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Book Review

Trust Us We're Experts: How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles with Your Future
by Sheldon Rampton, John Stauber

Investigative journalists Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber bring us a gripping look inside the public relations industry and the scientists who provide their business-funded, anti-consumer-safety or anti-health agenda. Two kinds of "experts" are presented to the public, spin misters and the so called “independent” experts paraded in front of the public. The scientists have been hand-selected, cultivated, and are paid handsomely to promote the views of corporations. Through well paid PR firms, corporations have managed to suppress the dangers of lead poisoning for decades, silenced the scientist who discovered rats fed genetically modified corn had significant organ abnormalities, squelched television and newspaper stories about the risks of bovine growth hormone, and placed enough confusion and doubt in the public's mind about global warming to suppress any action, all in the name of profit.

So how are they getting away with it? More recent surveys have shown that so called “national experts” are the third most trusted public figures presented to us and the authors, Rampton and Stauber, ask whether this trust is misplaced. Taking a closer look behind the scenes of decision making, they catch more than a few with blood money to spin doctors with dubious credentials, think tanks that do everything but think and scientists who do things backwards by backwards engineering the desired results of experiments.

Why should you read this book? It lets you follow the big money trail and where it leads. How a very cozy relationship between PR firms, scientists and corporations exist, all in an effort to part you from your money or undermine what you know to be true. Some may say that the authors are anti-big-business, but they are not. What they are really against is the corruption, deception, and manipulation of the public. Read the book for yourself and then make up your own mind, whether the authors are only educating you or are they truly anti-big-business.

Buy a copy of: Trust Us We're Experts: How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles with Your Future

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