Mad, Bad and Dangerous

In Trust Us, We're Experts, PR Watch editors Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber examined the ways that industry PR manipulates science and gambles with your future. Now British science writer Colin Tudge is exploring similar themes. Whether the topic is pharmaceuticals or genetically modified foods, he says, "people distrust what scientists tell them. And they are perfectly right to do so. ... More broadly, it begins to seem that no expert of any kind, scientist or lawyer or auditor, is likely to be employed at all except by private companies; and their publicly expressed opinions are adjusted accordingly."