3M’s use of a not-so-independent scientist to manufacture doubt: Academic Fame for Corporate Fortune
photo by Ralph Hapness ©
Please LINK to this post on my substack, Kris Hansen’s PFAS Journal, to read with photos. Text provided here.
3M's use of a not-so-independent scientist to manufacture doubt
Academic Fame for Corporate Fortune
Several groups have reported on 3M’s relationship with ‘independent’ researcher John Giesy as a tool to surreptitiously further 3M’s interests related to the global contamination of PFAS [LINK, LINK, LINK]. Together, 3M and Giesy, formerly a toxicologist at Michigan State University, have been accused of abusing the peer review process, trying to influence government regulatory bodies and scientists, and suppressing incriminating information [e.g. #2204, #2207, #2209, #1889, #2138, #2144, #2084, #2102]….all strategies or “key features of manufactured doubt.” [LINK]
Others have done a thorough job documenting the tactics employed by 3M and Giesy. Here I will add to that infamous collection with a lesser known aspect of the 3M-Giesy relationship. My experience occurred while working on characterizing 3M’s global PFAS contamination in 3M’s Environmental Lab (1997-2001), at the beginning of Giesy’s long and profitable tenure with the company.
In 2001, 3M and Giesy partnered to obscure 3M’s involvement in what is regarded as the discovery of PFOS contamination of the global food web. This obfuscation served to protect 3M from publicly disclosing the extent of their knowledge of PFOS contamination in the environment, supporting the company’s long-standing false narrative that the global contamination of PFOS was a complete surprise [LINK], and was, in fact, unknown and unknowable.
According to Wikipedia, “Giesy was credited with being the first scientist to discover toxic per- and poly-fluoroalkyl [PFAS] chemicals in the environment.” Giesy embraces this characterization, noting in an interview:
‘What we've done is a global survey that shows you, for the first time, that this compound is out there,’ Giesy said. ‘We found a good testing method and discovered small amounts [of PFOS] in these remote areas’ [emphasis added]. [LINK]
Like so much of Giesy’s association with 3M, the independence of this published work was a facade. The paper has two authors, Giesy and his postdoctoral student, K. Kannan. And yet all of the data in the paper was collected at 3M. In a 3M lab. Using 3M instrumentation. By a 3M team: my team. [#2814, LINK]
My team developed the methods, extracted the samples, did the analysis, reduced the data, and summarized the results. I wrote most of the “Methods and Materials” section for the published article. 3M executives reviewed the manuscript and determined if and when Giesy could submit it for publication [#1740]. This article, Giesy notes in his CV, is the “4th most cited paper” of all time for that journal [LINK].
Yet, the “landmark” paper includes no 3M authors. The only disclosed connection to the corporation is in the very last sentence of the article, “This research was supported by a grant from the 3M Company.” [LINK] “A grant” implies funding and dramatically understates the extensive role 3M played in the collection, construction, positioning and review of the data and the manuscript.
The 3M-enabled illusion of Giesy’s independent discovery of global PFOS contamination after depending entirely on 3M for the data was consistent with 3M’s history of concealing their knowledge of and suppressing information on PFOS (LINK). By giving Giesy the spotlight, 3M was not challenged publicly or within the context of the paper to share their own historical environmental data on PFOS [e.g. #1208, #1233, #1284, #1198, #1502, LINK]. Such challenges would have raised uncomfortable questions about what 3M knew - or should have known -about PFAS contamination of the environment (e.g. that 3M was discharging high levels of PFAS into the environment and that PFAS bioaccumulated in fish) and when they knew it (over 20 years before Giesy’s publication).
Instead, 3M invested 100s of hours and considerable analytical expertise to complete the work for Giesy’s “global survey.” Rather than promote the work as a collaborative effort, 3M gave an “independent” researcher center stage to claim the discovery. Giesy was happy to take the credit and promote the significance of the data as if he had collected it.
In the 3M - Giesy partnership, 3M won by keeping their historical knowledge, technical expertise and investigative involvement concealed; Giesy won by showcasing an extensive dataset as independent work, establishing him as the originator of global environmental data on PFAS. 3M won a second time when their highly paid (and surreptitious) consultant, raised in profile and acclaim by the data collected by 3M, worked the scientific review process on behalf of the corporation “to keep bad papers out of the literature” [#2209] [also, e.g. #2204, #2207, #2081, #2164]. In Giesy’s words, “Since we had been set up as academic experts, about half of the papers published in the area in any given year came to me (continue to come to me) for review. In time sheets, I always listed these reviews as literature searches so that there was no paper trail to 3M.” [#2204]
About a year before Giesy and Kannan’s “landmark” paper, I asked 3M management if I could publish a study that began to sketch out the basis for global environmental contamination of PFOS. I was told no.
The paper I was not allowed to write was an analysis of 60 samples of liver collected from wild waterfowl (e.g. pelicans, cormorants, cranes): 6 different species of birds collected from 7 different states. The liver samples, left over from a study conducted on the effect of lead on water birds, were shared with 3M by the National Health Wildlife Center in Madison, WI [LINK, #2603].
The results of our analysis of PFOS in the wild birds preliminarily indicated:
PFOS was likely present throughout the food web and was likely accumulating up the food chain: PFOS was present in 96% of all the fish-eating birds tested but detected in just one sandhill crane, a species that eats mostly seeds and grains.
Within our data, there were suggestions of geographic associations with the environmental contamination of PFOS. Non-migratory brown pelicans living along the west coast of the US had 5 times less PFOS in their livers than brown pelicans living along the Gulf Coast, an area of primary discharge for the textile industry, which started using PFAS in the 1950s.
Samples collected from white pelicans in Fallon, Nevada, home of an active military base, had five times higher levels of PFOS than samples from white pelicans collected in Calipatria, California (no military base), about 600 miles south. PFAS-laden AFFF has been used at military bases like the one in Fallon since the 1950s.
The distribution of PFAS chemicals in birds was different from that in humans. This difference may indicate different exposure sources for humans and wildlife (e.g. commercial products vs environmental exposure).
The answers to all of these preliminary thoughts have been thoroughly researched and confirmed now. In the 26 years since my group’s analysis of the wild bird livers, many elements of human and environmental exposure to PFAS have been well studied and carefully documented, including accumulation of PFOS in the food chain, the association between environmental levels of PFOS and the textile industry and military bases and the fact that historically, humans have been exposed to PFAS via direct contact with commercial products.
But in 1998 when we collected these data, outside of 3M, the answers were not obvious. In 1998 the term “PFAS” hadn’t yet been coined; the moniker “forever chemicals” had never been used. The acronym PFOS was essentially unknown in environmental technical literature.
For months, I had been enduring questions about the quality of my data and my team from people within the company. More than one person was critical of our data simply because “How could it be true? How could PFOS be everywhere?” The questions suggested that my inability to explain the global PFOS contamination meant that our analytical data was flawed. But these data on PFOS levels in wild bird livers supported a starting place for a plausible explanation to many questions. The data suggested how some pieces of the disparate PFOS puzzle might connect: the absence of PFOS in sandhill cranes, the only non fish-eating species tested, indicated bioaccumulation via a food web connection through fish; the geographical differences found among the same species of fish-eating birds indicated that specific types of industrial and military waste may have an impact on environmental levels; the differences in the PFAS profile we saw in humans and what we saw in birds could account for a source of exposure to humans that was related to consumer products, not just environmental contamination.
I was crushed, but unsurprised, when I was told we would not be allowed to share our wild bird liver data via a technical publication.
And I was crushed again, a year later, when my team spent hundreds of hours adapting methods, analysing samples, summarizing data and documenting results of PFOS levels in other wildlife samples….so that 3M executives could hand the data over to Giesy. John Giesy, an “independent” scientist paid by 3M who would publish those data under his own name and a misleadingly small acknowledgement of 3M’s contributions.
Ironically, following Giesy’s “global survey” publication, there was a series of other papers published by Giesy and Kannan based on data collected at 3M. In these lesser papers, I was listed as an author. However, I felt the articles did not properly reference data that others had collected and made dubious conclusions not supported by the fidelity of the data. I sent at least three emails to 3M management requesting to be removed from publications that included John Giesy. After submitting comments to the first two manuscripts, I was not given the opportunity to review the third article that listed me as a co-author before it was published.
Although he started collecting money from 3M in 1998 [#2773], I met Giesy in 1999. Public documents indicate he was still working to “curate” the content of peer-review literature for 3M into 2008, nearly 10 years later. Of course, we’ll never really know how long his activities went on, since he always ensured “that there was no paper trail to 3M.” [email written by John Giesy to 3M lab manager, March 26, 2008, 3:49AM, #2204].
