Bisphenol A Denial

I claim no expertise in understanding the toxicology of bisphenol A.

But I do recognize science denial.


Here's a piece by epidemiologist Geoffrey Kabat titled, "How Abysmal Scientific Research Is Used To Scare America's Parents".

His piece is a criticism of a study on bisphenol A in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

So here's what any non-expert should recognize:

1.  Very few parents read the American Journal of Epidemiology.  It's hard to connect how that study will scare a significant number of them.

2.  The reason objective scientists publish studies in the peer reviewed literature is to get criticism from their peers.  Why isn't Kabat providing his criticisms to the Journal?  Because he is trying to foment doubt to the uneducated.

I don't have access to that study, but looking at the chart Kabat provided, I can see he's full of pooh.

He says, "There is not a glimmer of a relationship among Non-White girls or boys nor among White girls."

That's a blatant lie, based on the chart.  Maybe he figures people won't understand "OR" or Odds Ratio.

Essentially the lowest quartile of urinary bisphenol A is used as a reference point (OR =1).  In all but one other case (Non-white, Boys, 2nd quartile) the OR is greater than one, meaning that there is a positive association between obesity and bisphenol A.

If there was no positive association, we'd expect very few OR's to be higher than 1.

Kabat writes, "Finally, one notices that the numbers of subjects are much greater among Non-whites than among Whites – more than twice as great. Therefore, it is interesting that among Non-Whites, where there is much greater statistical power to detect an association, there is no evidence of one."

The point he is making is that the OR doesn't increase linearly as one moves up in the quartile rankings. Since it doesn't he is claiming there's no association.

However the problem is that the number of subjects is low overall.  One would prefer thousands or tens of thousands of subjects in order to better see the trend with bisphenol A.

But the FACT that the OR is greater than 1 in virtually every category is not something to brush aside.

We have us a bisphenol A denier.  Thanks, Forbes.

P.S. Based on what I could read in his book for free, he's also a DeNiAr (health physics denier).