More mischievous microcontent

Christ the King Lives Up to National Reputation blared a headline from the March 25 New York Times sports section's online version.

How's that for getting people's atention? If you clicked on the link and opened the story, you'd have read:

GLENS FALLS, N.Y., March 25 — With four seconds left in the state Class AA title game, both teams seemed to move in slow motion as Tina Charles dribbled toward the hoop.

Her teammates from Christ the King High School in Queens were shocked, their mouths agape. Her opponents from Murry Bergtraum in Manhattan were dispirited, their heads hung low.

To end the game, the 6-foot-4 Charles, perhaps the nation's top player, put the ball into the hoop, coming just an inch or two from dunking. Before her feet returned to the ground, the crowd resounded with cheers for Christ the King.

Maybe the paper's headline writer just couldn't restrain herself. [Thanks to Steve Judd for this one.]

Misleading microcontent

Caught this headline yesterday from a long list of links to recent news about H5 N1 bird flu: Israel eradicates all bird flu in poultry-minister.

Confusion arises from the writer's use of the hyphen, which makes the word “poultry” seem to modify “minister,” suggesting that the nation has cured its agriculture minister, Zeev Boim, of avian flu.

However, the article refers to Boim’s announcement that the recent cull of 1.2 million chickens and turkeys at seven farms (costing million shekels, or $5.1 million, in reimbursements to farmers) had eradicated the deadly influenza from the nation’s domestic bird population. [Not all that reassuring, really, since Boim also announced the virus could return any day, due to infections currently raging in neighboring Gaza, Egypt, and Jordan. News of the day also carried reports of farmers in Gaza refusing to cull their flocks.]

The headline writers could have cured the confusion by replacing the hyphen with a colon: Israel eradicates all bird flu in poultry: minister, or by reordering the words: Minister: Israel eradicates all bird flu in poultry.

Information design: data to wisdom

Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

T.S Eliot, The Rock

I love the little online book Information Interaction Design: A Unified Field Theory of Design , by Nathan Shedroff, not so much for the quality of its writing (uneven), or the information he delivers (spotty, but interesting, an astonishing amount for such a compact and accessible little publication), but for the refined panache of its design. [Note: On my computer, the top the the page gets garbled when I open the site in Explorer from the linkin this post. If that happens for you, copy the URL and open it in Netscape or Mozilla or a fresh Explorer browser window.]

For example, I love the navigation scheme at the top of each page, with the little wandering dot that moves with your cursor. It looks like a horizontal linear table of contents, but lets you move rapidly back and forth from any part of the document to any other part. Of course, Shedroff’s design also includes conventional forward-moving and back-to-the-beginning navigation cues at the bottom of each page.

Among many other topics, Shedroff introduces the so-called “Information Hierarchy” that flows from data, to information, to knowledge, to wisdom. I like that he restrains himself from describing how to acquire wisdom, choosing instead to approach with humility:

We cannot create wisdom like we can data and information, and we cannot share it with others like we can with knowledge. We can only create experiences that offer opportunities and describe processes.

I also appreciate the question mark after his final heading: Conclusion?

Think like a designer: bad design tutorial

Have a gander at Bad Human Designs: A scrapbook of illustrated examples of things that are hard to use because they do not follow human factors principles, by Michael J. Darnell.

Such fun! Clicking through the bad designs can provide insight for writers, who might profitably think of themselves as “word designers,” and who also often fiddle with graphic layouts, instruction manuals, etc.

Some bad designs have to do with words and their associated images:

A confusing automobile title

An airport parking lot coding scheme

Dreadful airport concourse signage

Men’s room sign

Self-serve parking attendant Yikes!

Demon photocopier (Don’t you have one in your office?)

Note what they all have in common: The designers mindlessly failed to consider the needs of users/readers, and the contexts of use. The simplest way to avoid the most egregious design errors: Ask real people to interact with the instructions (or your written texts) and give you straight feedback on their experience. Cheap and easy.

Writer/designers: Think CRAP

This handy acronym will help you remember the four the core principles of good graphic design: contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity.

Get a quick overview of these (and other) design principles from The Non-Designer's Design Book, Second Edition, by Robin Williams (no, not the actor). Every county office should own a copy. Even a quick read-through will improve your next brochure, newsletter, poster, or other self-designed publication—guaranteed!

For an expanded virtual textbook of research-based design information, visit Web Design for Instruction, a comprehensive design guide by Bonnie Skaalid of the University of Saskatchewan. I find the site’s title a bit misleading; the site actually incorporates a comprehensive review of design theory and principles, as well as tutorials on Web page and other multimedia design.

Segments worth perusing:

Classic Design Theory
Gestalt Principles of Perception (overcoming “atomism”)
Web Page Design

Think like a designer

I found much to ponder in a column entitled Innovation Through Design Thinking, from the Poynter Institute’s “Design Desk.” Interesting comments, too.

Although written for practicing or aspiring journalists, the “design desk” columns apply equally well to educators who put words on paper or online for a purpose. In some sense or other, all written work ends up as a visual display, a “design.” We writers have more power over the ultimate design than most of us realize.

Take a look at this IDESIGN resource, a site for “anyone interested in teaching children and young adults the creative and critical thinking skills they need to cope with any subject or situation.” I found the site's navigation design and text display as exciting as the information it offers.

I also found myself drawn to the SPARC concept that originated at the renowned Mayo Clinic:

The idea of the SPARC (see, plan, act, refine and communicate) lab is to get healthcare providers thinking more like designers. The lab “operates like a design shop that specializes in the ‘patient experience.’” “Doctors, nurses and other staffers do what designers do: They interview, shadow, and observe customers (in this case patients) to uncover their needs, brainstorm with abandon, and engage in rapid prototyping.” Since SPARC lab began it has implemented ideas that are now used throughout the Mayo system.

What a concept! Interview, shadow and observe "clientele" in the settings where they make use of what educators "teach."

Try replacing the references to physicians and other clinicians with your own professional peers interacting with client populations. What sorts of information design might emerge?

When words have alternate spellings

Some words have more than one common spelling. Take dietician/dietitian.

From the professionals’ standpoint, dietitian seems to rule, as in Today’s Dietitian: The Magazine for Nutrition Professionals Making a Dofference ni Today's World http://www.todaysdietitian.com/index.php Registered Dietitians (RD) are “Your Link to Nutrition and Health.”

But you can also find Ask the Dietician and learn about the role of Dietician on the liver transplant team at the University of Southern California Liver Transplant Program and Center for Liver Disease.

Several dictionaries I consulted allow either spelling, without specifying a preference.

Recently, I reviewed a long information piece that contained the word repellent/repellant spelled both ways, with the alternate spellings scattered randomly throughout the text. (My dictionaries allow both, without preference.)

Some words have three or more spellings, mostly words that attempt to replicate in English words that come from languages that don’t use the Roman alphabet (tsar, tzar, czar), or that come from literature that predates standard spellings (griffin, griffon, and gryphon).

My suggestions:

When writing an academic paper or a piece for a professional journal, use the spelling most often used by others in the field.

If you produce a piece for a widely circulated newspaper or magazine, the editor will probably adjust your spelling to conform to the publication’s style guide.

Whatever you do, don’t allow two or more alternate spellings of a word to creep into a document. Choose one spelling and use it consistently.

Word resonance

Many common words we writers choose to communicate directly and precisely may also resonate with a wide variety of literal, idiomatic, symbolic, and figurative meanings in addition to the meaning we “intend.”

Good writers take advantage of this wonderful word plasticity, deliberately using word resonances to add nuance, desirable ambiguity, and complexity to their texts. But they also stay vigilant for unintended word resonances creeping into their writing.

Take, for example, our word “rock.”

In its most common use as a noun, it means a mass of hard consolidated mineral matter, as in, “The rocks in my garden make the carrots grow crooked.”

The common verb form of “rock” means to move back and forth or sideways, as in rock-a-bye baby.

We also use “rocky” as an adjective with both literal (a rocky landscape) and figurative (a long, rocky road ahead). As an adverb, “rock” emphasizes solidity, density, or steadfastness: rock-hard, rock-solid, rock-steady.

Think of all the ways human beings have used rocks literally: as ballast, anchors, shelters, weapons, tools, building materials, area delineators (Good fences make good neighbors), animal enclosures, heat storage media.

Consider how different figurative uses of the word “rock” can generate opposite or near-opposite meanings. For example:

Solid, supportive, stable, unchanging: He’s my rock. The wise man built his house upon a rock. In danger or difficult: The university finds itself between a rock and a hard place. His life has hit rock bottom. Their marriage is on the rocks.

Quiet, impassive: He sat there like a rock.
Intense, active: I’m gonna rock your world!

Humble, common, worthless: It won’t amount to a heap o’rocks. The platitudes abound, ubiquitous as the rocks.
Rare, of great value: She flashed a rock the size of a ping-pong ball on her left hand.

Rock on!

“War on error”

Over the many years I supported myself as a freelance writer, I gradually came to understand the value of a good copy editor, those critical readers laboring in the background who never took credit for the shine and sparkle they added to my writing, the folks who saved me from a thousand terrible embarrassments.

Every writer deserves a first-rate copy editor.

I’ve just discovered John McIntyre’s blog you don't say: language and usage, in the Baltimore Sun’s online version. A past president of the American Copy Editors Society, McIntyre works as assistant managing editor for the copy desk and teaches journalism at Loyola College in Maryland.

One recent McIntyre post introduces another important role of a copy editor: fact-checking. This demanding practice involves close, critical reading: checking each fact for accuracy (technical and linguistic); making sure that dates, percentages and other numerical data make sense; checking the entire document for internal consistency, etc. Diligent fact-checking saves a lot of face and protects a lot of professional reputations.

“So when we deal with sentences like the examples below—all the work of professional journalists — we see what we are up against in the combat with error,” McIntyre writes. (A commenter to the blog suggests calling it “the war on error.”

(1) And 42 percent of the students with low grades are boys, compared with 28 percent who are girls.
(2) He brought a luna moth to school, and recently, when she saw a 14-foot woodpecker, it was he who told her it was a pileated woodpecker, a scarce bird in Maryland.
(3) In the opening scenes, he’s literally bending sideways as he walks, ducking in and out of doors like Groucho Marks.
(4) Silent auction in West County: Among the wonderful items up for sale is a live thoroughbred horse.
(5) Divers Clinton Suggs (left) and Victor McCaugherty pause during their dive to replace a hole underneath Dam No. 5 near Williamsport.
(6) And the magazine was almost always right — until 1936, when the editors confidently predicted that Pennsylvania Gov. Alf Landon would soundly defeat Franklin Roosevelt.
(7) The seven-member group, the Pasadena Citizens Task Force on Radium in Well Water, was split down the middle.
(8) The train tracks are believed to be part of the Underground Railroad by which slaves found their way to freedom.

Follow the link to read the whole piece, which contains McIntyre’s comments on each of the examples. Imagine how grateful you’d have felt if you’d written one of these doozies and an editor had suggested changing it.

Point of view

When you sit down to write, do you bring a particular point of view to the topic?

Almost certainly. A writer’s level of interest, experience, beliefs and values, academic study, debate and deliberation, interests of funding sources, join many other factors in shaping his or her unique perspective of the topic at hand. Most of us find that long periods of study and deliberation alter our perspectives on a subject—sometimes subtly, sometimes dramatically, sometimes repeatedly.

What point of view do you drop onto the page as you write?

Even writers with a spacious perspective may exclude or ignore legitimate aspects and conflicting perspectives of the topic, and bring subtle (or not-so-subtle) bias to the page. Readers expect that in an opinion piece or a private reflection, but deserve a neutral stance in writing presented as factual.

The collaborative encyclopedia Wikipedia has an interesting page describing the “neutral point of view”
the site has adopted as official policy. Although I consider the current Wikipedia entry a work in progress, I recommend the whole of it.

[snip] The neutral point of view is a means of dealing with conflicting views. The policy requires that, where there are or have been conflicting views, these are fairly presented, but not asserted. All significant points of view are presented, not just the most popular one. It is not asserted that the most popular view or some sort of intermediate view among the different views is the correct one. Readers are left to form their own opinions.

As the name suggests the neutral point of view is a point of view. It is a point of view that is neutral—that is neither sympathetic nor in opposition to its subject.

Debates are described, represented, and characterized, but not engaged in. Background is provided on who believes what and why, and which view is more popular. Detailed articles might also contain the mutual evaluations of each viewpoint, but studiously refrain from stating which is better. One can think of unbiased writing as the cold, fair, analytical description of debates. When bias towards one particular point of view can be detected the article needs to be fixed.

Adopting a neutral point of view helps avoid various types of bias from creeping into a text. Wikipedia lists a few of them:

• Ethnic or racial bias, including racism, nationalism and regionalism.
• Corporate bias, including advertising, coverage of political campaigns in such a way as to favor corporate interests, and the reporting of issues to favor the interests of the owners of the news media.
• Class bias, including bias favoring one social class and bias ignoring social or class divisions.
• Political bias, including bias in favor of or against a particular political party or candidate.
• Religious bias, including bias in which one religious viewpoint is given preference over others.
• Sensationalism, which is bias in favor of the exceptional over the ordinary. This includes the practice whereby exceptional news may be overemphasized, distorted or fabricated to boost commercial ratings.
• Geographical bias which may for example describe a dispute as it is conducted in one country without knowing that the dispute is framed differently elsewhere.

You could probably add a few of your own. Gender bias, age bias, aesthetic bias, and bias in favor of a funding source come to mind for me.

Writing from the neutral point of view doesn’t mean the writer doesn’t have a point of view. But it does help prevent bias from creeping into our texts. More importantly, the task of crafting text in the neutral point of view usually requires unmasking our own unexamined assumptions and lack of knowledge about various aspects of the topic.

Unintended resonances

In an otherwise compelling article that ran in yesterday’s Concord Monitor about the plight of Concord’s grohomeless people during winter, I read:

But when the temperature drops, residents who usually hunker down in cars, tents and under bridges come out of the woodwork.

Whoa! That phrase “out of the woodwork” knocked me cold. In my mind, it conjures images of cockroaches, bedbugs and other lowly, despised creatures crawling out of their usual hiding places—images I feel sure the writer didn’t intend to evoke.

As a figure of speech, “out of the woodwork” doesn’t even fit the writer’s context—describing the homeless people’s fair-weather shelters: cars, tents, and bridges. It also doesn’t follow the previous sentence in this article, a quotation from Donna Muir, the First Congregational Church’s director of community outreach. “Concord’s very good at hiding its homeless,” she’d said. The quotation also ran Muir’s words as a pull-quote spanning the article’s carryover onto page 3.

If that piece had come my way for editing, I hope I’d have caught the offending phrase and changed the sentence to read something like:

But when the temperature drops, residents who usually hunker down in cars, tents, and under bridges become visible as they begin a desperate search for warmer shelter.

This example demonstrates how easily clichés slip into our written work and hold their places once they get there. Working under pressure, writers often grab at whatever handy words and phrases come first to mind—“out of the woodwork,” to use that timeworn expression more appropriately.

Punctuating with square brackets

Someone asked recently about when to punctuate with square brackets (aka box brackets).

Use square brackets […] to indicate that you’ve inserted insert text of your own into a quotation, usually to clarify the meaning or replace original text. For example:

Elliot wrote, “I wonder if [Eckstrom and Phillips] knew about the latest report before they issued the warning.”
In this case, “Eckstrom and Phillips” might replace the word “they,” in a quotation in which the original author would have introduced Eckstrom and Phillips in a previous paragraph.

“[W]e are potentially looking at more communication and navigation disruptions, more satellite failures, possible disruption of electric grids and blackouts, more dangerous conditions for astronauts—all these things,” Behnke said during the briefing.
Here, I’ve cut words from the beginning of Behnke’s quotation and added an uppercase W to indicate that I’ve begun a new sentence by clipping a section from the full text.

Use brackets to close off parenthetical material already within parentheses. For example: (We discuss this second control group [n = 30] in section IV, pp 35-70).

You might also set off numerical expressions in box brackets to make them easier to understand.

It goes without saying that brackets, like parentheses, always appear in pairs. What opens must close.

For the ultimate explanation of the many types and uses of brackets in prose, mathematics, computing, sports, etc., see this Wikipedia entry.

Note: Always refer to and follow the official style guide of a professional journal or magazine when preparing an article for publication. Look to your department's style requirements when writing academic papers.

“Watch Your Language”

Poynter Institute’s Ron Reason has posted a good piece about dealing with the tension that often arises between writers and designers.

As you read it, forget the word “newsroom” and try to apply Reason’s reasoning to any disagreements that arise between writers and the folks who set up their words for display or select graphic elements to accompany them. I think the advice even applies well to documents you both write and design.

After dispensing with various “unhelpful” remarks on the part of both writers and designers, Reason gets at what he considers “focused, fair questions to ask” when critiquing a graphic idea:

• Does it live up to the requirements of our accepted design or stylebook?
• Does it accurately reflect the PRECISE content, tone, meaning, and spirit of the story? Or, if it's not a literal reinforcement of the message in the text, is it compelling enough to stand on its own, or does it complement the text in an appropriate way?
• Is there anything in here that's offensive, incomplete, or confusing in any way?
• Does it HELP THE READER? (My favorite! A negative or unconvincing reply shoots down lots of dumb visual ideas, especially design gimmicks and doodads.)

I agree with Reason. The answer to the question “Does it help [or hinder] the reader?” trumps any other consideration.

Writers and graphic displays

Charts, tables, and other graphics often deliver complex information more effectively than words. But bad graphics, or merely decorative graphics that convey no essential information, can annoy or confuse readers, and sometimes even deliver information that diametrically opposes what the writer intended.

Take a look at these exceptionally fine displays of quantitative information (by way of Guy Kawasaki’s blog).

Some other examples of graphic brilliance (from Edward Tufte's site):

Princeton University acceptance letter (Note: Even text serves as “graphics.”

Single number semi-table

I’d add two final points:

Take special care adding graphics to online documents, where readers have much less context from which to construct meaning.

Remember that every element of a print or online document that your readers see functions as a graphic element, not only charts, tables, photos, and “art,” but also text itself (font shape, size, color, bold/italic/underlined, number of fonts on a single page, special features such as shadow, inverse, etc.), organization of white space (margin size and justification, length of words and sentences, manner of indicating a new paragraph), and color.

Keeping up with language

2005 was the year we saw a convergence of a number sometimes contradictory language trends: the major global media became more pervasive yet actually less persuasive; the language spoken by the youth of the world is converging at an ever-increasing rate; and the Political Correctness movement become a truly global phenomenon. Paul JJ Payack, president of The Global Language Monitor (GLM)

Want to stay tuned to the hot topics of the day? Keep up with the latest argot of politics, fashion, youth culture, business, entertainment, political correctness? For all this and more, bookmark The Global Language Monitor.

The GLM analyzes language trends and their subsequent impact on politics, culture and business (with a particular focus on Global English) by means of what progenitor and president, Paul JJ Payack, calls the Predictive Quantities Index Indicator, an algorithm that

helps track the frequency of words and phrases in the global print and electronic media, on the Internet, and throughout the Blogosphere. The algorithm tracks words and phrases in relation to their frequency of use and contextual usage. The PQ Index/Indicator is weighted, factoring in long-term trends, short-term changes, and citations in the major media.

Payack says his algorithm choices often contradict the beliefs of pundits, to wit, the fourth-quarter 2005 list of politically sensitive terms http://www.languagemonitor.com/wst_page12.html

Go here to learn the most frequently spoken word on the planet according to Payack.

Disclaimer: While I find the GLM lists interesting, amusing, and informative guides, I won’t vouch for the algorithm or its accuracy, despite the fact that numerous credible news and information sources cite its findings as authoritative.

Teaching through parables: A "pedagogy of inwardnss"

If the problem of the contemporary student is too much outwardness, i.e. too much preoccupation with role and status, then the greatest need might be for a pedagogy of inwardness, designed to reach undiscovered dimensions of self. If there is nothing there, what will have been lost by the effort?

Conventional teaching, ranging from ideological harangues to the presentation of more and more empirical evidence, will probably never reach the illusions of contemporary youth and will exhaust sincere teachers. Parables might help.

At least, given the freedom of students to roam around in the parabolic form, the teacher using parables will not have added to the anti-democratic and depersonalized trends already well under way. John J. Bonsignore, In Parables: Teaching Through Parables

Why should a "research-based" educator consider using parables as teaching tools?

A few days ago, I stumbled across the extraordinary essay quoted above. Written nearly two decades ago by John Bonsignore, at the time a professor of law at University of Massachusetts in Amherst, it goes to the heart of learning and teaching.

In the essay Bonsignore explains why he used the parables of Franz Kafka in all his law courses. As a "parabolic form" that doesn't merely present facts and tie them into neat conclusions, Bonsignore suggests that the core strength of the parable lies in its refusal to make "paradoxical elements of life seem simpler and more resolvable than they actually are."

Bonsignore quotes Thomas Oden's introduction to an anthology of the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard's parables. In it, Oden gives five reasons why Kierkegaard used parables. The third and fourth offer a compelling answer to my opening rhetorical question: Why should a "research-based" educator consider using parables as teaching tools?

3. The parable involves indirect communication that provokes self discovery. Direct communication conveys information and, by reference to authorities, endorses certain lines of thought. By contrast, a parable presents a moral knot which the reader must untie by inward reflection and choice. Whereas direct communication creates observers and listeners, indirect communication creates participants and action. Those who prefer to "learn about the world" in a direct and controlled way, lose control of their responses when they encounter the parable. The parable carries them, willingly or unwillingly, inward toward undiscovered dimensions of self.

4. Experiences with indirect communication cultivate the capability for developing the self. Whereas direct learning does not change the capability of a person (learning simply adds to knowledge) indirect communication jolts the person out of mental routines once and for all. Rather than a simple change in information there is a change in consciousness. Like the seeds of the sower in the New Testament, the parable does not always fall on receptive ground, but even in such instances, the person is placed on notice that a world outside regular understanding exists.

Try this famous Kafka parable on yourself.

The power of anecdote

Science is very much concerned about verifiability and repeatability and although an anecdote is certainly repeatable, verifying an anecdote is a whole other story. Scientists do fear the anecdote, and rightly so. Scientists face a lot of frustration with how the sharing of a mere anecdote is able to convince people against their theories despite the apparent strength of their scientific data….

And as Batman’s embracing of the bat, his greatest fear, enabled him access to a deeper power in himself, it looks like scientists are doing the same with the anecdote. The following list compiled by Ron Graham shows where scientists are quite happily using anecdotes and anecdotal evidence:

• deciding how and to whom to apply for research grants
• deciding directions for new and unstarted research
• deciding what questions to ask human subjects in gathering empirical data
• deciding what and when to publish

—Andrew Rixman at the blog Anecdote: Insight and Empowerment

I could spend all day adding to Graham’s list. But I’ve often wished writers wouldn’t pit research findings those other categories of “evidence” generally termed anecdotal. I don’t see how we can escape the conclusion that we need and operate from both.

A few days ago, I blogged here about a remarkable experiment in healingconducted by Michael Rich of Boston Children’s Hospital. It briefly touched on Rich’s experiment in which young asthmatic patients videotaped the events of their daily lives and recounted their experiences with asthma in front of the camera.

The mere act of recording the “anecdotes” of daily life improved the health status of these young patients, for whom previous medical interventions had failed. The project also yielded an astonishing range of data useful for educating clinicians themselves.

That word anecdote covers a lot of terrain: first-person narratives, stories, parables, teaching tales, fables, fairy tales, myths, gossip, old wives’ tales. I’ll stick my neck out by proclaiming that all have important uses for teaching, learning and empowered decision making. And like research findings, each anecdote has specific limitations.

Anecdotes can get at the deepest levels of beliefs, values, and feelings that drive huiman behavior. Anecdotes can force readers/listeners to confront their own unexamined assumptions, in ways that science cannot.

Some forms of anecdote promote the uncertainty and ambiguity that characterize mindful learning. Other anecdotal forms can resonate at many levels of language and meaning.

Take a look at this interesting post on the idea of anecdote circles.

Tomorrow, I’ll report on a novel use of one anecdotal form—parables—used in teaching prospective lawyers.

“Creating the outcome our client desires”: Who “shapes the debate?"

As the federal government cuts back on funding for research, scientists are now forced to rely more and more on financial assistance from corporations; this raises troubling questions about whether the results from these studies will be impartial and objective or favorable to the companies that paid for them. Paul D. Thacker

The article quoted above that appeared in Environmental Science and Technology (published by the American Chemical Society) last week provides insight into one incresingly common way “science” enters the public consciousness.

The Weinberg proposal: A scientific consulting firm says that it aids companies in trouble, but critics say that it manufactures uncertainty and undermines science, by Paul D. Thacker, discusses a five-page letter from P. Terrence Gaffney, vice president for “product defense” of the Weinberg Group (a consulting firm with the tagline: We get you where you want to go. No matter where you are.), addressed to DuPont’s vice president of special initiatives, Jane Brooks. In the letter, Gaffney lays out ideas for how the Weinberg Group proposes to help DuPont deal with a growing regulatory and legal crisis involving PFOA (perfluorooctanoic acid), a common building block of the perfluorocarbon family of chemicals, used in the manufacture of thousands of industrial and consumer products.

Thacker found the letter tucked into an official Environmental Protection Agency folder containing materials involved in the agency’s investigation of PFOA. I urge you to read Thacker's article and the entire Gaffney memo reproduced there.

In Gaffney's opening paragraphs, he emphasizes: “The constant theme which permeates our recommendations on the issues faced by DuPont is that DUPONT MUST SHAPE THE DEBATE AT ALL LEVELS.” [Emphasis in the original.]

Among the bona fides Gaffney presents for the Weinberg Group:

Beginning with Agent Orange in 1983, we have successfully guided clients through myriad regulatory, litigation, and public relations challenges posed by those whose agenda is to grossly over regulate, extract settlements from, or otherwise damage the chemical manufacturing industry….The following will describe some of our capabilities [for] implementing a strategy to limit the effect of litigation and regulation on the revenue stream generated by PFOA.

The memo goes on to offer, among other services, to design studies and employ a variety of experts:

[T]o harness, focus, and involve the scientific and intellectual capacity of our company with one goal in mind: creating the outcome our client desires.

These in-house experts are scientists and physicians holding advanced degrees in such areas as statistics & bioepidemiology, pharmacology, pathology, toxicology, oncology, molecular biology, regulatory strategy and product defense.

Weinberg promises to reshape the “debate,” not merely through defending the product, but by repositioning PFOA as beneficial to human health.

Manufacturers must be the aggressors. A defensive posture, in our opinion, would be disastrous.

[Dupont must] reshape the debate by identifying the likely known health benefits of PFOA exposure …and/or constructing a study to establish not only that FOA is safe…but that it offers real health benefits (oxygen carrying capacity and prevention of CAD [coronary artery disease].