer, now looked less sure. The authors concluded that the most serious criticisms of Selikoff were ill-founded or false, that he was a pragmatist rather than the man who destroyed an industry, and that he may have been too conservative in his methods.

We wrote this plain-English summary from the full article with the help of AI, and a second AI model checked each sentence against the article. It is not the authors' wording; the abstract and the article are their own account.

What the study did and found

• Design: historical and biographical assessment based on archival documents and interviews (not a medical or epidemiological study)
• Who was studied: Irving J. Selikoff (1915-1992). The sources were his papers in the Selikoff archive at Mount Sinai Hospital, New York City, and interviews with close colleagues. The authors said earlier critical accounts had not drawn on this archive.
• Exposure: Not applicable: no exposure was measured. The article discussed Selikoff's career and his work on asbestos hazards.
• Main results:
  • Selikoff personally received no funds to direct or work with the union-supported Insulation Industry Hygiene Research Program.
  • Selikoff favored controlling asbestos hazards rather than campaigning for an outright ban.
  • After giving evidence in some early cases in the late 1960s, Selikoff decided by the early 1970s to avoid litigation.
  • The authors described Selikoff as fallible in his dealings with industry scientists. Examples included his respect for Johns-Manville medical director Paul Kotin and his praise of Cape Asbestos medical officer Walter Smither.
  • The authors wrote that some of Selikoff's hypotheses had mixed fortunes in later research. One example was the link he identified between asbestos and gastrointestinal cancer.
  • The authors stated that their appraisal of his papers showed the most serious criticisms of Selikoff were ill-founded or false.
  • The authors characterized Selikoff as a pragmatist, not the man who destroyed an industry.
• The authors' conclusion: The authors concluded that, far from destroying the asbestos industry, Selikoff may have been too conservative in his methods.

Topics

The National Library of Medicine indexes this study under subjects our site covers: Asbestosis.

Medical terms in this study, explained in our Lexicon: Epidemiology.

Related studies

• Shooting the messenger: the vilification of Irving J. Selikoff — J. McCulloch, G. Tweedale (2007)
• Irving John Selikoff and the strange case of the missing medical degrees — P.W. Bartrip (2003)
• The long-lasting legacy of industrial carcinogens: the lesson of asbestos. Irving J. Selikoff Memorial Lecture, 1995 — C. Maltoni (1997)
• Asbestos: Socio-legal and Scientific Controversies and Unsound Science in the Context of the Worldwide Asbestos Tragedy - Lessons to be Learned — X. Baur (2016)
• Media and science: harmless dioxin, benign CFCs, and good asbestos — D.P. Rall (1994)
• Progress of malignant mesothelioma research in basic science: A review of the 14th international conference of the international mesothelioma interest group (iMig2018) — L. Wu, I. Dell'Anno, et al. (2019)

Browse more research in New Solutions, or return to medical research.