Download or read book Trust Us We re Experts written by Sheldon Rampton and published by Tarcher. This book was released on 2001 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In Trust Us, We're Experts! journalists Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber unmask the sneaky and widespread methods industry uses to influence opinion through bogus reports, doctored data, and manufactured facts. Rampton and Stauber show how corporations and public relations firms have seized upon remarkable new ways of exploiting your trust to get you to buy what they have to sell: letting you hear their pitch from a neutral third party, such as a professor or a pediatrician or a soccer mom or a watchdog group." "The problem is, these third parties are usually anything but neutral. They have been handpicked, cultivated, and meticulously packaged in order to make you believe what they say. In many cases, they have been paid handsomely for their "opinions.""--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Download or read book Trust Us We re Experts PA written by Sheldon Rampton and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2002-01-14 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The authors of Toxic Sludge Is Good for You! unmask the sneaky and widespread methods industry uses to influence opinion through bogus experts, doctored data, and manufactured facts. We count on the experts. We count on them to tell us who to vote for, what to eat, how to raise our children. We watch them on TV, listen to them on the radio, read their opinions in magazine and newspaper articles and letters to the editor. We trust them to tell us what to think, because there’s too much information out there and not enough hours in a day to sort it all out. We should stop trusting them right this second. In their new book Trust Us, We’re Experts!: How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles with Your Future, Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, authors of Toxic Sludge Is Good For You, offer a chilling exposé on the manufacturing of "independent experts." Public relations firms and corporations know well how to exploit your trust to get you to buy what they have to sell: Let you hear it from a neutral third party, like a professor or a pediatrician or a soccer mom or a watchdog group. The problem is, these third parties are usually anything but neutral. They have been handpicked, cultivated, and meticulously packaged in order to make you believe what they have to say—preferably in an "objective" format like a news show or a letter to the editor. And in some cases, they have been paid handsomely for their "opinions." For example: You think that nonprofit organizations just give away their stamps of approval on products? Bristol-Myers Squibb paid $600,000 to the American Heart Association for the right to display AHA’s name and logo in ads for its cholesterol-lowering drug Pravachol. SmithKline Beecham paid the American Cancer Society $1 million for the right to use its logo in ads for Beecham’s Nicoderm CQ and Nicorette anti-smoking ads. You think that a study out of a prestigious university is completely unbiased? In 1997, Georgetown University’s Credit Research Center issued a study which concluded that many debtors are using bankruptcy as an excuse to wriggle out of their obligations to creditors. Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen cited the study in a Washington Times column and advocated for changes in federal law to make it harder for consumers to file for bankruptcy relief. What Bentsen failed to mention was that the Credit Research Center is funded in its entirety by credit card companies, banks, retailers, and others in the credit industry; that the study itself was produced with a $100,000 grant from VISA USA, Inc. and MasterCard International; and that Bentsen himself had been hired to work as a credit-industry lobbyist. You think that all grassroots organizations are truly grassroots? In 1993, a group called Mothers Opposing Pollution (MOP) appeared, calling itself "the largest women’s environmental group in Australia, with thousands of supporters across the country." Their cause: A campaign against plastic milk bottles. It turned out that the group’s spokesperson, Alana Maloney, was in truth a woman named Janet Rundle, the business partner of a man who did P.R. for the Association of Liquidpaperboard Carton Manufacturers—the makers of paper milk cartons. You think that if a scientist says so, it must be true? In the early 1990s, tobacco companies secretly paid thirteen scientists a total of $156,000 to write a few letters to influential medical journals. One biostatistician received $10,000 for writing a single, eight-paragraph letter that was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. A cancer researcher received $20,137 for writing four letters and an opinion piece to the Lancet, the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, and The Wall Street Journal. Rampton and Sta...

Download or read book Trust Us We re Experts PA written by Sheldon Rampton and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2002-01-14 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The authors of Toxic Sludge Is Good for You! unmask the sneaky and widespread methods industry uses to influence opinion through bogus experts, doctored data, and manufactured facts. We count on the experts. We count on them to tell us who to vote for, what to eat, how to raise our children. We watch them on TV, listen to them on the radio, read their opinions in magazine and newspaper articles and letters to the editor. We trust them to tell us what to think, because there’s too much information out there and not enough hours in a day to sort it all out. We should stop trusting them right this second. In their new book Trust Us, We’re Experts!: How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles with Your Future, Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, authors of Toxic Sludge Is Good For You, offer a chilling exposé on the manufacturing of "independent experts." Public relations firms and corporations know well how to exploit your trust to get you to buy what they have to sell: Let you hear it from a neutral third party, like a professor or a pediatrician or a soccer mom or a watchdog group. The problem is, these third parties are usually anything but neutral. They have been handpicked, cultivated, and meticulously packaged in order to make you believe what they have to say—preferably in an "objective" format like a news show or a letter to the editor. And in some cases, they have been paid handsomely for their "opinions." For example: You think that nonprofit organizations just give away their stamps of approval on products? Bristol-Myers Squibb paid $600,000 to the American Heart Association for the right to display AHA’s name and logo in ads for its cholesterol-lowering drug Pravachol. SmithKline Beecham paid the American Cancer Society $1 million for the right to use its logo in ads for Beecham’s Nicoderm CQ and Nicorette anti-smoking ads. You think that a study out of a prestigious university is completely unbiased? In 1997, Georgetown University’s Credit Research Center issued a study which concluded that many debtors are using bankruptcy as an excuse to wriggle out of their obligations to creditors. Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen cited the study in a Washington Times column and advocated for changes in federal law to make it harder for consumers to file for bankruptcy relief. What Bentsen failed to mention was that the Credit Research Center is funded in its entirety by credit card companies, banks, retailers, and others in the credit industry; that the study itself was produced with a $100,000 grant from VISA USA, Inc. and MasterCard International; and that Bentsen himself had been hired to work as a credit-industry lobbyist. You think that all grassroots organizations are truly grassroots? In 1993, a group called Mothers Opposing Pollution (MOP) appeared, calling itself "the largest women’s environmental group in Australia, with thousands of supporters across the country." Their cause: A campaign against plastic milk bottles. It turned out that the group’s spokesperson, Alana Maloney, was in truth a woman named Janet Rundle, the business partner of a man who did P.R. for the Association of Liquidpaperboard Carton Manufacturers—the makers of paper milk cartons. You think that if a scientist says so, it must be true? In the early 1990s, tobacco companies secretly paid thirteen scientists a total of $156,000 to write a few letters to influential medical journals. One biostatistician received $10,000 for writing a single, eight-paragraph letter that was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. A cancer researcher received $20,137 for writing four letters and an opinion piece to the Lancet, the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, and The Wall Street Journal. Rampton and Sta...

Download or read book Reframing Public Policy written by Frank Fischer and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2003-06-20 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years a set of radical new approaches to public policy has been developing. These approaches, drawing on discursive analysis and participatory deliberative practices, have come to challenge the dominant technocratic, empiricist models in policy analysis. In his major new book Frank Fischer brings together this new work for the first time and critically examines it. In an accessible way he describes the theoretical, methodological, and political requirements and implications of the new "post-empiricist" approach to public policy. The volume includes a discussion of the social construction of policy problems, the role of interpretation and narrative analysis in policy inquiry, the dialectics of policy argumentation, and the uses of participatory policy analysis. The book will be required reading for anyone studying, researching, or formulating public policy.

Download or read book Energy Psychology written by Michael Mayer, Ph.D. and published by North Atlantic Books. This book was released on 2011-06-14 with total page 473 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Energy Psychology presents a comprehensive approach to healing that combines leading-edge Western bodymind psychological methods with a broad system of ancient, sacred traditions. Incorporating Dr. Mayer's integral approach called Bodymind Healing Psychotherapy, Energy Psychology draws on Chinese medicine approaches, including Qigong and acupressure self-touch; kabalistic processes; methods drawn from ancient traditions of meditation and postural initiation; and psycho-mythological storytelling techniques.Drawing on thirty years of training in Tai Chi and Qigong, Dr. Michael Mayer shows how integrating the essences of these traditions and methods can restore vitality and give the average person self-healing tools for physical and mental health. Unlike the quick-fix books on energy restoration, this book uses timetested, age-old practices from sacred traditions in combination with well-established clinical approaches. Dr. Mayer teaches readers bodymind healing methods to treat anxiety, chronic pain, addictions, hypertension, insomnia, trauma, and other prevalent conditions. Written in a clear, intelligible style, Energy Psychology includes real-life case studies that highlight the effectiveness of his techniques.

Download or read book Taking Action Saving Lives written by Kristin Shrader-Frechette and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2007-10-19 with total page 491 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the United States alone, industrial and agricultural toxins account for about 60,000 avoidable cancer deaths annually. Pollution-related health costs to Americans are similarly staggering: $13 billion a year from asthma, $351 billion from cardiovascular disease, and $240 billion from occupational disease and injury. Most troubling, children, the poor, and minorities bear the brunt of these health tragedies. Why, asks Kristin Shrader-Frechette, has the government failed to protect us, and what can we do about it? In this book, at once brilliant and accessible, Shrader-Frechette reveals how politicians, campaign contributors, and lobbyists--and their power over media, advertising, and public relations--have conspired to cover up environmental disease and death. She also shows how science and regulators themselves are frequently "captured" by well-funded polluters and special interests. But most important, the author puts both the blame--and the solution--on the shoulders of ordinary citizens. She argues that everyone, especially in a democracy, has a duty to help prevent avoidable environmental deaths, to remain informed about, and involved in, public-health and environmental decision-making. Toward this end, she outlines specific, concrete ways in which people can contribute to life-saving reforms, many of them building on recommendations of the American Public Health Association. As disturbing as it is, Shrader-Frechette's message is ultimately hopeful. Calling for a new "democratic revolution," she reminds us that while only a fraction of the early colonists supported the American Revolution, that tiny group managed to change the world. Her book embodies the conviction that we can do the same for environmental health, particularly if citizens become the change they seek. "Timely, accessible, and written with enviable clarity and passion. A distinguished philosopher sounds an ethical call to arms to prevent illness and death from pollution." --Sheila Jasanoff, Harvard University "Influential and impressive. A must-read." --Nicholas A. Ashford, Massachusetts Institute of Technology "By one of America's foremost philosophers and public intellectuals; immensely readable, courageous, often startling, insightful." --Richard Hiskes, University of Connecticut "Like Rachel Carson's Silent Spring--brilliant, brave." --Sylvia Hood Washington, University of Illinois, Chicago "A blistering account of how advocacy must be brought to bear on issues of justice and public health." -- Jeffrey Kahn, University of Minnesota "No other author can so forcefully bring together ethical analysis, government policy, and environmental science. Outstanding." --Colleen Moore, University of Wisconsin

Download or read book Kivalina written by Christine Shearer and published by Haymarket Books. This book was released on 2011 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "For the people of Kivalina, Alaska, the price of further climate change denial could be the complete devasation of their lives and culture. Their village must be relocated to survive, but neither the fossil fuel giants nor the U.S. government are willing to take full responsibility."--P. [4] of cover.

Download or read book Contemporary Anarchist Studies written by Randall Amster and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2009-02-10 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book highlights the recent rise in interest in anarchist theory and practice attempting to bridge the gap between anarchist activism on the streets and anarchist studies in the academia. Bringing together some of the most prominent voices in contemporary anarchism in the academy, it includes pieces written on anarchist theory, pedagogy, methodologies, praxis, and the future.

Download or read book Lies the Media Tell Us written by James P. Winter and published by Black Rose Books Ltd.. This book was released on 2007 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More disinformation and misinformation as perceived "bad news" threatens to disturb domestic tranquility.

Download or read book The Environment in Rachel Carson s Silent Spring written by Gary Wiener and published by Greenhaven Publishing LLC. This book was released on 2011-12-01 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A foundational text in the conservation movement, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring challenged prevailing ideas of the health of the environment by showing that pesticides affected organisms other than their targets, such as humans and birds. The book also accused chemical companies and federal officials of complacency in regulating pesticides. Despite challenges from the chemical industry, the book reversed pesticide policy, leading to a ban on DDT for agricultural use. This compelling volume offers an in-depth analysis of the life, works, and importance of Rachel Carson. Critical essays focus on how the book put human impact at the center of environmental policy, how some felt that Carson exaggerated her claims, and how environmentalism stands in the way of human progress. The book also offers readers contemporary perspectives on environmental disasters.

Download or read book Handbook of Risk and Crisis Communication written by Robert L. Heath and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-10-28 with total page 653 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Handbook of Risk and Crisis Communication explores the scope and purpose of risk, and its counterpart, crisis, to facilitate the understanding of these issues from conceptual and strategic perspectives. Recognizing that risk is a central feature of our daily lives, found in relationships, organizations, governments, the environment, and a wide variety of interactions, contributors to this volume explore such questions as "What is likely to happen, to whom, and with what consequences?" "To what extent can science and vigilance prevent or mitigate negative outcomes?" and "What obligation do some segments of local, national, and global populations have to help other segments manage risks?", shedding light on the issues in the quest for definitive answers. The Handbook offers a broad approach to the study of risk and crisis as joint concerns. Chapters explore the reach of crisis and risk communication, define and examine key constructs, and parse the contexts of these vital areas. As a whole, the volume presents a comprehensive array of studies that highlight the standard principles and theories on both topics, serving as the largest effort to date focused on engaging risk communication discussions in a comprehensive manner. Now available in paperback, the Handbook of Risk and Crisis Communication can be readily used in graduate coursework and individual research programs. With perspectives from psychology, sociology, anthropology, political science, economics, and communication, the Handbook provides vital insights for all disciplines studying risk, and is required reading for scholars and researchers investigating risk and crisis in various contexts.

Download or read book Brandishing the First Amendment written by Tamara Piety and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2012-02-08 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tamara R. Piety argues that increasingly expansive First Amendment protections for commercial speech imperil public health, safety, and welfare; the reliability of commercial and consumer information; the stability of financial markets; and the global environment. Using evidence from public relations and marketing, behavioral economics, psychology, and cognitive studies, she shows how overly permissive extensions of protections to commercial expression limit governmental power to address a broad range of public policy issues.

Download or read book The Nutrient Dense Eating Plan written by Douglas L. Margel and published by Basic Health Publications, Inc.. This book was released on 2005 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nutrient-dense eating refers to the nutritional quality of a food, and to the highly concentrated, vitally important foods eaten on the plan. They are the opposite of empty-calorie foods that eventually degrade health and lead to debilitating diseases, says the author, Douglas Margel. He believes the dominant eating disorder of this culture is the ambivalent, adversarial relationship people have with food and we should reconnect to ancestral wisdom and eat as if it really mattered.

Download or read book Biomedical Ethics for Engineers written by Daniel A. Vallero and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2011-04-01 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Biomedical Ethics for Engineers provides biomedical engineers with a new set of tools and an understanding that the application of ethical measures will seldom reach consensus even among fellow engineers and scientists. The solutions are never completely technical, so the engineer must continue to improve the means of incorporating a wide array of societal perspectives, without sacrificing sound science and good design principles.Dan Vallero understands that engineering is a profession that profoundly affects the quality of life from the subcellular and nano to the planetary scale. Protecting and enhancing life is the essence of ethics; thus every engineer and design professional needs a foundation in bioethics. In high-profile emerging fields such as nanotechnology, biotechnology and green engineering, public concerns and attitudes become especially crucial factors given the inherent uncertainties and high stakes involved. Ethics thus means more than a commitment to abide by professional norms of conduct. This book discusses the full suite of emerging biomedical and environmental issues that must be addressed by engineers and scientists within a global and societal context. In addition it gives technical professionals tools to recognize and address bioethical questions and illustrates that an understanding of the application of these measures will seldom reach consensus even among fellow engineers and scientists.· Working tool for biomedical engineers in the new age of technology· Numerous case studies to illustrate the direct application of ethical techniques and standards· Ancillary materials available online for easy integration into any academic program

Download or read book Drugs for Life written by Joseph Dumit and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2012-09-03 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Challenges our understanding of health, risks, facts, and clinical trials [Payot]

Download or read book Old House Journal written by and published by . This book was released on 1986-10 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Old-House Journal is the original magazine devoted to restoring and preserving old houses. For more than 35 years, our mission has been to help old-house owners repair, restore, update, and decorate buildings of every age and architectural style. Each issue explores hands-on restoration techniques, practical architectural guidelines, historical overviews, and homeowner stories--all in a trusted, authoritative voice.

Download or read book Sweet Deception written by Joseph Mercola and published by Thomas Nelson. This book was released on 2006-11-05 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most people believe that sucralose (Splenda) is a perfectly safe artificial sweetener. Big business and the FDA have fostered that dangerous misconception. The truth is Splenda is by no means safe; and the same is true for many of the other artificial sweeteners being marketed today. Dr. Joseph Mercola---supported by extensive studies and research---exposes the fact that Splenda actually contributes to a host of serious diseases. Sweet Deception will lay out how the FDA really works for big food companies and should not be trusted when it comes to your health.