|
Consumer Reports blasted by
one of its
own
April 20, 1999
Brian Ross
Chief Investigative Reporter, 20/20
ABC
157 Columbus Ave.
New York, NY 10023
Your "expose" last night on the Consumer Reports baby bottle
story was the worst news magazine segment I've ever seen. I say
this as someone who worked at CR for 12 years and knows something
about the place. You were suckered (all too willingly, I'm sure) by
Consumers Union and gave CU's irresponsible story even wider
publicity. Let's count just a few of the ways you screwed up:
-
Your lead-in footage of CR's testing laboratories--washing
machines whirling, technicians toiling--indicated to viewers that
the baby-bottle testing was done by CU staffers at company
headquarters in Yonkers, NY. But as you presumably knew (or could
have learned, if you were curious enough to ask), the testing was
actually done at a lab in London, England--a mere 3,000 miles from
Yonkers. Why did they choose to do the testing over there? If you'd
pursued that angle, you might have ended up with a genuinely
intriguing story rather than the scare-of-the-month embarrassment
you presided over.
You bought into the basic premise of the CR story: that Dr.
Frederick vom Saal's work on bisphenol-A and lab animals is valid.
And you dismissed as "industry sponsored" the follow-up studies
that failed to replicate vom Saal's findings. (At least you
mentioned those other studies, which the CR article failed to do.)
Most journalists, on learning that a researcher's findings can't be
replicated, become leery about reporting those findings. A good
reporter may even think, 'Maybe my guy is wrong and the real story
lies with what the other researchers have found.' But not you. Why
bother doing some investigative reporting when CU's Ned Groth has
been kind enough to tell you what the real story is?
Has Dr. vom Saal published any of his crucially important
findings in a peer-reviewed journal? That's a basic question to ask
when working on a health-related story--especially when you're
pretty much relying on the claims of one researcher to scare the
entire nation. Such information is not hard to find--just check the
National Library of Medicine's web site. When reporting a story so
dependent on one researcher's conclusions, most journalists would
feel uncomfortable if the researcher has a scanty publications
output. But not you. Had you bothered checking, you would have
found that Dr. vom Saal has published exactly three studies on bisphenol-A's effects on lab animals. He was listed as principal
author on only one of those studies.
What about those "industry-sponsored" studies? They not only
failed to find a problem with bisphenol-A but apparently used
larger numbers of test animals than Dr. vom Saal did. Even assuming
(as you clearly did) that any industry-sponsored study is bound to
be biased, studies using a larger numbers of subjects yields
results that have greater statistical power--are more
scientifically valid--than studies with fewer subjects. You chose
to ignore these studies in favor of Dr. vom Saal's less valid but
scarier findings.
And what about Dr. vom Saal himself? Viewers might have been
interested to know that he was scheduled to defend his findings
just last week at a meeting of the Toxicology Forum in Washington,
D.C and that he backed out at the last minute, apparently out of
concern that his claims couldn't stand up to scrutiny. According to
the junk science web site www.junkscience.com (yes, your story
fully meets the definition of junk science), "The president of the
Forum publicly upbraided vom Saal" for his failure to show up.
In your zeal to be sensationalistic (TV journalism sure doesn't
get much better than dire threats to infants), you not only scared
millions of people unnecessarily, but you managed to overlook the
real story: the transmogrification of CU over the past 10 years
from an organization that helped to educate the public about what
was truly risky and what wasn't...to a group determined to scare
people about risks that in reality pose negligible or nonexistent
dangers. This lamentable evolution is largely the handiwork of your
partner in baby-bottle bashing, Dr. Ned Groth.
One more thing, Mr. Ross: Did you ever ask Dr. Groth what might
happen if all the infants now using plastic baby bottles were to
switch to glass, an option you offer in your report? I have a
14-month-old infant who delights in throwing his bottle from his
stroller and high chair and probably does so 10 or 12 times a day.
I guarantee you: A lot of cuts, gouges and overall bloodletting
will occur when thousands of these bottles start breaking. Some
might even argue that the all-too-predictable risk from using glass
bottles outweighs the entirely hypothetical risk of using
unbreakable plastic bottles containing bisphenol-A.
Don't feel bad about not asking that question: It's just one of
many omissions in a really sloppy reporting job. But hey--you got
the lead story last night, and what can be wrong with that?
Sincerely,
Larry Katzenstein
cc: Victor Neufeld, executive producer
|
