Toxic torts: are they poisoning the scientific literature?

Our plain-English summary of Toxic torts: are they poisoning the scientific literature?, by P.E. Enterline (American Journal of Industrial Medicine, 1996).

The study

• Author: P.E. Enterline
• Journal: American Journal of Industrial Medicine
• Published: 1996;30(1):121-2
• Type of article: Comment
• Cited by: 1 article, as counted by NIH iCite
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher

In plain English

This article was a commentary, not a research study, and it reported no new data. The author responded to a 1995 commentary by Schepers about work by Leroy Gardner at the Saranac Laboratory in the early 1940s, in which mice were exposed to asbestos. Schepers believed most of the mouse tumors were malignant. The author pointed to a 1992 letter by Pratt, a pathologist and co-worker of Gardner, who interpreted the lesions as all adenomas rather than cancers. Pratt also noted that the mouse data did not come from a true experiment because there were no control animals. The author wrote that because Gardner's data were never published, they played no part in the development of knowledge about asbestos and human cancer. The author then argued that lawyers on both sides of toxic tort cases sponsor epidemiological studies whose results are usually made public only when they favor the sponsor, and called this deliberate publication bias. The author suggested that journals asking about sources of research funding might help identify lawyer-sponsored research.

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: commentary (opinion piece responding to another commentary; no original data)
• Who was studied: No study population. The commentary discusses Gardner's unpublished early-1940s experiments in mice at the Saranac Laboratory, and lawyer-sponsored research in toxic tort litigation.
• Exposure: Asbestos, with no fiber type specified, discussed in the context of Gardner's mouse work and toxic tort litigation
• Main results:
  • The author contrasted two accounts of Gardner's mouse lesions. Schepers believed most of the mouse tumors were truly malignant.
  • In the other account, Pratt, a pathologist and co-worker of Gardner who had reviewed the slides, interpreted the lesions as all adenomas rather than cancers.
  • The author cited Pratt's point that the mouse data did not come from a true experiment because there were no control animals.
  • The author argued that because Gardner's data were not published, they were not a factor in the development of knowledge about asbestos and human cancer.
  • The author reported that the author's own literature reviews did not show Gardner or Vorwald reporting that asbestos caused cancer, and that as late as 1952 Vorwald said the evidence did not support that conclusion.
  • The author argued that lawyer-sponsored epidemiological studies are usually made public only if favorable to the sponsor, and called this deliberate publication bias.
• The authors' conclusion: The author concluded that journals' policies of asking about the source of research support might be useful in identifying lawyer-sponsored research, and that this is perhaps the only solution.

Topics

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

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