3M misconduct regarding knowledge of “forever chemicals”: As is so often the case, the problem was in open sight for a long time before anything was done

Horrifying story here from Sharon Lerner how chemical products company 3M (which has successfully branded itself as the cuddly people behind Post-it notes) polluted the world’s water supply and covered it up for decades.

It features several issues we’ve discussed in this space:

– Research misconduct, hiding of data, mischaracterizing findings, etc.

– Flat out lying.

– Bad actions by big business.

– The misconduct was sitting in open sight for a long time (as we’ve seen with Theranos, Pizzagate, the Canadian biologist, the Los Angeles tunnel, the financial fraudster, and many other cases)

– The use of the legal system to threaten people and suppress the truth (as again with Theranos)

Those last two bits go together. Keeping things quiet for a long time can require unscrupulous people to put in a lot of work.

Lerner writes:

Much of my reporting, which started in 2015, focussed on what 3M and DuPont knew, even as they continued to produce PFAS. But, as I reported on the coverup, I wondered what it meant for a sprawling multinational company to know that its products were dangerous. Who knew? How much, exactly, did they know? And how had the company kept its secret? . . .

2015! That’s almost ten years ago!

It’s everywhere in the environment

The story is about so-called “forever chemicals,” which spread to everyone in the world, and the companies that produced and distributed them even after having this knowledge, and the people who worked for these companies. No matter what you do, what food you consume, what water you drink, what products you use, you’ll be exposed to these. There’s no avoiding it.

And this got me thinking about research fraud. That’s hard to avoid too! I guess that right now if someone asked me if I’d do a job for 3M, I’d say hell no, but, then again, take a look at our list of sponsors, which among them have lots of misdeeds in their past and present histories. Just about every organization has problems. This is not at all intended to excuse those terrible people at 3M, it’s just all a big messy story. It doesn’t sound like any of those sleazes will pay any cost for what they did, which helps explain why it keeps happening. Moral hazard and all that.