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Has the American Statistical Association Gone Post-Modern?

March 24th, 2019

Last week, the American Statistical Association (ASA) released a special issue of its journal, The American Statistician, with 43 articles addressing the issue of “statistical significance.” If you are on the ASA’s mailing list, you received an email announcing that

“the lead editorial calls for abandoning the use of ‘statistically significant’, and offers much (not just one thing) to replace it. Written by Ron Wasserstein, Allen Schirm, and Nicole Lazar, the co-editors of the special issue, ‘Moving to a World Beyond ‘p < 0.05’ summarizes the content of the issue’s 43 articles.”

In 2016, the ASA issued its “consensus” statement on statistical significance, in which it articulated six principles for interpreting p-values, and for avoiding erroneous interpretations. Ronald L. Wasserstein & Nicole A. Lazar, “The ASA’s Statement on p-Values: Context, Process, and Purpose,” 70 The American Statistician 129 (2016) [ASA Statement] In the final analysis, that ASA Statement really did not change very much, and could be read fairly only to state that statistical significance was not sufficient for causal inference.¹ Aside from overzealous, over-claiming lawyers and their expert witnesses, few scientists or statisticians had ever maintained that statistical significance was sufficient to support causal inference. Still, many “health effect claims” involve alleged causation that is really a modification of a base rate of a disease or disorder that happens without the allegedly harmful exposure, and which does not invariably happen even with the exposure. It is hard to imagine drawing an inference of such causation without ruling out random error, as well as bias and confounding.

According to the lead editorial for the special issue:

“The ASA Statement on P-Values and Statistical Significance stopped just short of recommending that declarations of ‘statistical significance’ be abandoned. We take that step here. We conclude, based on our review of the articles in this special issue and the broader literature, that it is time to stop using the term ‘statistically significant’ entirely. Nor should variants such as ‘significantly different’, ‘p < 0.05’, and ‘nonsignificant’ survive, whether expressed in words, by asterisks in a table, or in some other way.”²

The ASA (through Wasserstein and colleagues) appear to be condemning dichotomizing p-values, which are a continuum between zero and one. Presumably saying that a p-value is less than 5% is tantamount to dichotomizing, but providing the actual value of the p-value would cause no offense, as long as it was not labeled “significant.”

So although the ASA appears to have gone “whole hog,” the Wasserstein editorial does not appear to condemn assessing random error, or evaluating the extent of random error as part of assessing a study’s support for an association. Reporting p < 0.05 as opposed to p = a real number between zero and one is largely an artifact of statistical tables in the pre-computer era.

So what is the ASA affirmatively recommending? “Much, not just one thing?” Or too much of nothing, which we know makes a man feel ill at ease. Wasserstein’s editorial earnestly admits that there is no replacement for:

“the outsized role that statistical significance has come to play. The statistical community has not yet converged on a simple paradigm for the use of statistical inference in scientific research—and in fact it may never do so.”³

The 42 other articles in the special issue certainly do not converge on any unified, coherent response to the perceived crisis. Indeed, a cursory review of the abstracts alone suggests deep disagreements over an appropriate approach to statistical inference. The ASA may claim to be agnostic in the face of the contradictory recommendations, but there is one thing we know for sure: over-reaching litigants and their expert witnesses will exploit the real or apparent chaos in the ASA’s approach. The lack of coherent, consistent guidance will launch a thousand litigation ships, with no epistemic compass.⁴

1 “The American Statistical Association’s Statement on and of Significance” (March 17, 2016); “The American Statistical Association Statement on Significance Testing Goes to Court – Part I” (Nov. 13, 2018).

2 Ronald L. Wasserstein, Allen L. Schirm, and Nicole A. Lazar, “Editorial: Moving to a World Beyond ‘p < 0.05’,” 73 Am. Statistician S1, S2 (2019).

3 Id. at S2.

4 See, e.g., John P. A. Ioannidis, “Retiring statistical significance would give bias a free pass,” 567 Nature 461 (2019); Valen E. Johnson, “Raise the Bar Rather than Retire Significance,” 567 Nature 461 (2019).

Posted in Rule 702, statistical evidence | Comments Off on Has the American Statistical Association Gone Post-Modern?

Expert Witnesses Who Don’t Mean What They Say

March 24th, 2019

’Then you should say what you mean’, the March Hare went on.
‘I do’, Alice hastily replied; ‘at least–at least I mean what I say–that’s the same thing, you know’.
‘Not the same thing a bit!’ said the Hatter. ‘You might just as well say that “I see what I eat” is the same thing as “I eat what I see!”’

Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter VII (1865)

Anick Bérard is an epidemiologist at the Université de Montréal. Most of her publications involve birth outcomes and maternal medication use, but Dr. Bérard’s advocacy also involves social media (Facebook, YouTube) and expert witnessing in litigation against the pharmaceutical industry.

When the FDA issued its alert about cardiac malformations in children born to women who took Paxil (paroxetine) in their first trimesters of pregnancy, the agency characterized its assessment of the “early results of new studies for Paxil” as “suggesting that the drug increases the risk for birth defects, particularly heart defects, when women take it during the first three months of pregnancy.”¹ The agency also disclaimed any conclusion of “class effect” among the other selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), such as Zoloft (sertraline), Celexa (citalopram), and Prozac (fluoxetine). Indeed, the FDA requested the manufacturer of paroxetine to undertake additional research to look at teratogenicity of paroxetine, as well as the possibility of class effects. That research never showed an SSRI teratogenicity class effect.

A “suggestion” from the FDA of an adverse effect is sufficient to launch a thousand litigation complaints, which were duly filed against GlaxoSmithKline. The plaintiffs’ counsel recruited Dr. Bérard to serve as an expert witness in support of a wide array of birth defects in Paxil cases. In her hands, the agency’s “suggestion” of causation became a conclusion. The defense challenged Bérard’s opinions, but the federal court motion to exclude her causal opinions were taken under advisement, without decision. Hayes v. SmithKline Beecham Corp., 2009 WL 4912178 (N.D. Okla. Dec. 14, 2009). One case in state court went to trial, with a verdict for plaintiffs.

Despite Dr. Bérard;s zealous advocacy for a causal association between Paxil and birth defects, she declined to assert any association between maternal use of the other, non-paroxetine SSRIs and birth defects. Here is an excerpt from her Rule 26 report in a paroxetine case:

“Taken together, the available scientific evidence makes it clear that Paxil use during the first trimester of pregnancy is an independent risk factor that at least doubles the risk of cardiovascular malformations in newborns at all commonly used doses. This risk has been consistent and was further reinforced by repeated observational study findings as well as meta-analyses results. No such associations were found with other types of SSRI exposures during gestation.”²

In her sworn testimony, Dr. Bérard made clear that she really meant what she had written in her report, about exculpating the non-paroxetine SSRIs of any association with birth defects:

“Q. Is it fair to say that you will not be offering an opinion that SSRIs as a class, or individual SSRIs other than Paxil increased the risk of cardiovascular malformations in newborns?

A. This is not what I was asked to do.

Q. But in fact you actually write in your report that you don’t believe there’s sufficient data to reach any conclusion about other SSRIs, true?

A. Correct.”³

In 2010, Dr. Bérard, along with two professional colleagues, published what they called a systematic review of antidepressant use in pregnancy and birth outcomes.⁴ In this review, Bérard specifically advised that paroxetine should be avoided by women of childbearing age, but she and her colleagaues affirmatively encouraged use of other SSRIs, such as fluoxetine, sertraline, and citalopram:

“Clinical Approach: A Brief Overview

“For women planning a pregnancy or when a treatment initiation during pregnancy is deemed necessary, the decision should rely not only on drug safety data but also on other factors such as the patient’s condition, previous response to other antidepressants, comorbidities, expected adverse effects and potential interactions with other current pharmacological treatments. Since there is a more extensive clinical experience with SSRIs such as fluoxetine, sertraline, and citalopram, these agents should be used as first-line therapies. Whenever possible, one should refrain from prescribing paroxetine to women of childbearing potential or planning a pregnancy. However, antenatal screening such as fetal echocardiography should be considered in a woman exposed prior to finding out about her pregnancy.”⁵

When Bérard wrote and published her systematic review, she was still actively involved as an expert witness for plaintiffs in lawsuits against the manufacturers of paroxetine. In her 2010 review, Dr. Bérard gave no acknowledgment of monies earned in her capacity as an expert witness, and her disclosure of potential conflicts of interest was limited to noting that she was “a consultant for a plaintiff in the litigation involving Paxil.”⁶ In fact, Bérard had submitted multiple reports, testified at deposition, and had been listed as a testifying expert witness in many cases involving Paxil or paroxetine.

Not long after the 2010 review article, Glaxo settled most of the pending paroxetine birth defect cases, and the plaintiffs’ bar pivoted to recast their expert witnesses’ opinions as causal teratogenic conclusions about the entire class of SSRIs. In 2012, the federal courts established a “multi-district litigation,” MDL 2342, for birth defect cases involving Zoloft (sertraline), in the Philadelphia courtroom of Judge Cynthia Rufe, in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

Notwithstanding her 2010 clinical advice that pregnant women with depression should use fluoxetine, sertraline, or citalopram, Dr. Bérard became actively involved in the new litigation against the other, non-Paxil SSRI manufacturers. By 2013, Dr. Bérard was on record as a party expert witness for plaintiffs, opining that setraline causes virtually every major congenital malformation.⁷

In the same year, 2013, Dr. Bérard published another review article on teratogens, but now she gave a more equivocal view of the other SSRIs, claiming that they were “known carcinogens,” but acknowledging in a footnote that teratogenicity of the SSRIs was “controversial.”⁸ Incredibly, this review article states that “Anick Bérard and Sonia Chaabane have no potential conflicts of interest to disclose.”⁹

Ultimately, Dr. Bérard could not straddle her own contradictory statements and remain upright, which encouraged the MDL court to examine her opinions closely for methodological shortcomings and failures. Although Bérard had evolved to claim a teratogenic “class effect” for all the SSRIs, the scientific support for her claim was somewhere between weak to absent.¹⁰ Perhaps even more distressing, many of the pending claims involving the other SSRIs arose from pregnancies and births that predated Bérard’s epiphany about class effect. Finding ample evidence of specious claiming, the federal court charged with oversight of the sertraline birth defect claims excluded Dr. Bérard’s causal opinions for failing to meet the requirements of Federal Rule of Evidence 702.¹¹

Plaintiffs sought to substitute Nicholas Jewell for Dr. Bérard, but Dr. Jewell fared no better, and was excluded for other methodological shenanigans.¹² Ultimately, a unanimous panel of the United States Court of Appeals, for the Third Circuit, upheld the expert witness exclusions.¹³

1 See “FDA Advising of Risk of Birth Defects with Paxil; Agency Requiring Updated Product Labeling,” P05-97 (Dec. 8, 2005) (emphasis added).

2 Bérard Report in Hayes v. SmithKline Beecham Corp, 2009 WL 3072955, at *4 (N.D. Okla. Feb. 4, 2009) (emphasis added).

3 Deposition Testimony of Anick Bérard, in Hayes v. SmithKline Beecham Corp., at 120:16-25 (N.D. Okla. April 2009).

4 Marieve Simoncelli, Brigitte-Zoe Martin & Anick Bérard, “Antidepressant Use During Pregnancy: A Critical Systematic Review of the Literature,” 5 Current Drug Safety 153 (2010).

5 Id. at 168b.

6 Id. at 169 (emphasis added).

7 See Anick Bérard, “Expert Report” (June 19, 2013).

8 Sonia Chaabanen & Anick Bérard, “Epidemiology of Major Congenital Malformations with Specific Focus on Teratogens,” 8 Current Drug Safety 128, 136 (2013).

9 Id. at 137b.

10 See, e.g., Nicholas Myles, Hannah Newall, Harvey Ward, and Matthew Large, “Systematic meta-analysis of individual selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor medications and congenital malformations,” 47 Australian & New Zealand J. Psychiatry 1002 (2013).

11 See In re Zoloft (Sertraline Hydrochloride) Prods. Liab. Litig., MDL No. 2342; 26 F.Supp. 3d 449 (E.D.Pa. 2014) (Rufe, J.). Plaintiffs, through their Plaintiffs’ Steering Committee, moved for reconsideration, but Judge Rufe reaffirmed her exclusion of Dr. Bérard. In re Zoloft (Sertraline Hydrochloride) Prods. Liab. Litig., MDL No. 2342; 12-md-2342, 2015 WL 314149 (E.D. Pa. Jan. 23, 2015) (Rufe, J.) (denying PSC’s motion for reconsideration). See “Zoloft MDL Relieves Matrixx Depression” (Jan. 30, 2015).

12 See In re Zoloft Prods. Liab. Litig., No. 12–md–2342, 2015 WL 7776911 (E.D. Pa. Dec. 2, 2015) (excluding Jewell’s opinions as scientifically unwarranted and methodologically flawed); In re Zoloft Prod. Liab. Litig., MDL NO. 2342, 12-MD-2342, 2016 WL 1320799 (E.D. Pa. April 5, 2016) (granting summary judgment after excluding Dr. Jewell). See also “The Education of Judge Rufe – The Zoloft MDL” (April 9, 2016).

13 In re Zoloft Prod. Liab. Litig., 858 F.3d 787 (3d Cir. 2017). See “WOE — Zoloft Escapes a MDL While Third Circuit Creates a Conceptual Muddle” (July 31, 2017).

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The Contrivance Standard for Gatekeeping

March 23rd, 2019

According to Google ngram, the phrase “junk science” made its debut circa 1975, lagging junk food by about five years. See “The Rise and Rise of Junk Science” (Mar. 8, 2014). I have never much like the phrase “junk science” because it suggests that courts need only be wary of the absurd and ridiculous in their gatekeeping function. Some expert witness opinions are, in fact, serious scientific contributions, just not worthy of being advanced as scientific conclusions. Perhaps better than “junk” would be patho-epistemologic opinions, or maybe even wissenschmutz, but even these terms might obscure that the opinion that needs to be excluded derives from serious scientific, only it is not ready to be held forth as a scientific conclusion that can be colorably called knowledge.

Another formulation of my term, patho-epistemology, is the Eleventh Circuit’s lovely “Contrivance Standard.” Rink v. Cheminova, Inc., 400 F.3d 1286, 1293 & n.7 (11th Cir. 2005). In Rink, the appellate court held that the district court had acted within its discretion to exclude expert witness testimony because it had properly confined its focus to the challenged expert witness’s methodology, not his credibility:

“In evaluating the reliability of an expert’s method, however, a district court may properly consider whether the expert’s methodology has been contrived to reach a particular result. See Joiner, 522 U.S. at 146, 118 S.Ct. at 519 (affirming exclusion of testimony where the methodology was called into question because an “analytical gap” existed “between the data and the opinion proffered”); see also Elcock v. Kmart Corp., 233 F.3d 734, 748 (3d Cir. 2000) (questioning the methodology of an expert because his “novel synthesis” of two accepted methodologies allowed the expert to ”offer a subjective judgment … in the guise of a reliable expert opinion”).”

Note the resistance, however, to the Supreme Court’s mandate of gatekeeping. District courts must apply the statutes, Rule of Evidence 702 and 703. There is no legal authority for the suggestion that a district court “may properly consider wither the expert’s methodology has been contrived.” Rink, 400 F.3d at 1293 n.7 (emphasis added).

Posted in Expert Witness Hall of Shame, Rule 702 | Comments Off on The Contrivance Standard for Gatekeeping

The Joiner Finale

March 23rd, 2019

“This is the end
Beautiful friend

This is the end
My only friend, the end”

Jim Morrison, “The End” (c. 1966)

The General Electric Co. v. Joiner, 522 U.S. 136 (1997), case was based upon polychlorinated biphenyl exposures (PCB), only in part. The PCB part did not hold up well legally in the Supreme Court; nor was the PCB lung cancer claim vindicated by later scientific evidence. See “How Have Important Rule 702 Holdings Held Up With Time?” (Mar. 20, 2015).

The Supreme Court in Joiner reversed and remanded the case to the 11^th Circuit, which then remanded the case back to the district court to address claims that Mr. Joiner had been exposed to furans and dioxins, and that these other chemicals had caused, or contributed to, his lung cancer, as well. Joiner v. General Electric Co., 134 F.3d 1457 (11th Cir. 1998) (per curiam). Thus the dioxins were left in the case even after the Supreme Court ruled.

After the Supreme Court’s decision, Anthony Roisman argued that the Court had addressed an artificial question when asked about PCBs alone because the case was really about an alleged mixture of exposures, and he held out hope that the Joiners would do better on remand. Anthony Z. Roisman, “The Implications of G.E. v. Joiner for Admissibility of Expert Testimony,” 1 Res Communes 65 (1999).

Many Daubert observers (including me) are unaware of the legal fate of the Joiners’ claims on remand. In the only reference I could find, the commentator simply noted that the case resolved before trial.[1] I am indebted to Michael Risinger, and Joseph Cecil, for pointing me to documents from PACER, which shed some light upon the Joiner “endgame.”

In February 1998, Judge Orinda Evans, who had been the original trial judge, and who had sustained defendants’ Rule 702 challenges and granted their motions for summary judgments, received and reopened the case upon remand from the 11th Circuit. In March, Judge Evans directed the parties to submit a new pre-trial order by April 17, 1998. At a status conference in April 1998, Judge Evans permitted the plaintiffs additional discovery, to be completed by June 17, 1998. Five days before the expiration of their additional discovery period, the plaintiffs moved for additional time; defendants opposed the request. In July, Judge Evans granted the requested extension, and gave defendants until November 1, 1998, to file for summary judgment.

Meanwhile, in June 1998, new counsel entered their appearances for plaintiffs – William Sims Stone, Kevin R. Dean, Thomas Craig Earnest, and Stanley L. Merritt. The docket does not reflect much of anything about the new discovery other than a request for a protective order for an unpublished study. But by October 6, 1998, the new counsel, Earnest, Dean, and Stone (but not Merritt) withdrew as attorneys for the Joiners, and by the end of October 1998, Judge Evans entered an order to dismiss the case, without prejudice.

A few months later, in February 1999, the parties filed a stipulation, approved by the Clerk, dismissing the action with prejudice, and with each party to bear its own coasts. Given the flight of plaintiffs’ counsel, the dismissals without and then with prejudice, a settlement seems never to have been involved in the resolution of the Joiner case. In the end, the Joiners’ case fizzled perhaps to avoid being Frye’d.

And what has happened since to the science of dioxins and lung cancer?

Not much.

In 2006, the National Research Council published a monograph on dioxin, which took the controversial approach of focusing on all cancer mortality rather than specific cancers that had been suggested as likely outcomes of interest. See David L. Eaton (Chairperson), Health Risks from Dioxin and Related Compounds – Evaluation of the EPA Reassessment (2006). The validity of this approach, and the committee’s conclusions, were challenged vigorously in subsequent publications. Paolo Boffetta, Kenneth A. Mundt, Hans-Olov Adami, Philip Cole, and Jack S. Mandel, “TCDD and cancer: A critical review of epidemiologic studies,” 41 Critical Rev. Toxicol. 622 (2011) (“In conclusion, recent epidemiological evidence falls far short of conclusively demonstrating a causal link between TCDD exposure and cancer risk in humans.”

In 2013, the Industrial Injuries Advisory Council (IIAC), an independent scientific advisory body in the United Kingdom, published a review of lung cancer and dioxin. The Council found the epidemiologic studies mixed, and declined to endorse the compensability of lung cancer for dioxin-exposed industrial workers. Industrial Injuries Advisory Council – Information Note on Lung cancer and Dioxin (December 2013). See also Mann v. CSX Transp., Inc., 2009 WL 3766056, 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 106433 (N.D. Ohio 2009) (Polster, J.) (dioxin exposure case) (“Plaintiffs’ medical expert, Dr. James Kornberg, has opined that numerous organizations have classified dioxins as a known human carcinogen. However, it is not appropriate for one set of experts to bring the conclusions of another set of experts into the courtroom and then testify merely that they ‘agree’ with that conclusion.”), citing Thorndike v. DaimlerChrysler Corp., 266 F. Supp. 2d 172 (D. Me. 2003) (court excluded expert who was “parroting” other experts’ conclusions).

Last year, an industrial cohort, followed for two decades found no increased risk of lung cancer among workers exposed to dioxin. David I. McBride, James J. Collins, Thomas John Bender, Kenneth M Bodner, and Lesa L. Aylward, “Cohort study of workers at a New Zealand agrochemical plant to assess the effect of dioxin exposure on mortality,” 8 Brit. Med. J. Open e019243 (2018) (reporting SMR for lung cancer 0.95, 95%CI: 0.56 to 1.53)

[1] Morris S. Zedeck, Expert Witness in the Legal System: A Scientist’s Search for Justice 49 (2010) (noting that, after remand from the Supreme Court, Joiner v. General Electric resolved before trial)

Posted in Causation, Expert Witnesses, Rule 702 | Comments Off on The Joiner Finale

Lipitor Diabetes MDL’s Inexact Analysis of Fisher’s Exact Test

March 23rd, 2019

Muriel Bristol was a biologist who studied algae at the Rothamsted Experimental Station in England, after World War I. In addition to her knowledge of plant biology, Bristol claimed the ability to tell whether tea had been added to milk, or the tea poured first and then milk had been added. Bristol, as a scientist and a proper English woman, preferred the latter.

Ronald Fisher, who also worked at Rothamsted, expressed his skepticism over Dr. Bristol’s claim. Fisher set about to design a randomized experiment that would efficiently and effectively test her claim. Bristol was presented with eight cups of tea, four of which were prepared with milk added to tea, and four prepared with tea added to milk. Bristol, of course, was blinded to which was which, but was required to label each according to its manner of preparation. Fisher saw his randomized experiment as a 2 x 2 contingency table, from he could calculate the observed outcome (and ones more extreme if there were any more extreme outcomes) using the assumption of fixed marginal rates and the hypergeometric probability distribution. Fisher’s Exact Test was born at tea time.[1]

Fisher described the origins of his Exact Test in one of his early texts, but he neglected to report whether his experiment vindicated Bristol’s claim. According to David Salsburg, H. Fairfield Smith, one of Fisher’s colleagues, acknowledged that Bristol nailed Fisher’s Exact test, with all eight cups correctly identified. The test has gone on to become an important tool in the statistician’s armamentarium.

Fisher’s Exact, like any statistical test, has model assumptions and preconditions. For one thing, the test is designed for categorical data, with binary outcomes. The test allows us to evaluate whether two proportions are likely different by chance alone, by calculating the probability of the observed outcome, as well as more extreme outcomes.

The calculation of an exact attained significance probability, using Fisher’s approach, provides a one-sided p-value, with no unique solution to calculating a two-side attained significance probability. In discrimination cases, the one-sided p-value may well be more appropriate for the issue at hand. The Fisher’s Exact Test has thus played an important role in showing the judiciary that small sample size need not be an insuperable barrier to meaningful statistical analysis. In discrimination cases, the one-sided p-value provided by the test is not a particular problem.[2]

The difficulty of using Fisher’s Exact for small sample sizes is that the hypergeometric distribution, upon which the test is based, is highly asymmetric. The observed one-sided p-value does not measure the probability of a result equally extreme in the opposite direction. There are at least three ways to calculate the p-value:

Double the one-sided p-value.
Add the point probabilities from the opposite tail that are more extreme than the observed point probability.
Use the mid-P value; that is, add all values more extreme (smaller) than the observed point probability from both sides of the distribution, PLUS ½ of the observed point probability.

Some software programs will proceed in one of these ways by default, but their doing so does guarantee the most accurate measure of two-tailed significance probability.

In the Lipitor MDL for diabetes litigation, Judge Gergel generally used sharp analyses to cut through the rancid fat of litigation claims, to get to the heart of the matter. By and large, he appears to have done a splendid job. In course of gatekeeping under Federal Rule of Evidence 702, however, Judge Gergel may have misunderstood the nature of Fisher’s Exact Test.

Nicholas Jewell is a well-credentialed statistician at the University of California. In the courtroom, Jewell is a well-known expert witness for the litigation industry. He is no novice at generating unreliable opinion testimony. See In re Zoloft Prods. Liab. Litig., No. 12–md–2342, 2015 WL 7776911 (E.D. Pa. Dec. 2, 2015) (excluding Jewell’s opinions as scientifically unwarranted and methodologically flawed). In re Zoloft Prod. Liab. Litig., MDL NO. 2342, 12-MD-2342, 2016 WL 1320799 (E.D. Pa. April 5, 2016) (granting summary judgment after excluding Dr. Jewell). See “The Education of Judge Rufe – The Zoloft MDL” (April 9, 2016).

In the Lipitor cases, some of Jewell’s opinions seemed outlandish indeed, and Judge Gergel generally excluded them. See In re Lipitor Marketing, Sales Practices and Prods. Liab. Litig., 145 F.Supp. 3d 573 (D.S.C. 2015), reconsideration den’d, 2016 WL 827067 (D.S.C. Feb. 29, 2016). As Judge Gergel explained, Jewell calculated a relative risk for abnormal blood glucose in a Lipitor group to be 3.0 (95% C.I., 0.9 to 9.6), using STATA software. Also using STATA, Jewell obtained an attained significance probability of 0.0654, based upon Fisher’s Exact Test. Lipitor Jewell at *7.

Judge Gergel did not report whether Jewell’s reported p-value of 0.0654, was one- or two-sided, but he did state that the attained probability “indicates a lack of statistical significance.” Id. & n. 15. The rest of His Honor’s discussion of the challenged opinion, however, makes clear that of 0.0654 must have been a two-sided value. If it had been a one-sided p-value, then there would have been no way of invoking the mid-p to generate a two-sided p-value below 5%. The mid-p will always be larger than the one-tailed exact p-value generated by Fisher’s Exact Test.

The court noted that Dr. Jewell had testified that he believed that STATA generated this confidence interval by “flip[ping]” the Taylor series approximation. The STATA website notes that it calculates confidence intervals for odds ratios (which are different from the relative risk that Jewell testified he computed), by inverting the Fisher exact test.[3] Id. at *7 & n. 17. Of course, this description suggests that the confidence interval is not based upon exact methods.

STATA does not provide a mid p-value calculation, and so Jewell used an on-line calculator, to obtain a mid p-value of 0.04, which he declared statistically significant. The court took Jewell to task for using the mid p-value as though it were a different analysis or test. Id. at *8. Because the mid-p value will always be larger than the one-sided exact p-value from Fisher’s Exact Test, the court’s explanation does not really make sense:

“Instead, Dr. Jewell turned to the mid-p test, which would ‘[a]lmost surely’ produce a lower p-value than the Fisher exact test.”

Id. at *8. The mid-p test, however, is not different from the Fisher’s exact; rather it is simply a way of dealing with the asymmetrical distribution that underlies the Fisher’s exact, to arrive at a two-tailed p-value that more accurately captures the rate of Type I error.

The MDL court acknowledged that the mid-p approach, was not inherently unreliable, but questioned Jewell’s inconsistent, selective use of the approach for only one test.[4] Jewell certainly did not help the plaintiffs’ cause and his standing by having discarding the analyses that were not incorporated into his report, thus leaving the MDL court to guess at how much selection went on in his process of generating his opinions.. Id. at *9 & n. 19.

None of Jewell’s other calculated p-values involved the mid-p approach, but the court’s criticism begs the question whether the other p-values came from a Fisher’s Exact Test with small sample size, or other highly asymmetrical distribution. Id. at *8. Although Jewell had shown himself willing to engage in other dubious, result-oriented analyses, Jewell’s use of the mid-p for this one comparison may have been within acceptable bounds after all.

The court also noted that Jewell had obtained the “exact p-value and that this p-value was not significant.” Id. The court’s notation here, however, does not report the important detail whether that exact, unreported p-value was merely the doubled of the one-sided p-value given by the Fisher’s Exact Test. As the STATA website, cited by the MDL court, explains:

“The test naturally gives a one-sided p-value, and there are at least four different ways to convert it to a two-sided p-value (Agresti 2002, 93). One way, not implemented in Stata, is to double the one-sided p-value; doubling is simple but can result in p-values larger than one.”

Wesley Eddings, “Fisher’s exact test two-sided idiosyncrasy” (Jan. 2009) (citing Alan Agresti, Categorical Data Analysis 93 (2d ed. 2002)).

On plaintiffs’ motion for reconsideration, the MDL court reaffirmed its findings with respect to Jewell’s use of the mid-p. Lipitor Jewell Reconsidered at *3. In doing so, the court insisted that the one instance in which Jewell used the mid-p stood in stark contrast to all the other instances in which he had used Fisher’s Exact Test. The court then cited to the record to identify 21 other instances in which Jewell used a p-value rather than a mid-p value. The court, however, did not provide the crucial detail whether these 21 other instances actually involved small-sample applications of Fisher’s Exact Test. As result-oriented as Jewell can be, it seems safe to assume that not all his statistical analyses involved Fisher’s Exact Test, with its attendant ambiguity for how to calculate a two-tailed p-value.

[1] Sir Ronald A. Fisher, The Design of Experiments at chapter 2 (1935); see also Stephen Senn, “Tea for three: Of infusions and inferences and milk in first,” Significance 30 (Dec. 2012); David Salsburg, The Lady Tasting Tea: How Statistics Revolutionized Science in the Twentieth Century (2002).

[2] See, e.g., Dendy v. Washington Hosp. Ctr., 431 F. Supp. 873 (D.D.C. 1977) (denying preliminary injunction), rev’d, 581 F.2d 99 (D.C. Cir. 1978) (reversing denial of relief, and remanding for reconsideration). See also National Academies of Science, Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence 255 n.108 (3d ed. 2011) (“Well-known small sample techniques [for testing significance and calculating p-values] include the sign test and Fisher’s exact test.”).

[3] See Wesley Eddings, “Fisher’s exact test two-sided idiosyncrasy” (Jan. 2009), available at <http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/statistics/fishers-exact-test/>, last visited April 19, 2016 (“Stata’s exact confidence interval for the odds ratio inverts Fisher’s exact test.”). This article by Eddings contains a nice discussion of why the Fisher’s Exact Test attained significance probability disagrees with the calculated confidence interval. Eddings points out the asymmetry of the hypergeometric distribution, which complicates arriving at an exact p-value for a two-sided test.

[4] See Barber v. United Airlines, Inc., 17 Fed. Appx. 433, 437 (7th Cir. 2001) (“Because in formulating his opinion Dr. Hynes cherry-picked the facts he considered to render an expert opinion, the district court correctly barred his testimony because such a selective use of facts fails to satisfy the scientific method and Daubert.”).

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Apportionment and Pennsylvania’s Fair Share Act

March 14th, 2019

In 2011, Pennsylvania enacted the Fair Share Act, which was remedial legislation designed to mitigate the unfairness of joint and several liability in mass, and other, tort litigation by abrogating joint and several liability in favor of apportionment of shares among multiple defendants, including settled defendants.¹

Although the statute stated the general rule in terms of negligence,² the Act was clearly intended to apply to actions for so-called strict liability:³

“(1) Where recovery is allowed against more than one person, including actions for strict liability, and where liability is attributed to more than one defendant, each defendant shall be liable for that proportion of the total dollar amount awarded as damages in the ratio of the amount of that defendant’s liability to the amount of liability attributed to all defendants and other persons to whom liability is apportioned under subsection.”

The intended result of the legislation was for courts to enter separate and several judgments against defendants held liable in the amount apportioned to each defendant’s liability.⁴ The Act created exceptions for for intentional torts and for cases in which a defendant receives 60% or greater share in the apportionment.⁵

In Pennsylvania, as in other states, judges sometimes fall prey to the superstition that the law, procedural and substantive, does not apply to asbestos cases. Roverano v. John Crane, Inc., is an asbestos case in which the plaintiff claimed his lung cancer was caused by exposure to multiple defendants’ products. The trial judge, falling under the sway of asbestos exceptionalism, refused to apply Fair Share Act, suggesting that “the jury was not presented with evidence that would permit an apportionment to be made by it.”

The Roverano trial judge’s suggestion is remarkable, given that any plaintiff is exposed to different asbestos products in distinguishable amounts, and for distinguishable durations. Furthermore, asbestos products have distinguishable, relative levels of friability, with different levels of respirable fiber exposure for the plaintiff. In some cases, the products contain different kinds of asbestos minerals, which have distinguishable and relative levels of potency to cause the plaintiff’s specific disease. Asbestos cases, whether involving asbestosis, lung cancer, or mesothelioma claims, are more amenable to apportionment of shares among co-defendants than are “red car / blue car” cases.

Pennsylvania’s intermediate appellate court reversed the trial court’s asbestos exceptionalism, and held that upon remand, the court must:

“[a]pply a non-per capita allocation to negligent joint tortfeasors and strict liability joint tortfeasors; and permit evidence of settlements reached between plaintiffs and bankrupt entities to be included in the calculation of allocation of liability.”

Roverano v. John Crane, 2017 Pa. Super. 415, 177 A.3d 892 (2017).

The Superior Court’s decision did not sit well with the litigation industry, which likes joint and several liability, with equal shares. Joint and several liability permits plaintiffs’ counsel to extort large settlements from minor defendants who face the prospect of out-sized pro rata shares after trial, without the benefit of reductions for the shares of settled bankrupt defendants. The Roverano plaintiff appealed from the Superior Court’s straightforward application of a remedial statute.

What should be a per curiam affirmance of the Superior Court, however, could result in another act of asbestos exceptionalism by Pennsylvania Supreme Court. Media reports of the oral argument in Roverano suggest that several of the justices invoked the specter of “junk science” in apportioning shares among asbestos co-defendants.⁶ Disrespectfully, Justice Max Baer commented:

“Respectfully, your theory is interjecting junk science. We’ve never held that duration of contact corresponds with culpability.”⁷

The Pennsylvania Justices’ muddle can be easily avoided. First, the legislature clearly expressed its intention that apportionment be permitted in strict liability cases.

Second, failure-to-warn strict liability cases are, as virtually all scholars and most courts recognize, essentially negligence cases, in any event.⁸

Third, apportionment is a well-recognized procedure in the law of Torts, including the Pennsylvania law of torts. Apportionment of damages among various causes was recognized in the Restatement of Torts (Second) Section 433A (Apportionment of Harm to Causes), which specifies that:

(1) Damages for harm are to be apportioned among two or more causes where

(a) there are distinct harms, or

(b) there is a reasonable basis for determining the contribution of each cause to a single harm.

Restatement (Second) of Torts § 433A(1) (1965) [hereinafter cited as Section 433A].

The comments to Section 433A suggest a liberal application for apportionment. The rules set out in Section 433A apply “whenever two or more causes have combined to bring about harm to the plaintiff, and each has been a substantial factor in producing the harm … .”

Id., comment a. The independent causes may be tortious or innocent, “and it is immaterial whether all or any of such persons are joined as defendants in the particular action.” Id. Indeed, apportionment also applies when the defendant’s conduct combines “with the operation of a force of nature, or with a pre-existing condition which the defendant has not caused, to bring about the harm to the plaintiff.” Just as the law of grits applies in everyone’s kitchen, the law of apportionment applies in Pennsylvania courts.

Apportionment of damages is an accepted legal principle in Pennsylvania law. Martin v. Owens-Corning Fiberglas Corp., 515 Pa. 377, 528 A.2d 947 (1987). Courts, applying Pennsylvania law, have permitted juries to apportion damages between asbestos and cigarette smoking as causal factors in plaintiffs’ lung cancers, based upon a reasonable basis for determining the contribution of each source of harm to a single harm.⁹

In Parker, none of the experts assigned exact mathematical percentages to the probability that asbestos rather than smoking caused the lung cancer. The Court of Appeals noted that on the record before it:

“we cannot say that no reasonable basis existed for determining the contribution of cigarette smoking to the cancer suffered by the decedent.”¹⁰

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has itself affirmed the proposition that “liability attaches to a negligent act only to the degree that the negligent act caused the employee’s injury.”¹¹ Thus, even in straight-up negligence cases, causal apportionment must play in a role, even when the relative causal contributions are much harder to determine than in the quasi-quantitative setting of an asbestos exposure claim.

Let’s hope that Justice Baer and his colleagues read the statute and the case law before delivering judgment. The first word in the name of the legislation is Fair.

1 42 Pa.C.S.A. § 7102.

2 42 Pa.C.S.A. § 7102(a)

3 42 Pa.C.S.A. § 7102(a)(1) (emphasis added).

4 42 Pa.C.S.A. § 7102(a)(2).

5 42 Pa.C.S.A. § 7102 (a)(3)(ii), (iii).

6 See Max Mitchell, “Pa. Justices Express Wariness of ‘Junk Science’ in Applying Fair Share Act,” ( Mar. 6, 2019).

7 Id. (quoting Baer, J.).

8 See, e.g, Restatement (Third) of Torts: Products Liability § 2, and comment I (1998); Fane v. Zimmer, Inc., 927 F.2d 124, 130 (2d Cir. 1991) (“Failure to warn claims purporting to sound in strict liability and those sounding in negligence are essentially the same.”).

9 Parker v. Bell Asbestos Mines, No. 86-1197, unpublished slip op. at 5 (3d Cir., Dec. 30, 1987) (per curiam) (citing Section 433A as Pennsylvania law, and Martin v. Owens-Corning Fiberglas Corp. , 515 Pa. 377, 528 A.2d 947, 949 (1987))

10 Id. at 7.

11 Dale v. Baltimore & Ohio RR., 520 Pa. 96, 106, 552 A.2d 1037, 1041 (1989). See also McAllister v. Pennsylvania RR., 324 Pa. 65, 69-70, 187 A. 415, 418 (1936) (holding that plaintiff’s impairment, and pain and suffering, can be apportioned between two tortious causes; plaintiff need not separate damages with exactitude); Shamey v. State Farm Mutual Auto. Ins. Co., 229 Pa. Super. 215, 223, 331 A.2d 498, 502 (1974) (citing, and relying upon, Section 433A; difficulties in proof do not constitute sufficient reason to hold a defendant liable for the damage inflicted by another person). Pennsylvania law is in accord with the law of other states as well, on apportionment. See Waterson v. General Motors Corp., 111 N.J. 238, 544 A.2d 357 (1988) (holding that a strict liability claim against General Motors for an unreasonably dangerous product defect was subject to apportionment for contribution from failing to wear a seat belt) (the jury’s right to apportion furthered the public policy of properly allocating the costs of accidents and injuries).

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ASA Statement Goes to Court – Part 2

March 7th, 2019

It has been almost three years since the American Statistical Association (ASA) issued its statement on statistical significance. Ronald L. Wasserstein & Nicole A. Lazar, “The ASA’s Statement on p-Values: Context, Process, and Purpose,” 70 The American Statistician 129 (2016) [ASA Statement]. Before the ASA’s Statement, courts and lawyers from all sides routinely misunderstood, misstated, and misrepresented the meaning of statistical significance.¹ These errors were pandemic despite the efforts of the Federal Judicial Center and the National Academies of Science to educate judges and lawyers, through their Reference Manuals on Scientific Evidence and seminars. The interesting question is whether the ASA’s Statement has improved, or will improve, the unfortunate situation.²

The ASA Statement on Testosterone

“Ye blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel!”
Matthew 23:24

To capture the state of the art, or the state of correct and flawed interpretations of the ASA Statement, reviewing a recent but now resolved, large so-called mass tort may be illustrative. Pharmaceutical products liability cases almost always turn on evidence from pharmaco-epidemiologic studies that compare the rate of an outcome of interest among patients taking a particular medication with the rate among similar, untreated patients. These studies compare the observed with the expected rates, and invariably assess the differences as either a “risk ratio,” or a “risk difference,” for both the magnitude of the difference and for “significance probability” of observing a rate at least as large as seen in the exposed group, given the assumptions that that the medication did not change the rate and that the data followed a given probability distribution. In these alleged “health effects” cases, claims and counterclaims of misuse of significance probability have been pervasive. After the ASA Statement was released, some lawyers began to modify their arguments to suggest that their adversaries’ arguments offend the ASA’s pronouncements.

One litigation that showcases the use and misuse of the ASA Statement arose from claims that AbbVie, Inc.’s transdermal testosterone medication (TRT) causes heart attacks, strokes, and venous thromboembolism. The FDA had reviewed the plaintiffs’ claims, made in a Public Citizen complaint, and resoundingly rejected the causal interpretation of two dubious observational studies, and an incomplete meta-analysis that used an off-beat composite end point.³ The Public Citizen petition probably did succeed in pushing the FDA to convene an Advisory Committee meeting, which again resulted in a rejection of the causal claims. The FDA did, however, modify the class labeling for TRT with respect to indication and a possible association with cardiovascular outcomes. And then the litigation came.

Notwithstanding the FDA’s determination that a causal association had not been shown, thousands of plaintiffs sued several companies, with most of the complaints falling on AbbVie, Inc., which had the largest presence in the market. The ASA Statement came up occasionally in pre-trial depositions, but became a major brouhaha, when AbbVie moved to exclude plaintiffs’ causation expert witnesses.⁴

The Defense’s Anticipatory Parry of the ASA Statement

As AbbVie described the situation:

“Plaintiffs’ experts uniformly seek to abrogate the established methods and standards for determining … causal factors in favor of precisely the kind of subjective judgments that Daubert was designed to avoid. Tests for statistical significance are characterized as ‘misleading’ and rejected [by plaintiffs’ expert witnesses] in favor of non-statistical ‘estimates’, ‘clinical judgment’, and ‘gestalt’ views of the evidence.”⁵

AbbVie’s brief in support of excluding plaintiffs’ expert witnesses barely mentioned the ASA Statement, but in a footnote, the defense anticipated the Plaintiffs’ opposition would be based on rejecting the importance of statistical significance testing and the claim that this rejection was somehow supported by the ASA Statement:

“The statistical community is currently debating whether scientists who lack expertise in statistics misunderstand p-values and overvalue significance testing. [citing ASA Statement] The fact that there is a debate among professional statisticians on this narrow issue does not validate Dr. Gerstman’s [plaintiffs’ expert witness’s] rejection of the importance of statistical significance testing, or undermine Defendants’ reliance on accepted methods for determining association and causation.”⁶

In its brief in support of excluding causation opinions, the defense took pains to define statistical significance, and managed to do so, painfully, or at least in ways that the ASA conferees would have found objectionable:

“Any association found must be tested for its statistical significance. Statistical significance testing measures the likelihood that the observed association could be due to chance variation among samples. Scientists evaluate whether an observed effect is due to chance using p-values and confidence intervals. The prevailing scientific convention requires that there be 95% probability that the observed association is not due to chance (expressed as a p-value < 0.05) before reporting a result as “statistically significant. * * * This process guards against reporting false positive results by setting a ceiling for the probability that the observed positive association could be due to chance alone, assuming that no association was actually present.”⁷

AbbVie’s brief proceeded to characterize the confidence interval as a tool of significance testing, again in a way that misstates the mathematical meaning and importance of the interval:

“The determination of statistical significance can be described equivalently in terms of the confidence interval calculated in connection with the association. A confidence interval indicates the level of uncertainty that exists around the measured value of the association (i.e., the OR or RR). A confidence interval defines the range of possible values for the actual OR or RR that are compatible with the sample data, at a specified confidence level, typically 95% under the prevailing scientific convention. Reference Manual, at 580 (Ex. 14) (“If a 95% confidence interval is specified, the range encompasses the results we would expect 95% of the time if samples for new studies were repeatedly drawn from the same population.”). * * * If the confidence interval crosses 1.0, this means there may be no difference between the treatment group and the control group, therefore the result is not considered statistically significant.”⁸

Perhaps AbbVie’s counsel should be permitted a plea in mitigation by having cited to, and quoted from, the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence’s chapter on epidemiology, which was also wide of the mark in its description of the confidence interval. Counsel would have been better served by the Manual’s more rigorous and accurate chapter on statistics. Even so, the above-quoted statements give an inappropriate interpretation of random error as a probability about the hypothesis being tested.⁹ Particularly dangerous, in terms of failing to advance AbbVie’s own objectives, was the characterization of the confidence interval as measuring the level of uncertainty, as though there were no other sources of uncertainty other than random error in the measurement of the risk ratio.

The Plaintiffs’ Attack on Significance Testing

The Plaintiffs, of course, filed an opposition brief that characterized the defense position as an attempt to:

“elevate statistical significance, as measured by confidence intervals and so-called p-values, to the status of an absolute requirement to the establishment of causation.”¹⁰

Tellingly, the plaintiffs’ brief fails to point to any modern-era example of a scientific determination of causation based upon epidemiologic evidence, in which the pertinent studies were not assessed for, and found to show, statistical significance.

After citing a few judicial opinions that underplayed the importance of statistical significance, the Plaintiffs’ opposition turned to the ASA Statement for what it perceived to be support for its loosey-goosey approach to causal inference.¹¹ The Plaintiffs’ opposition brief quoted a series of propositions from the ASA Statement, without the ASA’s elaborations and elucidations, and without much in the way of explanation or commentary. At the very least, the Plaintiffs’ heavy reliance upon, despite their distortions of, the ASA Statement helped them to define key statistical concepts more carefully than had AbbVie in its opening brief.

The ASA Statement, however, was not immune from being misrepresented in the Plaintiffs’ opposition brief. Many of the quoted propositions were quite beside the points of the dispute over the validity and reliability of Plaintiffs’ expert witnesses’ conclusions of causation about testosterone and heart attacks, conclusions not reached or shared by the FDA, any consensus statement from medical organizations, or any serious published systematic review:

“P-values do not measure the probability that the studied hypothesis is true, … .”¹²

This proposition from the ASA Statement is true, but trivially true. (Of course, this ASA principle is relevant to the many judicial decisions that have managed to misstate what p-values measure.) The above-quoted proposition follows from the definition and meaning of the p-value; only someone who did not understand significance probability would confuse it with the probability of the truth of the studied hypothesis. P-values’ not measuring the probability of the null hypothesis, or any alternative hypothesis, is not a flaw in p-values, but arguably their strength.

“A p-value, or statistical significance, does not measure the size of an effect or the importance of a result.”¹³

Again, true, true, and immaterial. The existence of other importance metrics, such as the magnitude of an association or correlation, hardly detracts from the importance of assessing the random error in an observed statistic. The need to assess clinical or practical significance of an association or correlation also does not detract from the importance of the assessed random error in a measured statistic.

“By itself, a p-value does not provide a good measure of evidence regarding a model or hypothesis.”¹⁴

The Plaintiffs’ opposition attempted to spin the above ASA statement as a criticism of p-values involves an elenchi ignoratio. Once again, the p-value assumes a probability model and a null hypothesis, and so it cannot provide a “measure” or the model or hypothesis’ probability.

The Plaintiffs’ final harrumph on the ASA Statement was their claim that the ASA Statement’s conclusion was “especially significant” to the testosterone litigation:

“Good statistical practice, as an essential component of good scientific practice, emphasizes principles of good study design and conduct, a variety of numerical and graphical summaries of data, understanding of the phenomenon under study, interpretation of results in context, complete reporting and proper logical and quantitative understanding of what data summaries mean. No single index should substitute for scientific reasoning.”¹⁵

The existence of other important criteria in the evaluation and synthesis of a complex body of studies does not erase or supersede the importance of assessing stochastic error in the epidemiologic studies. Plaintiffs’ Opposition Brief asserted that the Defense had attempted to:

“to substitute the single index, the p-value, for scientific reasoning in the reports of Plaintiffs’ experts should be rejected.”¹⁶

Some of the defense’s opening brief could indeed be read as reducing causal inference to the determination of statistical significance. A sympathetic reading of the entire AbbVie brief, however, shows that it had criticized the threats to validity in the observational epidemiologic studies, as well as some of the clinical trials, and other rampant flaws in the Plaintiffs’ expert witnesses’ reasoning. The Plaintiffs’ citations to the ASA Statement’s “negative” propositions about p-values (to emphasize what they are not) appeared to be the stuffing of a strawman, used to divert attention from other failings of their own claims and proffered analyses. In other words, the substance of the Rule 702 application had much more to do with data quality and study validity than statistical significance.

What did the trial court make of this back and forth about statistical significance and the ASA Statement? For the most part, the trial court denied both sides’ challenges to proffered expert witness testimony on causation and statistical issues. In sorting the controversy over the ASA Statement, the trial court apparently misunderstood key statistical concepts and paid little attention to the threats to validity other than random variability in study results.¹⁷ The trial court summarized the controversy as follows:

“In arguing that the scientific literature does not support a finding that TRT is associated with the alleged injuries, AbbVie emphasize [sic] the importance of considering the statistical significance of study results. Though experts for both AbbVie and plaintiffs agree that statistical significance is a widely accepted concept in the field of statistics and that there is a conventional method for determining the statistical significance of a study’s findings, the parties and their experts disagree about the conclusions one may permissibly draw from a study result that is deemed to possess or lack statistical significance according to conventional methods of making that determination.”¹⁸

Of course, there was never a controversy presented to the court about drawing a conclusion from “a study.” By the time the briefs were filed, both sides had multiple observational studies, clinical trials, and meta-analyses to synthesize into opinions for or against causal claims.

Ironically, AbbVie might claim to have prevailed in having the trial court adopt its misleading definitions of p-values and confidence intervals:

“Statisticians test for statistical significance to determine the likelihood that a study’s findings are due to chance. *** According to conventional statistical practice, such a result *** would be considered statistically significant if there is a 95% probability, also expressed as a “p-value” of <0.05, that the observed association is not the product of chance. If, however, the p-value were greater than 0.05, the observed association would not be regarded as statistically significant, according to prevailing conventions, because there is a greater than 5% probability that the association observed was the result of chance.”¹⁹

The MDL court similarly appeared to accept AbbVie’s dubious description of the confidence interval:

“A confidence interval consists of a range of values. For a 95% confidence interval, one would expect future studies sampling the same population to produce values within the range 95% of the time. So if the confidence interval ranged from 1.2 to 3.0, the association would be considered statistically significant, because one would expect, with 95% confidence, that future studies would report a ratio above 1.0 – indeed, above 1.2.”²⁰

The court’s opinion clearly evidences the danger in stating the importance of statistical significance without placing equal emphasis on the need to exclude bias and confounding. Having found an observational study and one meta-analysis of clinical trial safety outcomes that were statistically significant, the trial court held that any dispute over the probativeness of the studies was for the jury to assess.

Some but not all of AbbVie’s brief might have encouraged this lax attitude by failing to emphasize study validity at the same time as emphasizing the importance of statistical significance. In any event, trial court continued with its précis of the plaintiffs’ argument that:

“a study reporting a confidence interval ranging from 0.9 to 3.5, for example, should certainly not be understood as evidence that there is no association and may actually be understood as evidence in favor of an association, when considered in light of other evidence. Thus, according to plaintiffs’ experts, even studies that do not show a statistically significant association between TRT and the alleged injuries may plausibly bolster their opinions that TRT is capable of causing such injuries.”²¹

Of course, a single study that reported a risk ratio greater than 1.0, with a confidence interval 0.9 to 3.5 might be reasonably incorporated into a meta-analysis that in turn could support, or not support a causal inference. In the TRT litigation, however, the well-conducted, most up-to-date meta-analyses did not report statistically significant elevated rates of cardiovascular events among users of TRT. The court’s insistence that a study with a confidence interval 0.9 to 3.5 cannot be interpreted as evidence of no association is, of course, correct. Equally correct would be to say that the interval shows that the study failed to show an association. The trial court never grappled with the reality that the best conducted meta-analyses failed to show statistically significant increases in the rates of cardiovascular events.

The American Statistical Association and its members would likely have been deeply disappointed by how both parties used the ASA Statement for their litigation objectives. AbbVie’s suggestion that the ASA Statement reflects a debate about “whether scientists who lack expertise in statistics misunderstand p-values and overvalue significance testing” would appear to have no support in the Statement itself or any other commentary to come out of the meeting leading up to the Statement. The Plaintiffs’ argument that p-values properly understood are unimportant and misleading similarly finds no support in the ASA Statement. Conveniently, the Plaintiffs’ brief ignored the Statement’s insistence upon transparency in pre-specification of analyses and outcomes, and in handling of multiple comparisons:

“P-values and related analyses should not be reported selectively. Conducting multiple analyses of the data and reporting only those with certain p-values (typically those passing a significance threshold) renders the reported p-values essentially uninterpretable. Cherrypicking promising findings, also known by such terms as data dredging, significance chasing, significance questing, selective inference, and ‘p-hacking’, leads to a spurious excess of statistically significant results in the published literature and should be vigorously avoided.”²²

Most if not all of the plaintiffs’ expert witnesses’ reliance materials would have been eliminated under this principle set forth by the ASA Statement.

1 See, e.g., In re Ephedra Prods. Liab. Litig., 393 F.Supp. 2d 181, 191 (S.D.N.Y. 2005). See also “Confidence in Intervals and Diffidence in the Courts” (March 4, 2012); “Scientific illiteracy among the judiciary” (Feb. 29, 2012).

2 “The American Statistical Association Statement on Significance Testing Goes to Court – Part I” (Nov. 13, 2018).

3Letter of Janet Woodcock, Director of FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, to Sidney Wolfe, Director of Public Citizen’s Health Research Group (July 16, 2014) (denying citizen petition for “black box” warning).

4 Defendants’ (AbbVie, Inc.’s) Motion to Exclude Plaintiffs Expert Testimony on the Issue of Causation, and for Summary Judgment, and Memorandum of Law in Support, Case No. 1:14-CV-01748, MDL 2545, Document #: 1753, 2017 WL 1104501 (N.D. Ill. Feb. 20, 2017) [AbbVie Brief].

5 AbbVie Brief at 3; see also id. at 7-8 (“Depending upon the expert, even the basic tests of statistical significance are simply ignored, dismissed as misleading… .”) AbbVie’s definitions of statistical significance occasionally wandered off track and into the transposition fallacy, but generally its point was understandable.

6 AbbVie Brief at 63 n.16 (emphasis in original).

7 AbbVie Brief at 13 (emphasis in original).

8 AbbVie Brief at 13-14 (emphasis in original).

9 The defense brief further emphasized statistical significance almost as though it were a sufficient basis for inferring causality from observational studies: “Regardless of this debate, courts have routinely found the traditional epidemiological method—including bedrock principles of significance testing—to be the most reliable and accepted way to establish general causation. See, e.g., In re Zoloft, 26 F. Supp. 3d 449, 455; see also Rosen v. Ciba-Geigy Corp., 78 F.3d 316, 319 (7th Cir. 1996) (“The law lags science; it does not lead it.”). AbbVie Brief at 63-64 & n.16. The defense’s language about “including bedrock principles of significance testing” absolves it of having totally ignored other necessary considerations, but still the defense might have advantageously pointed out at the other needed considerations for causal inference at the same time.

10 Plaintiffs’ Steering Committee’ Memorandum of Law in Opposition to Motion of AbbVie Defendants to Exclude Plaintiffs’ Expert Testimony on the Issue of Causation, and for Summary Judgment at p.34, Case No. 1:14-CV-01748, MDL 2545, Document No. 1753 (N.D. Ill. Mar. 23, 2017) [Opp. Brief].

11 Id. at 35 (appending the ASA Statement and the commentary of more than two dozen interested commentators).

12 Id. at 38 (quoting from the ASA Statement at 131).

13 Id. at 38 (quoting from the ASA Statement at 132).

14 Id. at 38 (quoting from the ASA Statement at 132).

15 Id. at 38 (quoting from the ASA Statement at 132).

16 Id. at 38

17 In re Testosterone Replacement Therapy Prods. Liab. Litig., MDL No. 2545, C.M.O. No. 46, 2017 WL 1833173 (N.D. Ill. May 8, 2017) [In re TRT]

18 In re TRT at *4.

19 In re TRT at *4.

20 Id.

21 Id. at *4.

22 ASA Statement at 131-32.

Posted in Causation, Rule 702, Scientific Evidence, statistical evidence | Comments Off on ASA Statement Goes to Court – Part 2

Link-a-lot, right and left

March 1st, 2019

The right-wing of American politics, with its religious enthusiams, has long shown a willingness to ignore and subvert science to advance its policy agendas. The left wing of American politics, however, is not immune from ignoring evidence-based scientific conclusions in its policy agenda. When it comes to World-Trade Center (WTC) attack, the hostility to evidence-based conclusions appears to be bipartisan.

The attack on the WTC by evil Muslim religious extremists was deplorable, and the September 11th rescue workers deserve our respect and gratitude. They may even deserve compensation for fortuitous, un-related chronic diseases experienced a decade or so later. Dressing up our gratitude in the language of causality and victimhood, however, undermines basic respect for scientific evidence and leads to specious claiming.

The New York Times, no slouch when it comes to specious claiming on scientific issues, provided a great example with its editorial this morning, advocating for increased federal funding for the WTC compensation fund. Editorial Board, “Give Sept. 11 Survivors the Help They Deserve: A fund to aid the thousands sickened from the toxic dust of the World Trade Center attack is running out of money,” N.Y. Times (Feb. 28, 2019). The Times’ editors pictured a retired federal worker as one “who suffers from illnesses like leukemia related to recovery work at ground zero.” The editorial tells us that this man, in 2015, “was told he had leukemia linked to his work there, “like many who had been at the site.” The editors went on to bemoan how this man, and others like him, might receive much less than what had been promised by the federal WTC compensation fund.

The passive voice can be very revealing for the deception and misrepresentations it hides. Who told this man such a thing, about a “link,” whatever that is? And on what evidence was the “link” supposedly established?

Of course, there were toxic materials disseminated by the Muslim terrorist attack, and scientists have studied health outcomes among both the rescue workers and responders, as well as among civilians who joined the effort to look for survivors and victims. One study that was published shortly after the 10-year anniversary of the WTC attack, failed to show any “link” between respiratory or physical exposure to WTC dusts and materials and leukemia.^¹ In the authors’ words, “”Using within-cohort comparisons, the intensity of World Trade Center exposure was not significantly associated with cancer of the lung, prostate, thyroid, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, or hematological cancer in either group.”

Table 3 of their paper reported specifically on leukemia, using standardized incidence ratios (SIR), in two time windows:

Early Period (with enrollment through 2006, n = 21,218.

SIR 0.73 (95% C.I., 0.20 to 1.87)

and

Later Period (enrollment 2007-2008, n = 20,991)

SIR = 1.25 (95% C.I., 0.46 to 2.72)

A later paper by many of the same authors updated the cohort through 2011. Again, the results overall were equivocal in terms of standardized incidence ratios, but quite “null” for leukemia:

“RESULTS: All-cancer SIR was 1.11 (95% confidence interval (CI) 1.03-1.20) in RRWs, and 1.08 (95% CI 1.02-1.15) in non-RRWs. Prostate cancer and skin melanoma were significantly elevated in both populations. Thyroid cancer was significantly elevated only in RRWs [rescue workers] while breast cancer and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma were significantly elevated only in non-RRWs. There was a significant exposure dose-response for bladder cancer among RRWs, and for skin melanoma among non-RRWs [civilians].”^²

Table II of this later report provides the evidence that the New York Times’ anonymous “linker” was mostly likely full of soup:

Rescue/recovery workers (RRW) (N=24,863)

Leukemia: 16 observed; 17 expected

SIR = 0.95 (95% C.I., 0.54 – 1.54)

Enrollees not involved in rescue and recovery (non-RRW) (N = 35,476)

Leukemia: 18 observed, 22 expected

SIR = 0.81 (95% C.I., 0.48 – 1.29)

An article reporting on the results of multiple cohorts in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine (“red journal”) makes clear that causal conclusions or “linking” is not appropriate on the available evidence:

“Conclusions. The presence of three cohorts strengthens the effort of identifying and quantifying the cancer risk; the heterogeneity in design might increase sensitivity to the identification of cancers potentially associated with exposure. The presence and magnitude of an increased cancer risk remains to be fully elucidated. Continued long-term follow up with minimal longitudinal dropout is crucial to achieve this goal.”^³

These authors’ point about continued, long-term follow up is of course true, but immaterial to the validity of the present compensation schemes. The evidence for the relevant time window has been collected and analyzed. Whether compensation for longer latency period manifestations of chronic disease is appropriate is a separate issue. There is just no link in the New York Times’ linking. Evidence-based policy needs evidence, not editorial opinion.

1Jiehui Li, James E. Cone, Amy R. Kahn, Robert M. Brackbill, Mark R. Farfel, Carolyn M. Greene, James L. Hadler,Leslie T. Stayner, and Steven D. Stellman, “Association between World Trade Center exposure and excess cancer risk,” 308 J. Am. Med. Ass’n 2479 (2012).

2Mark R. Farfel, James L. Hadler, Amy R. Kahn, Kevin J. Konty, Leslie T. Stayner, and Steven D. Stellman, “Ten-year cancer incidence in rescue/recovery workers and civilians exposed to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center,” 59 Am. J. Indus. Med. 709 (2016).

3Paolo Boffetta, Rachel Zeig-Owens, Sylvan Wallenstein, Jiehui Li, Robert Brackbill, James Cone, Mark Farfel, William Holden, Roberto Lucchini, Mayris P. Webber, David Prezant, and Steven D. Stellman, “Cancer in World Trade Center responders: Findings from multiple cohorts and options for future study,” 59 Am. J. Indus. Med. 96, 96 (2016) (emphasis added).

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History of Silica Litigation – the Lung Cancer Angle

February 3rd, 2019

In the late 1990s, the litigation industry attempted a revival of mass-tort silicosis claiming, by initiating unlawful, unethical radiological screenings. This effort was the plaintiffs’ bar’s “Field of Dreams,” based upon its glib assumption that “if you build it, they will come.” They were the thousands of imaginary silicosis victims who somehow were not getting access to legal redress in the courts.

In large part, the litigation industry’s confidence was based upon plausible belief that a then recent classification of crystalline silica as a Category I human carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer would sex up their litigation claims. Dozens of plaintiffs’ and defense lawyers weighed in by asking whether silica was the new asbestos.^¹

This recrudescence of silica litigation ultimately failed, and the overwhelming number (but not all) of the specious medical claims have been wiped away.^² Why did silicosis fail as a mass tort, when other claims gained recognition? Surely, the lack of real, valid silicosis diagnoses from mass screenings helped sink many claims. Plaintiffs also faced up an uphill battle on legal liability, given the widespread common knowledge about how, why, and when silica causes silicosis, among industry, organized and unorganized labor, government scientists and regulators, and academics. Even when the so-called sophisticated intermediary was not a complete legal defense, the realities of employer-purchaser knowledge of silica hazards, and prevalent state and federal regulation of silica in the workplace made silicosis claims unattractive.

Finally, the sex appeal of silica as a cause of lung cancer dissipated. Every dogma has its day, but the IARC was quickly losing credibility as a disinterested voice in debates about cancer causation. The 1996 working group vote on silica was closely decided by a slim majority. The head of the working group exhibited a serious conflict of interest, by promoting his own study as the rationale for the working group’s decision. Although the regulatory agencies and the litigation industry’s consultants quickly jumped on the cancer bandwagon, the IARC ruling was itself qualified and hedged:

“In making the overall evaluation, the Working Group noted that carcinogenicity in humans was not detected in all industrial circumstances studied. Carcinogenicity may be dependent on inherent characteristics of the crystalline silica or on external factors affecting its biological activity or distribution of its polymorphs. Crystalline silica inhaled in the form of quartz or cristobolite from occupational sources is carcinogenic to humans. (Group 1).”^³

The 1997 IARC monograph on silica provoked a scholarly debate on the correctness of the IARC analysis and decision. Two prominent pathologists weighed:

“Whether an increased lung cancer risk also exists in the absence of asbestosis is a matter of considerable debate (177). In rats, crystalline silica is clearly a lung carcinogen and tumors again arise in close spatial relationship to silicotic nodules, whereas strains of mice and hamsters that do not develop fibrotic lesions after exposure to silica also do not show an in-creased incidence of cancers (178). The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) recently classified crystalline silica as a definite human carcinogen (179). This classification is controversial, but the association between silica exposure and lung cancer in humans appears to be on much firmer ground in those with silicosis than in those without (5, 25).”^⁴

In 2000, just a few years after the IARC published its silica monograph, Colin A. Soutar, a scientist at the Institute of Medicine in Edinburgh, described the science behind the IARC decision as uncertain:

“Descriptive studies frequently though not invariably suggest an excess lung cancer risk in silica-exposed workers compared with the general population, but exposure-response studies consistently fail to confirm that the cause is exposure to quartz. A single exposure-response study of cristobalite suggests a positive relation. Both sets of evidence have weaknesses. There are uncertainties on whether the excess risks in the descriptive studies are related to silica exposure or to lifestyle, including smoking habits. There are doubts on whether the exposure estimates in some of the exposure-response studies were sufficiently reliable to detect a small risk or weak association, though they are unlikely to have missed a strong effect.”^⁵

In 2000, a group of seven scientists criticized the IARC determination for its biased selectivity in excluding important “negative” studies, as well as for other analytical flaws:

“The data demonstrate a lack of association between lung cancer and exposure to crystalline silica in human studies. Furthermore, silica is not directly genotoxic and has been to be a pulmonary carcinogen in only one animal species, the rat, which seems to be an inappropriate carcinogenesis in humans.”^⁶

Another important aspect to the silica lung cancer debate differentiated silica litigation from asbestos cases. In the evolution of knowledge about the carcinogenicity of asbestos, there were important voices in the scientific community who suggested or claimed that asbestosis caused lung cancer, well before any scientific consensus emerged, and well before 1964, when many companies begin to label its asbestosconsumer products with warnings. The “state of the art” with respect to knowledge of silica and its alleged carcinogenicity was very different from the asbestos history. Up until the IARC 1997 silica monograph, virtually all experts in the field expressed views that silica did not cause lung cancer. Among these experts were many of the experts lauded by the litigation industries’ expert witnesses on asbestos history. Furthermore, much of the silica sand industry began to warn about a lung cancer hazard, despite the lack of a reasonable conclusion of carcinogenicity, back in the 1980s, when claims of carcinogenicity were being made only by a few zealots. Unlike the asbestos litigation, which received a huge boost from the negligence failure-to-warn about cancer claims, the silica claims were bereft of this moral grievance.^⁷

——————————————————————————————————————–

1 See, e.g., Robert D. Chesler, James Stewart, and Geoffrey T. Gibson, “Is Silica the Next Asbestos? Silica litigation will present similar insurance issues and raise many of the same controversies as asbestos litigation,” 177 N. J. L. J. (June 28, 2004); Melissa Shapiro, “Is Silica the Next Asbestos? An Analysis of Silica Litigation and the Sudden Resurgence of Silica Lawsuit Filings,” 32 Pepperdine L. Rev. 983 (2005); Chris Michael Temple, “A Case for Why Silica Litigation Is Not the ‘Next Asbestos’,” Product Liab. Law & Strategy 1, 6-7 (Nov. 2004); Peter A. Antonucci & Jason Marino, “Silicosis Litigation: Here We Go Again,” Toxic Torts & Envt’l Law Comm. News 10 (Summer 2004); Sharon L. Caffrey, Kenneth M. Argentieri & Julie S. Greenberg, “Another Wave Of Silicosis Claims May Be On The Horizon,” Law360 (Oct. 3, 2012); Lawrence G. Cetrulo & Lawrence J. Sugarman, “The Re-emergence of Silica Litigation and the Theories of Liability Under Which it is Litigated,” HarrisMartin (Feb. 24, 2004); Thomas A Gilligan, Jr., “Is Silica The Next Asbestos? The Defendants’ Perspective,” 1 Mealey’s Litig. Rep. 19 (Jan. 2003). See also “The Unreasonable Success of Asbestos Litigation” (July 25, 2015).

2 See Kimberley A. Strassel, “He Fought the Tort Bar — and Won; Thanks to a CEO’s persistence, a federal judge discovers massive lawsuit fraud,” Wall St. J. (May 3, 2009).

3 68 IARC Monograph 210-11 (1997) (emphasis in original).

4 Brooke Brookman & Andrew Churg, “Mechanisms in the Pathogenesis of Asbestosis and Silicosis,” 157 Am. J. Respir. Critical Care Med. 1666, 1676 (1998)

5 Colin A. Soutar, “Epidemiological Evidence on the Carcinogenicity of Silica: Factors in Scientific Judgement,” 44 Ann. Occup. Hyg. 3 (2000).

6 Patrick A. Hessel, John F. Gamble, J. Bernard L. Gee, Graham Gibbs, Francis H. Y. Green, W. Keith C. Morgan, and Brooke T. Mossman, “Silica, Silicosis, and Lung Cancer: A Response to a Recent Working Group Report,” 42 J. Occup. & Envt’l Med. 704, 718 (2000).

7 A brief review of who was saying what, when about silica and lung cancer, is helpful to make the point.

Arthur J. Vorwald (1938)

“Inhaled dusts, therefore, except those containing recognized carcinogenic substances such as radium and tar, cannot in general be considered as etiological factors in the development of primary pulmonary carcinoma.”

Vorwald & Karr, “Pneumoconiosis and Pulmonary Carcinoma,” 14 Am. J. Path. 49, 57 (1938)

Sir Ernest Laurence Kennaway & Nina Marion Kennaway (1947)

“The general indication of these results is that the factors which lead to silicosis are not very active in producing cancer of the lung or larynx.”

(Kennaway & Kennaway, “A Further Study of the Incidence of Cancer of the Lung and Larynx,” Br. J. Cancer 260 (1947))

Madge Thurlow Macklin (1948)

“If silicosis is being considered as a causative agent in lung cancer, the control group should be as nearly like the experimental or observed group as possible in sex, age distribution, race, facilities for diagnosis, other possible carcinogenic factors, etc. The only point in which the control group should differ in an ideal study would be that they were not exposed to free silica, whereas the experimental group was. The incidence of lung cancer could then be compared in the two groups of patients.
This necessity is often ignored; and a ‘random’ control group is obtained for comparison on the assumption that any group taken at random is a good group for comparison. Fallacious results based on such studies are discussed briefly.”

Madge Thurlow Macklin, “Pitfalls in Dealing with Cancer Statistics, Especially as Related to Cancer of the Lung,” 14 Diseases Chest 525 532-33, 529-30 (1948).

Alexander Thom Doig (1949)

“Some ten years ago a number of cases of lung cancer occurring in men suffering from silicosis were reported and an impression arose that silica might play an etiological part in producing malignant lung disease. This has not been borne out by further enquiry but evidence is accumulating that cancer of the lung is unduly frequent in asbestos workers usually associated with asbestosis.”

A. T. Doig, “Other Lung Diseases Due to Dust,” 25 Postgrad. Med. J. 639, 645 (1949) [His Majesty’s Inspector of Factories]

Wilhelm Hueper (1951)

“Since silicotic pneumoconiosis is characterized by a chronic granulomatous inflammatory reaction, and thus seems to fulfill remarkably well the basic requirements of the chronic irritation theory of cancerigenesis, several investigators have incriminated this frequent type of occupational pneumoconiosis in the development of cancer of the lung (Fine & Jaso; Anderson & Dible; Charr; Klotz; Dible). There are in fact some 50 cases on record in which cancer of the lung or larynx and silicosis were co-existing (Dible; Fine & Jaso; Klotz & Simpson; Maxwell; Sladden; Middleton; Sweany, Porsche & Douglass; Vorwald & Karr; Allen; Sokoloff; Pancoast & Pendergrass; Simmons; Schnurer; Charr; Harris). However, the great majority of investigators have come to the conclusion that there does not exist any causal relation between silicosis and pulmonary or laryngeal malignancy (Vorwald & Karr; Allen; Feil; Harris; Pancoast & Pendergrass; Saupe; Schulte; Schulz; Berblinger). Schulte and Schultz noted that coal miners in the Ruhr district, among whom silicosis is frequent, have no unusual frequency of lung cancer, while Allen recorded a similar observation for the coal miners of Pennsylvania. Corresponding negative observations were made by Vorwald and Karr on individuals who came to necropsy with silicosis at the Saranac Laboratory and have been reported by the Miner’s Phthisis Medical Bureau of South Africa based on studies made among the South African gold miners in the Johannesburg district.”
“These conclusions are supported by the results of experimental investigations, in which mice, rats, guinea pigs, rabbits, chickens and cats were exposed to the inhalation of silica dust (Cambell; Vorwald & Karr; Willis & Brutsaert). A fundamentally different situation, on the other hand, seems to prevail in regard to the causal relation between asbestosis and cancer of the lung.…”

(Hueper, “Environmental Lung Cancer,” 20 Industrial Medicine & Surgery 49, 55-56 (1951))

Maxcy (1951)

“Thus, there is no evidence that lung cancer is related in any way to silicosis.”

Maxcy, ed., Rosenau Preventive Medicine and Hygiene 1051 (NY, 7th ed. 1951)

May Mayers, New York Dep’t of Labor (1952)

“Silica and asbestos are of special importance among the dusts which fall into this category. The environmental conditions for their development are essentially similar. Nevertheless, silicosis is not, apparently associated with, or productive of, lung cancer, whereas asbestosis very probably is.”

(Mayers, “Industrial Cancer of the Lungs,” 4 Compensation Medicine 11, 12 (1952)). [Dr. May Mayers was Chief, Medical Unit, Division of Industrial Hygiene and Safety Standards, N.Y. Dep’t of Labor]

Behrens (1953)

“Special mention is made of the association of asbestosis with carcinoma, which is contrary to experience in cases of silicosis. Post-mortem reports from the literature indicate that in 309 cases of asbestosis there were 44 lung carcinomas (14.2 per cent.) whereas in 2,204 cases of silicosis only 32 carcinomas were found (1.4 per cent.)”

(Behrens, “Über Klinik and Pathologic der Asbestosis,” 45 Zeitschrift fur Unfallmed and Berufskrankh 129-140, 179-189 (June 15, Sept. 15, 1952; abstracted at Bulletin of Hygiene 192 (March 1953))

Wilhelm Hueper (1954)

“Rather far-reaching, if not extravagant, claims recently have been advanced as to the important, if not predominant, role which cigarette smoking is alleged to have played in the production of lung cancer and its progressive rise in frequency during the past 50 years. A critical and sober analysis of the evidence offered in support of these assertions is in order not only for reasons of scientific accuracy but also for medicolegal reasons and especially for determining the direction of future epidemiologic research and of control activities in the field of lung cancer.”
* * *
“It may be concluded that the existing evidence neither proves nor strongly indicates that tobacco smoking, and especially cigarette smoking, represents a major or even predominating causal factor in the production of cancers of the respiratory tract and are the main reason for the phenomenal increase of pulmonary tumors during recent decades. If excessive smoking actually plays a role in the production of lung cancer, it seems to be a minor one if judged from the evidence on hand. However, it may be well to remember in this connection, the concluding statement of Doll and Kennaway, that ‘the study of the relation between the national consumption of tobacco and the national incidence of cancer of the lung has scarcely begun.’”

(Hueper, “Lung Cancer and the Tobacco Smoking Habit,” 23 Industrial Medicine & Surgery 13, 19 (1954)) [Hueper, Chief of Environmental Section, National Cancer Institute, U.S. Public Health Service, in Bethesda, MD]

Wilhlem Hueper (1955)

“The concept that members of occupations especially exposed to dust, particularly silica, have an unusual liability to cancer is an old one which is still held. Reliable epidemiologic data from various sources, however, show that pulmonary cancers are not excessively frequent among persons having occupational contact with coal and silica dust and affected with anthracosis, silicosis, and anthracosilicosis, such as gold and coal mines.”

[Hueper, 25 Am. J. Clinical Path. 1388, 1388 (1955)]

Cuyler Hammond (1956)

“Pneumoconiosis. Any direct carcinogenic effect of the pneumoconiosis-producing dusts is extremely doubtful.
* * *
Studies by Vorwald (41) and others agree in the conclusion that pneumoconiosis in general, and silicosis in particular, do not involve any predisposition of lung cancer.” (p. 50)
[As to asbestosis: “The data at present are suggestive but inference as to causal relationship is not warranted.” (p. 50)
“. . . in our opinion, the evidence for their causal role is insufficient.” (p. 57)]
[As to smoking: “There is a high degree of association between cigarette smoking and the occurrence of lung cancer. We are of the opinion that cigarette smoking acts as one of the causative factors for the development of lung cancer.”]

(Cuyler Hammond & W. Machle, “Environmental and Occupational Factors in the Development of Lung Cancer,” Ch. 3, pp. 41-61, in E. Mayer & H. Maier, Pulmonary Carcinoma: Pathogenesis, Diagnosis, and Treatment (NY 1956))

Wilhelm Hueper (1956)

“Although the data are in part contradictory, it seems that silicosis does not play any significant role as a direct or contributory cause of cancer of the lung among the radioactive-ore miners in Schneeberg and Joachimsthal. Whether it has an antagonistic affect upon the cancerization process or modifies the course of the established cancer remains problematical.”

(W. Hueper, “A Quest Into the Environmental Causes of Cancer of the Lung,” Public Health Service Publ. No. 452, 71 Public Health Reports, No. 1, at 42-43 (1956))

[As to smoking: “From these considerations, it is apparent that any final decision concerning the relative role of cigarette smoking in the causation of cancer of the human lung should be kept in abeyance until a great deal of (additional and more valid, and especially medically conclusive, evidence becomes available. The data on hand make it unlikely that cigarette smoking represents a major factor in the production of lung cancer and in its recent phenomenal rise in frequency. For these reasons, it would be most injudicious mainly to base the future preventive control of lung cancer hazards on a theory of such doubtful scientific merits and to concentrate the immediate epidemiological and experimental efforts on this over propagandized concept.]

Id. at 44-45.

Sir Richard Doll (1959)

“Some degree of pneumoconiosis is present in most forms of industrial lung cancer, but all investigators agree that there is no quantitative relationship between silicosis and the presence of the cancer.”

Richard Doll, “Occupational Lung Cancer: A Review,” 16 Brit. J. Indus. Med. 181, 188 (1959)

Gerret Schepers (1960)

“Lung cancer, of course, occurs in silicotics and is on the increase. Thus far, however, statistical studies have failed to reveal a relatively enhanced incidence of pulmonary neoplasia in silicotic subjects.”

(G. Schepers, “Occupational Chest Diseases,” Chap. 33, p. 455, ¶3, in A. Fleming, et al., eds., Modern Occupational Medicine (Philadelphia 2d ed. 1960))

Compare: “Pulmonary carcinoma has been observed with such high frequency in employees of the asbestos industry that a causal relationship has been accepted by most authorities.”

(Id. at 467, ¶5)

Herbert Spencer (1962)

“Silicosis and lung cancer inhaled silica, unlike asbestos, does not predispose to the development of lung cancer. Gardner (1939) investigated the incidence among employees of Rand gold mines in South Africia and found that the incidence of lung cancer in the silicotic miners amounted to 0.7 per cent; among a large comparable group of males employed on the surface outside the mines the incidence was 0.93 per cent. Similar findings have been reported amongst a group of silicotic South Wales coal miners by James (1995)

Herbert Spencer, Pathology of the Lung (Excluding Pulmonary Tuberculosis) (1962)

Joseph K. Wagoner (1963)

“Since epidemiologic studies have demonstrated that silicosis and occupational exposure to free silica dust do not predispose to the development of cancer of the respiratory tract^7,18,19attention must be paid to specific components of the ore that have been suspected of carcinogenic activity in man.”

Joseph K. Wagoner, Robert W. Miller, Frank E. Lundin, Jr., Joseph Fraumeni, and Marian E. Hai, “Unusual Cancer Mortality Among a Group of Underground Metal Miners,” 269 New Engl. J. Med. 284, 287 (1963)

“Attention was given to the possible explanations for the threefold increase in cancer of the respiratory system. This excess was not attributed to an effect of age, smoking, nativity, urbanization, socioeconomic status, heredity, diagnostic accuracy or silicosis.”

Id. at 288 (emphasis added)

Joseph K. Wagner (1965)

“In 1964 Wagoner and his co-workers⁹ reported a tenfold excess of respiratory cancer among long-term underground uranium miners in the United States. This excess was not attributable to age, smoking, nativity, heredity, urbanization, self-selection, diagnostic accuracy, prior hard-rock mining or nonradioactive-ore constituents, including silica dust.”

Joseph K. Wagoner, Victor E. Archer, Frank E. Lundin, Jr., Duncan A. Holaday, and William Lloyd, “Radiation as the Cause of Lung Cancer Among Uranium Miners,” 273 New Engl. J. Med. 181, 182 (1965)

Sir Richard Doll (1966)

“I should like to draw your attention to the absence of a risk, although one has been looked for very carefully, among men with silicosis. Irritation of the lungs of the type that is produced by silica is, therefore, not in itself a cause of lung cancer.”

Richard Doll, “The Statistical Approach to Industrial Lung Cancer,” in Douglas Teare & Joan Fenning, eds., Some Aspects of Carcinoma of the Bronchus and Other Malignant Diseases of the Lung 5, 14 (1966)

Wilhelm Hueper (1966)

“Silicosis has been in the past and to somewhat lesser extent still is a rather common occupational disease occurring among member of several large work groups, such as especially hard rock miners, foundry workers, anthracite miners, stone masons and granite cutters. The relationship of silicosis to cancer of the lung covers three aspects (HUEPER, WEISSMAN).
A. The occurrence of large densities observed on X-ray film of the chest in individuals suffering from tuberculosilicosis may be mistaken from carcinoma of the lung.
B. It has remained controversial whether silicosis favors the development of lung cancer, hinders it, or does not exert any influence on this process.
C. Since the exposure to several established or suspected carcinogens (radioactive substances, iron, arsenic) is complicated in some occupations by a simultaneous contact with silica, the role of silica and silicosis on the action of the specific carcinogens and on the cancerization process, respectively, has remained a subject of dispute.
* * * *
The bulk of the available epidemiologic evidence on the association of silicosis and lung cancer supports the view of a mere coincidental role of silicosis in this combination. Several large statistical analyses performed on autopsy material derived from several occupational groups with silicosis hazard confirm this conclusion (Table 1), which is, moreover, shard by many experienced investigators (VORWALD and KARR; SCHULZ; SCHULTE; KENAWAY and KENAWAY; MEREWETHER; FAULDS; MITTMANN; FRUEHLING and OPPERMANN; BRAUN; JAMES; MULLER, MARCHAND-ALPHAND, CUALLACCI, NADIRAS and MULLER; ALLEN; RUETTNER; SCHOCH; BERBLINGER; WEDLER; FISCHER; FISCHER-WASELS; HOLSTEIN; STAEMMLER, JOHNSTONE; CHARR; WAETJEN and others).
* * * *
From the evidence on hand, it appears that a well advanced silicosis does not seem to furnish a favorable soil for the development of cancer of the lung.”

(W. Hueper, Occupational and Environmental Cancers of the Respiratory System at 2-6 (N.Y. 1966))
Note: Dr. Hueper was chief of the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, MD.

Harriet L. Hardy (1967)

“cancer of the lung is not a risk for the silicotic. It is a serious risk following asbestos exposure and for hematite, feldspar, and uranium miners. This means that certain dusts and ionizing radiation alone or perhaps with cigarette smoke act as carcinogens.”

Harriet L. Hardy, “Current Concepts of Occupational Lung Disease of Interest to the Radiologist,” 2 Sem. Roentgenology 225, 231-32 (1967)

W. Raymond Parkes (1974)

“Bronchial carcinoma occasionally occurs in silicotic lungs but there is no evidence of a causal relationship between it and silicosis; indeed the incidence of lung cancer in miners with silicosis is significantly lower than in non-silicotic males (Miners Phthisis Medical Bureau, 1944; Rüttner & Heer, 1969).”

W. Raymond Parkes, Occupational Lung Disorders 192 (London 1974)

NIOSH (1974)

In Section III, entitled “Biologic Effects of Exposure,” there is no mention of cancer (or of autoimmune disease).

[NIOSH, Criteria for a Recommended Standard: Occupational Exposure to Crystalline Silica (1974)] [In the Asbestos Criteria Document, cancer is a principal subject of concern.]

Morton Ziskind, Robert N. Jones, Hans Weill (1976)

“There is no indication that silicosis is associated with increased risk for the development of cancer of the respiratory or other systems. When there is a combined exposure to silica and other substances such as arsenic, nickel, or chromate, the increased susceptibility to cancer appears to be related to the other material. There is no indication of a synergistic increase of susceptibility to cancer after exposure to such other dusts and silica.”

(Ziskind, Jones, and Weill, “State of the Art: Silicosis” 113 Am. Rev. Respir. Dis. 643, 653b, ¶ 1 (1976)

Herbert Spencer (1977)

“Inhaled silica, unlike asbestos, does not predispose to the development of lung cancer. Gardner (1939) investigated the incidence among employees of the Rand gold-miners in South Africa and found that the incidence of lung cancer in the silicotic miners amounted to 0.7 per cent; among a large comparable group of males employed on the surface outside the miners the incidence was 0.93 per cent. These findings were again confirmed by Chatgidakis (1963) among white South African miners. She found that although in recent times bronchogenic carcinoma had become the most common form malignant tumorer among these miners, the incidence was the same as among the non-miners. Similar findings in Great Britain were reported by James (1955) amongst a group of South Wales coal-miners showing silicotic changes.”

[H. Spencer, Pathology of the Lung, Vol. 1, p. 395 (3d ed. 1977)]

Kaye Kilburn, Ruth Lilis, and Edwin Holstein (1980)

“Lung cancer is apparently not a complication of silicosis. In a substantial mortality experience from Hamburg, lung cancer was present in 2.3 per cent of 688 deaths from silicosis and 3.99 per cent of 212,827 control deaths in males over 20 years of age.

[Kaye Kilburn, Ruth Lilis, Edwin Holstein, “Silicosis,” in Maxcy-Rosenau, Public Health and Preventive Medicine, 11^th ed., at 606 (N.Y. 1980)]

LEBOWITZ (1981)

“It is my opinion that no definitive etiological relationship has been proven between silicosis and lung carcinoma, although there is some data to support such a relationship.”

(Lebowitz, “The Relationship Among Silica, Silicosis, and Lung Carcinoma,” 38 Ariz. Med. 596, 598a, last ¶ (1981)). R. Lemen was one of the editors of Lebowitz’s article. (Id. at 596b – credits)

Raymond Parkes (1982)

“Bronchial carcinoma occasionally occurs in silicotic lungs but there is no evidence of a causal relationship between it and silicosis or siliceous dusts; indeed, the incidence of lung cancer with silicosis is significantly lower than in non‑silicotic males (Miners Phthisis Medical Bureau, 1944; Ruttner & Heer, 1969).”

[R. Parkes, “Diseases Due To Free Silica,” Chap. 7, Occupational Lung Disorders 157 (2d ed. 1982)]

William Rom (1983)

“The weight of epidemiologic evidence is against the proposition that silicosis carries an increased risk of respiratory malignancy.”

[Robert N. Jones, “Silicosis,” Chap. 16, in William Rom, et al., eds., Environmental and Occupational Medicine at 205 (Boston 1983)]

Herbert Anderson (1985)

“There is no evidence that silica increases the risk of lung cancer, nor does it enhance tobacco‑induced carcinogenesis.”

(I Anderson’s Pathology at 910b (1985))

Alfred Gordon Heppleston (1985)

“From this mass of evidence, pathological and epidemiological, it is thus reasonable to believe that primary carcinoma of the lung shows no demonstrable causal connection either with the accumulation of dust per se containing silica in high or low proportions, or with the prior existence of pneumoconiosis whether assuming the form of classical silicosis or of the distinct variety seen in coal workers. If selection enters into necropsy studies, this conclusion may even be emphasized.”

(Heppleston, “Silica, Pneumoconiosis, and Carcinoma of the Lung,” 7 Am. J. Ind. Med. 285, 291 ¶ 2 (1985))

Herbert Spencer (1985)

“Inhaled silica, unlike asbestos, does not predispose to the development of lung cancer. Gardner (1939) investigated the incidence among employees of the Rand gold-miners in South Africa and found that the incidence of lung cancer in the silicotic miners amounted to 0.7 per cent; among a large comparable group of males employed on the surface outside the miners the incidence was 0.93 per cent. These findings were again confirmed by Chatgidakis (1963) among white South African miners. She found that although in recent times bronchogenic carcinoma had become the most common form malignant tumorer among these miners, the incidence was the same as among the non-miners. Similar findings in Great Britain were reported by James (1955) amongst a group of South Wales coal-miners showing silicotic changes.”

(H. Spencer, Pathology of the Lung, 4^th ed., Vol. 1, 439 (Oxford 1985))

United States Surgeon General (1985)

1985 Surgeon General’s Report, Chapter 8 “Silica‑Exposed Workers”
Summary & Conclusions
* *
*
4. “A number of studies have demonstrated an increased risk of lung cancer in workers exposed to silica, but few of these studies have adequately controlled for smoking. Therefore, while the increased standardized mortality ratios for lung cancer in these populations suggest the need for further investigation of a potential carcinogenic effect of silica exposure (particularly in the combined exposure with other possible carcinogens), the evidence does not currently establish whether silica exposure increases the risk of developing lung cancer in men.”
5. “Smoking control efforts should be an important concomitant of efforts to reduce the burden of silica‑related illness in working populations.”

(1985 Surg. Gen. Report at 348)

In 1966, Dr. W.C. Hueper reviewed the evidence on this claim and “observed that the data support the idea that lung cancer is a coincidental finding among silicotics and that there is no etiological relationship.”

(1985 Surg. Gen. at 341, citing W. Hueper, “Recent Results in Cancer Research, in III Occupational and Environmental Cancers of the Respiratory System 1‑6 (1966))

“None of these studies [reviewed by Hueper] addressed the smoking status of the subjects, a crucial omission in any study of lung cancer. Furthermore, age was not adjusted, nor were there any quantitative estimates of the silica exposure or assessments of the severity of the silicotic lesions.”

(1985 Surg. Gen. Report at 341, last ¶) IARC (1987)

William Weiss (1986)

“A search of the Index Medicine for the years 1935-39 revealed three times as many cases of silicosis with lung cancer as cases of asbestosis with lung cancer. As a result of later studies designed to answer the question whether the frequency of lung cancer among people with silicosis or asbestosis is higher than in the general population, it has been shown that there is no association between silicosis and lung cancer, but there is an association between asbestosis and lung cancer.”

William Weiss, “History of hazards associated with asbestos,” 89 Penn. Med. 57, 57 (1986)

IARC (1987)

“Limited evidence” is a term defined specifically by the IARC Working Group:
“Limited evidence of carcinogenicity indicates that a causal interpretation is credible, but that alternative explanations, such as chance, bias or confounding could not adequately be excluded.”

(42 IARC Monographs on the Evaluation of the Carcinogenic Risk of Chemicals to Humans at 22 (1987))

IARC concluded that:

“There is limite devidence for the carcinogenicity of crystalline silica to humans.”

(42 IARC at 111, § 4.4)

John E. Cotes & COTES (1987)

“The inhalation of silica dust does not contribute to malignancy.”

J. Cotes & J. Steel, Work-Related Lung Disorders 156 (Oxford 1987)

W. K. C. Morgan & Antony Seaton (1987)

“It is generally believed that silicosis does not predispose to lung cancer.”
“On balance, it seems unlikely that silicosis itself predisposes to lung cancer.”

[K. Morgan & A. Seaton, Occupational Lung Diseases at 266, ¶ 1 (2d ed. 1987)]

Graham Gibbs & Christopher Wagner in CHURG & GREEN (1988)

“Until recently, it has been denied that silicosis is associated with the development of lung cancer. However, several epidemiologic studies have claimed increased rates of lung cancer in occupations with high free‑silica exposure. These have included silicotic miners, iron and steel foundry workers, metal molders, sandblasters, and ceramic workers. Some support for this has come from animal studies that have shown that silica can function as a direct acting carcinogen or co‑carcinogen. However, this is species dependent. Heppleston has critically reviewed the literature linking silica and lung cancer and notes that published studies lackdetailed of smoking histories and have not excluded other possible atmospheric carcinogens. At the present time, the evidence linking silica exposure with lung cancer is not entirely convincing. Further epidemiologic and pathologic studies are required to support or refute the association.”

[Gibbs & Wagner, “Disease Due to Silica,” in A. Churg & F. Green, Pathology of Occupational Lung Disease at 165 1^st ed. (1988)]

NIOSH COMMITTEE (1988)

“The epidemiological evidence at present is insufficient to permit conclusions regarding the role of silica in the pathogenesis of bronchogenic carcinoma.”

(NIOSH Silicosis and Silicate Disease Committee, “Diseases Associated With Exposure to Silica and Nonfibrous Silicate Minerals,” 112 Arch. Path. & Lab. Med. 673, 711b, ¶ 2 (1988)) [cited as 1988 NIOSH]

Arthur Frank (1989)

“The question of the relationship of coal mining to the development of lung cancer has been frequently considered. Most evidence points to cigarette smoking among coal miners as the major causative factor in the development of lung cancer, and neither a recent⁸⁴ nor a British study of lung cancer among coal miners has found any relationship to occupational exposure.”

Arthur Frank, “Epidemiology of Lung Cancer, in J. Roth, et al., Thoracic Oncology, Chap. 2, at p. 8 (Table 2-1), 11 (Phila. 1989) (omitting silica from table of lung carcinogens)

BAUM & WOLINSKY (1989)

“There is little evidence that either exposure to silica or the presence of silicosis predisposes to the development of lung cancer. The SMR in workers exposed to silica has been reported to be elevated in a number of studies, but most of these studies have made no allowance for cigarette smoking habits and have been carried out retrospectively. In other instances, the exposure has not been to silica alone, but has included other agents, such as coal tar pitch, polycyclic hydrocarbons, or radiation. That an increased death rate from silicosis and tuberculosis in metal miners exposed to silica can be demonstrated in the absence of any concomitant increase from lung cancer militates against silicosis being associated with an increased risk of lung cancer.”

[1989 Morgan, in G. Baum & E. Wolinsky, Textbook of Pulmonary Diseases at 771b (1989)]

Corbett McDonald (1989)

“Evidence for the carcinogenicity of crystalline silica to man is indeed limited; although credible, alternative explanations such as chance, bias, or confounding have not been adequately excluded.”
“The credibility of the hypothesis rests largely on a few animal experiments that are themselves difficult to interpret (J.C. Wagner, personal communication).”
“Without more and better evidence, it is premature to conclude that exposure to crystalline silica has caused lung cancer in man.”

(McDonald, “Editorial; Silica, Silicosis, and Lung Cancer,” 46 Brit. J. Indus. Med. 289, 290b, last ¶ (1989))

Hans Weill, Robert N. Jones, and Raymond Parkes (1994)

“It may be reasonably concluded that the evidence to date that occupational exposure to silica results in excess lung cancer risk is not yet persuasive.”

[Weill, Jones, and Parkes, “Silicosis and Related Diseases, Chap. 12, in Occupational Lung Disorders (3d ed. 1994)]

HUNTER (1994)

“The IARC’s evaluation states that there is ‘limited evidence’ for the carcinogenicity of crystalline silica to humans, which has led some countries to treat it as a proven carcinogen. However, many workers in this field agree with Craighead that such action is premature, believing that concomitant exposure to other carcinogens and inadequate control for cigarette smoke probably accounts for most of the observed risk. In any event, the possible risk of cancer can be eliminated if silicosis is reduced by good dust control.”

Peter Elmes, “Inorganic Dusts,” chap. 20, at 424 (p. 410-457), in P. Raffle, et al., eds., Hunter’s Diseases of Occupations (London 1994)

Eva Hnizdo (1994)

“Although the respirable dust in South African gold is very fibrogenic, it is not certain whether the gold miners have an increased risk of lung cancer due to the effect of silica dust. The mortality studies showed an increased standardized mortality ratio, but the dose-response trend with silica dust is inconsistent, and in two case-control studies, no association with silica or silicosis was shown. As some of the gold miners were also uranium producing mines, radiation is a strong confounding factor. Smoking is also a confounding factor. A study done in the 1960s reported that in comparison to a non-mining male population of the same socio-economic status, the miners had a higher proportion of smokers [Sluis-Cremer et al., 1967].

[Hnizdo, “Letter: Risk of Silicosis,” 25 Am. J. Indus. Med. 771 (1994)]

Tags: historian testimony, lung cancer, silicosis litigation, sophisticated intermediary defense, state of the art defense
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on History of Silica Litigation – the Lung Cancer Angle

History of Silicosis Litigation

January 31st, 2019

“Now, Silicosis, you’re a dirty robber and a thief;
Yes, silicosis, you’re a dirty robber and a thief;
Robbed me of my right to live,
and all you brought poor me is grief.
I was there diggin’ that tunnel for just six bits a day;
I was diggin’ that tunnel for just six bits a day;
Didn’t know I was diggin’ my own grave,
Silicosis was eatin’ my lungs away.”

Josh White, “Silicosis Is Killin’ Me (Silicosis Blues)” (1936)

Recently, David Rosner, labor historian, social justice warrior, and expert witness for the litigation industry, gave the Fielding H. Garrison Lecture, in which he argued for the importance of the work that he and his comrade-in-arms, Gerald Markowitz, have done as historian expert witnesses in tort cases.¹ Although I am of course grateful for the shout out that Professor Rosner gives me,² I am still obligated to call him on the short-comings of his account of silicosis litigation.³ Under the rubric of “the contentious struggle to define disease,” Rosner presents a tendentious account of silicosis litigation, which is highly misleading, for what it says, and in particular, for it omits.

For Rosner’s self-congratulatory view of his own role in silicosis litigation to make sense, we must imagine a counterfactual world that is the center piece of his historical narrative in which silicosis remains the scourge of the American worker, and manufacturing industry is engaged in a perpetual cover up.

Rosner’s fabulistic account of silicosis litigation and his role in it falls apart under even mild scrutiny. The hazards of silica exposure were known to Josh White and the entire country in 1936. Some silicosis litigation arose in the 1930s against employers, but plaintiffs were clearly hampered by tort doctrines of assumption of risk, contributory negligence, the fellow-servant rule. To my knowledge, there were no litigation claims against remote suppliers of silica before the late 1970s, when courts started to experiment with hyperstrict liability rules.

Eventually, the litigation industry, buoyed by its successes against asbestos-product manufacturers turned their attention to silica sand suppliers to foundries and other industrial users. Liability claims against remote suppliers of a natural raw material such as silica sand, however, made no sense in terms of the rationales of tort law. There was no disparity of information between customer and supplier; the customer, plaintiffs’ employer was not only the cheapest and most efficient cost and risk avoider, the employer was the only party that could control the risk. Workers and their unions were well aware of the hazards of working in uncontrolled silica-laden workplaces.

Although employer compliance with safety and health regulations for silica exposure has never been perfect, the problem of rampant acute silicosis, such as what afflicted the tunnel workers memorialized by Josh White, is a thing of the past in the United States. The control of silica exposures and the elimination of silicosis are rightly claimed to be one of the great public health achievements of the 20^th century. See Centers Disease Control, “Ten Great Public Health Achievements — United States, 1900-1999,” 48 Morbidity & Mortality Weekly Report 241 (April 02, 1999).

Interestingly, after World War II, silicosis has been a much greater problem in the communist countries, such as China, the countries that made up the Soviet Union. Rosner and Markowitz, however, like the leftist intellectuals of the 1950s who could not bring themselves to criticize Stalin, seem blind to the sorry state of workplace safety in communist countries. Their blindness vitiates their historical project, which attempts to reduce occupational diseases and other workplace hazards to the excesses of corporate capitalism. A fair comparison with non-capitalist systems would reveal that silicosis results from many motives and conditions, including inattention, apathy, carelessness, concern with productivity, party goals, and labor-management rivalries. In the case of silicosis, ignorance of the hazards of silica is the least likely explanation for silicosis cases arising out of workplace exposures after the mid-1930s.

In the United States, silicosis litigation has been infused with fraud and deception, not by the defendants, but by the litigation industry that creates lawsuits. Absent from Rosner’s historical narratives is any mention of the frauds that have led to dismissals of thousands of cases, and the professional defrocking of any number of physician witnesses. In re Silica Products Liab. Litig., MDL No. 1553, 398 F.Supp. 2d 563 (S.D.Tex. 2005).

Nor does Rosner deign to discuss the ethical and legal breaches committed by the plaintiffs’ counsel in conducting radiographic screenings of workers, in the hopes of creating lawsuits. With the help of unscrupulous physicians, these screenings were unnaturally successful not only in detecting silicosis that did not exist, but in some cases, in transmuting real asbestosis into silicosis.⁴

Many silicosis cases in recent times were accompanied by more subtle frauds, which turned on the “failure-to-warn” rhetoric implicit in the Restatement (Second) of Torts § 402A. Consider the outbreak of silicosis litigation in western Pennsylvania, in the mid-1980s. Many of the men who claimed to have silicosis had significant silica exposure at the Bethlehem and U.S. Steel foundries in the Johnstown areas. Some of the claimants actually had simple silicosis, although discovery of these claimants’ workplace records revealed that they had been non-compliant with workplace safety rules.

The Johnstown, Cambria County, cases were not the result of unlawful medical screenings, paid for by plaintiffs’ lawyers and conducted by physicians of dubious integrity and medical acumen. Instead, the plaintiffs’ lawyers found their claimants as a result of the claimants’ having had previous workers’ compensation claims for silicosis, which resulted after the workers were diagnosed by employer medical screening programs.

Cambria County Courthouse in Ebensburg, PA (venue for an outbreak of silicosis litigation in the 1980s and early 1990s⁵)

The first of the foundrymen’s cases was set for trial in 1989, 30 years ago, in Cambria County, Pennsylvania. The silica cases were on the docket of the President Judge, the Hon. Joseph O’Kicki, who turned out to be less than honorable. Just before the first silica trial, Judge O’Kicki was arrested on charges of corruption, as well as lewdness (for calling in his female staff while lounging in chambers in his panties).

As a result of O’Kicki’s arrest, the only Cambria Country trial we saw in 1989 was the criminal trial of Judge O’Kicki, in Northampton County. In April 1989, a jury found O’Kicki guilty of bribery and corruption, although it acquitted him on charges of lewdness.⁶ Facing a sentence of over 25 years, and a second trial on additional charges, O’Kicki returned to the land of his forebears, Slovenia, where he lived out his days and contributed to the surplus population.⁷

Whatever schadenfreude experienced by the defendants in the Cambria County silicosis litigation was quickly dispelled by the assignment of the silica cases to the Hon. Eugene Creany, who proved to be an active partisan for the plaintiffs’ cause. Faced with a large backlog of cases created by the rapacious filings of the Pittsburgh plaintiffs’ lawfirms, and Judge O’Kicki’s furlough from judicial service, Judge Creany devised various abridgements of due process, the first of which was to consolidate cases. As a result, the first case up in 1990 was actually three individual cases “clustered” for a single jury trial: Harmotta, Phillips, and Peterson.⁸ To poke due process in both eyes, Judge Creany made sure that one of the “clustered” cases was a death case (Peterson).

Jury selection started in earnest on April 2, 1990, with opening statements set for April 4. In between, the defense made the first of its many motions for mistrial, when defense lawyers observed one of the plaintiffs, Mr. Phillips, having breakfast with some of the jurors in the courthouse cafeteria. Judge Creany did not seem to think that this pre-game confabulation was exceptional, and admonished the defense that folks in Cambria County are just friendly, but they are fair. Trial slogged on for four weeks, with new abridgments of due process almost every day, such as forcing defendants, with adverse interests and positions, into having one direct- and one cross-examination of each witness. The last motion for mistrial was provoked by Judge Creany’s walking into the jury room during its deliberations, to deliver doughnuts.

At the end of the day, in May 1990, the jury proved to be much fairer than the trial judge. Judge Creany instructed the jury that “silica was the defect,” and on other novel points of law. Led by its foreman, a union organizer for the United Mine Workers, the jury returned a defense verdict in the Peterson case, which involved a claim that Mr. Peterson’s heart attack death case was caused by his underlying silicosis. In the two living plaintiffs’ cases, the jury found that the men had knowingly assumed the risk of silicosis, but at the judge’s insistence, the jury proceeded to address defendants’ liability, and to assess damages, in the amount of $22,500, in the two cases.

Pennsylvania’s appellate courts took a dim view of plaintiffs’ efforts to hold remote silica suppliers responsible for silicosis arising out of employment by large, sophisticated steel manufacturers. The Superior Court, Pennsylvania’s intermediate appellate court, reversed and remanded both plaintiffs’ verdicts. In Mr. Harmotta’s case, the court held that his action was collaterally estopped by a previous workman’s compensation judge’s finding that he did not have silicosis. In Mr. Phillip’s case, the court addressed the ultimate issue, whether a remote supplier to a sophisticated intermediary can be liable for silicosis that resulted from the intermediary’s employment and use of the supplied raw material. In what was a typical factual scenario of supply of silica to foundry employers, the Superior Court held that there was no strict or negligence liability for the employees’ silicosis.⁹ The Pennsylvania Supreme Court declined to hear Harmotta’s appeal on collateral estoppels, but heard an appeal in Phillips’ case. The Supreme Court pulled back from the sophisticated intermediary rationale for reversal, and placed its holding instead on the obvious lack of proximate cause between the alleged failure to warn and the claimed harm, given the jury’s special finding of assumed risk.¹⁰

One of plaintiffs’ counsel’s principal arguments, aimed at the union organizer on the jury, was that even if a warning to the individual plaintiffs might not have changed their behavior, a warning to the union would have been effective. The case law involving claims against unions for failing to warn have largely exculpated unions and taken them out of the warning loop. Given this case law, plaintiffs’ argument was puzzling, but the puzzlement turned to outrage when we learned after the first trial that Judge Creany had been a union solicitor, in which role, he had regularly written to U.S. Steel in Johnstown, to notify the employer when one of the local union members had been diagnosed with silicosis.

The next natural step seemed to list Judge Creany as a percipient fact witness to the pervasive knowledge of silicosis among the workforce and especially among the union leadership. Judge Creany did not take kindly to being listed as a fact witness, or being identified in voire dire as a potential witness. Still, the big lie about failure to warn and worker and labor union ignorance had been uncovered. Judge Creany started to delegate trials to other judges in the courthouse and to bring judges in from neighboring counties. The defense went on win the next dozen or so cases, before the plaintiffs’ lawyers gave up on their misbegotten enterprise of trying to use Pennsylvania’s hyperstrict liability rules to make remote silica suppliers pay for the fault of workers and their employers.

You won’t find any mention of the Cambria County saga in Rosner or Markowitz’s glorified accounts of silicosis litigation. The widespread unlawful screenings, the “double dipping” by asbestos claimants seeking a second paycheck for fabricated silicosis, the manufactured diagnoses and product identification do not rent space in Rosner and Markowitz’s fantastical histories.

1 David Rosner, “Trying Times: The Courts, the Historian, and the Contentious Struggle to Define Disease,” 91 Bull. Hist. Med. 471 (2017).

2 See, e.g., Nathan A. Schachtman, “On Deadly Dust and Histrionic Historians: Preliminary Thoughts on History and Historians as Expert Witnesses,” 2 Mealey’s Silica Litigation Report Silica 1, 2 (November 2003); Nathan Schachtman & John Ulizio, “Courting Clio: Historians and Their Testimony in Products Liability Action,” in: Brian Dolan & Paul Blanc, eds., At Work in the World: Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on the History of Occupational and Environmental Health, Perspectives in Medical Humanities, University of California Medical Humanities Consortium, University of California Press (2012); Schachtman, “On Deadly Dust & Histrionic Historians 041904,”; “How Testifying Historians Are Like Lawn-Mowing Dogs” (May 15, 2010); A Walk on the Wild Side (July 16, 2010); Counter Narratives for Hire (Dec. 13, 2010); Historians Noir (Nov. 18, 2014); “Succès de scandale – With Thanks to Rosner & Markowitz” (Mar. 26, 2017). And of course, I have experienced some schadenfreude for when one of the Pink Panthers was excluded in a case in which he was disclosed as a testifying expert witness. Quester v. B.F. Goodrich Co., Case No. 03-509539, Court of Common Pleas for Cuyahoga Cty., Ohio, Order Sur Motion to Exclude Dr. Gerald Markowitz (Sweeney, J.).

3 “Trying Times” is the sixth Rosnowitz publication to point to me as a source of criticism of the Rosner-Markowitz radical leftist history of silicosis in the United States. See David Rosner, “Trying Times: The Courts, the Historian, and the Contentious Struggle to Define Disease,” 91 Bull. History Med. 473, 491-92 & n.32 (2017); Previously, Rosner and Markowitz have attempted to call me out in four published articles and one book. See D. Rosner & G. Markowitz, “The Trials and Tribulations of Two Historians: Adjudicating Responsibility for Pollution and Personal Harm, 53 Medical History 271, 280-81 (2009); D. Rosner & G. Markowitz, “L’histoire au prétoire. Deux historiens dans les procès des maladies professionnelles et environnementales,” 56 Revue D’Histoire Moderne & Contemporaine 227, 238-39 (2009); David Rosner, “Trials and Tribulations: What Happens When Historians Enter the Courtroom,” 72 Law & Contemporary Problems 137, 152 (2009); David Rosner & Gerald Markowitz, “The Historians of Industry” Academe (Nov. 2010); and Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner, Deceit and Denial: The Deadly Politics of Industrial Pollution at 313-14 (U. Calif. rev. ed. 2013).

4 Nathan A. Schachtman, “State Regulators Impose Sanction Unlawful Screenings 05-25-07,” Washington Legal Foundation Legal Opinion Letter, vol. 17, no. 13 (May 2007); “Silica Litigation – Screening, Scheming, and Suing,” Washington Legal Foundation Critical Legal Issues Working Paper (December 2005); “Medico-Legal Issues in Occupational Lung Disease Litigation,” 27 Seminars in Roentgenology140 (1992).

5 by Publichall – own work, CC BY-SA 3.0.

6 Assoc’d Press, “Pennsylvania County Judge Guilty of Corruption,” (April 18, 1989).

7 U.P.I., “Facing Prison, Convicted Judge Skips Bail,” (Mar. 8, 1993); “Judge O’kicki Declared Fugitive; May Be In Slovenia,” The Morning Call (April 20, 1993).

8 Harmotta v. Walter C. Best, Inc., Cambria Cty. Ct. C.P. No. 1986-128; Phillips v. Walter C. Best, Inc., Cambria Cty. Ct. C.P. No. 1987-434(b)(10); Peterson v. Walter C. Best, Inc., Cambria Cty. Ct. C.P. No. 1986-678.

9 Phillips v. A.P. Green Co., 428 Pa. Super. 167, 630 A.2d 874 (1993).

10 Phillips v. A-Best Products Co., 542 Pa. 124, 665 A.2d 1167 (1995).

Posted in Historian Testimony, Public Nuisances, Silica, Sophisticated User | Comments Off on History of Silicosis Litigation

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