by Howard J. Lewis
It would be hard to imagine a scientific paper that could cause as much grief for all concerned as the one that appeared in Science magazine, June 7, 1996. The paper, “Synergistic Activation of Estrogen Receptor with Combinations of Environmental Chemicals,” by Steven F. Arnold, Diane M. Klotz, Bridgette M. Collins, Peter M. Vonier, Louis J. Guillette Jr., John A. McLachlan (mostly from Tulane University of Public Health and Tropical Medicine)…
And then it began to get a little ugly. The Detroit News editorialist contributed a column to the August 20, 1997 Wall Street Journal, which seemed to suggest that the response of Paul Recer, Associated Press science correspondent in Washington, DC, (“I was on vacation all of July,”) was insufficient justification for not filing his own retraction after sending out a “629-word story” on the original report. And then, with arrows to spare, she suggested that there could be a covert reason for the strength of the original play and the near silence accorded the retraction: The W. Alton Jones Foundation’s “$50,000 grants to the Radio and Television News Directors Foundation and the Society of Environmental Journalists to ‘educate’ their members about endocrine disrupters and other environmental topics.”
The Society of Environmental Journalists responded swiftly in a letter to the editor of the WSJ editorial page. Kevin Carmody, SEJ president and environment/health writer for Chicago Daily Southtown, pointed out that Dr. Stephen Safe, professor of toxicology at Texas A&M University and WSJ’s very authority on the so-called endocrine disrupters, or “his peers had been included on every training program on the topic we have conducted at our annual conferences.” He saved his sharpest barb for the Detroit News columnist, writing that “her piece, including the cheap shot directed at SEJ and RTNDF, was fatally flawed by the faulty premise conveyed in her lead paragraph: ‘The endocrine apocalypse has been canceled, but word in the press is harder to find than a humbled green activist.’ He concluded: “Perhaps Ms. Katz should avail herself of SEJ’s training programs, so she can avoid making such fundamental errors in the future.”
In point of fact, according to Katz, a Nexis search subsequent to the July 25 correction in Science unearthed only two examples of corrective stories—in the Raleigh (NC) News and Observer and the New Orleans Times Picayune.
But then Paul Recer, who really had been on vacation and was now bristling at what he considers another cheap shot by Katz, took some action. First, he cranked out a 600-word story on August 21, leading with “Research that exploded like an environmental bombshell last year has turned out to be a dud.” He noted further that Tulane University had announced “an internal inquiry into the circumstances” and, without further explanation, had forbidden John A. McLachlan, senior author of the original paper and its retraction, to talk to reporters. He closed with a reference to the July 25 letter of withdrawal to Science and an accompanying message with special significance to his colleagues in the media: “Science published the letter [of retraction] without comment or announcement.” His story was carried in full by the Chicago Tribune, and in an abbreviated version, it was—according to Recer—carried by several thousand AP subscribers.
Another sidebar to this story still seems odd. SW’s request to interview Paul Recer on tape for the record had to be referred to his editors at the Washington AP bureau. After a delay of many weeks and after repeated SW telephone calls, Recer reported the editors’ response: No. N-O. No. No publishable explanation was ever offered.
One question remains: There are all kinds of reasons why the later withdrawal or disproof of a highly publicized threat to human health will not get the same play as the original story, but how much should it get? And who is responsible for providing it? In wartime, sirens sound an alarm to indicate a coming attack, and everybody hunkers down. But if the attack doesn’t come, the sirens sound an “All Clear.” And everybody relaxes a little. That still sounds like a good idea.