{"id":16366,"date":"2018-06-25T08:11:18","date_gmt":"2018-06-25T13:11:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=16366"},"modified":"2018-06-25T08:11:18","modified_gmt":"2018-06-25T13:11:18","slug":"killing-your-customers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2018\/06\/25\/killing-your-customers\/","title":{"rendered":"Killing Your Customers"},"content":{"rendered":"

For readers local to Minnesota, the company name Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing<\/strong>, better known as 3M<\/strong><\/em>, is a storied name and the<\/em> local corporate research powerhouse. But it appears that it, too, has supped at the forbidden soup-bowl of profits-above-all in regards to the recent legal settlement regarding water pollution. Carrie Fellner reports<\/a> in The Age<\/strong><\/em>:<\/p>\n

As a leading international authority on toxic chemicals, Professor John P. Giesy is in the top percentile of active authors in the world.<\/p>\n

His resume is littered with accolades, from being named in the Who\u2019s Who of the World to receiving the Einstein Professor Award from the Chinese Academy of Sciences.<\/p>\n

Professor Giesy was credited with being the first scientist to discover toxic per- and poly-fluoroalkyl [PFAS] chemicals in the environment, and with helping to persuade chemical giant 3M Company to abandon their manufacture.<\/p>\n

But Fairfax Media can now reveal that Professor Giesy was accused of covertly doing 3M\u2019s bidding in a widespread international campaign to suppress academic research on the dangers of PFAS.<\/p>\n

A trove of internal company documents has been made public for the first time following a $US850 million ($1.15 billion) legal settlement between the company and Minnesota Attorney-General Lori Swanson. They suggest that Professor Giesy was one weapon in an arsenal of tactics used by the company to – in a phrase coined by 3M – \u201ccommand the science\u201d on the chemicals.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s a disappointment and a shame on 3M<\/strong><\/em> to engage in a form of doublespeak that obscures the company’s responsibility in the manner. And what of Professor Giesy?<\/p>\n

To the outside world, Professor Giesy was a renowned and independent university academic.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut privately, he characterised himself as part of the 3M team,\u201d alleged the State of Minnesota.<\/p>\n

\u201cDespite spending most of his career as a professor at public universities, Professor Giesy has a net worth of approximately $20 million. This massive wealth results at least in part from his long-term involvement with 3M for the purpose of suppressing independent scientific research on PFAS.\u201d<\/p>\n

Professor Giesy\u2019s consulting company appears to have received payments from 3M between at least 1998 and 2009. One document indicated his going rate was about $US275 an hour.<\/p>\n

In an email to a 3M laboratory manager, Professor Giesy described his role as trying to keep \u201cbad papers out of the literature\u201d, because in \u201clitigation situations they can be a large obstacle to refute\u201d.<\/p>\n

Professor Giesy was an editor of several academic journals and, in any given year, about half of the papers submitted on PFAS came to him for review.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome journals \u2026 for conflict-of-interest issues will not allow an industry to review a paper about one of their products. That is where I came in,\u201d he wrote in another email.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn time sheets, I always listed these reviews as literature searches so that there was no paper trail to 3M.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If true, I would be very careful about trusting Professor Giesy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For readers local to Minnesota, the company name Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing, better known as 3M, is a storied name and the local corporate research powerhouse. But it appears that it, too, has supped at the forbidden soup-bowl of profits-above-all in regards to the recent legal settlement regarding water pollution. \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16366"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16366\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16367,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16366\/revisions\/16367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}