Industry-funded scientists reframed lead poisoning as normal and defended their research as honorable

Evidence

In the minimization of health effects, Robert Kehoe, head of the industry-funded Kettering Laboratory, was “a virtual commissar of lead toxicology” until the 1960s (Markowitz & Rosner, 2002). Throughout his lengthy career, Kehoe never publicly acknowledged that lead posed any public health risk. … He considered it “normal” for all human beings to have some lead in their bodies. The civil rights movement and the War on Poverty of the 1960s began to focus public attention on lead poisoning among the poor. Scientists began to challenge Kehoe’s positions and his research, which never took into account the smaller body mass and developing neurological systems of lead poisoning’s primary victims, children. Late in his career, Kehoe responded to criticism of his research by the Hazard Evaluation System and Information Service of the California Department of Health, claiming that his life’s work was conducted with integrity. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1762

Categorization

• XREF: This ‘normalization of harm by industry scientists claiming integrity’ parallels the vault’s mechanism-of-rationalization theme and Cooper’s social conservatism research.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 1762