David Michaels, the head of OSHA (Occupational Safety & Health Administration), also wrote the book Doubt is Their Product: How Industry‘s Assault on Science Threatens Your Health. You can guess what it‘s about based on the subtitle. The title itself comes from a 1969 memo from the tobacco giant Brown and Williamson discussing a plan to try to obscure the scientific evidence that smoking is dangerous with a flood of competing, sponsored „scientific“ research in an effort to sow doubt. The memo announced „doubt is our product, since it is the best means of competing with the ‚body of fact‘ that exists in the mind of the general public.“ Once put in charge of OSHA, he added a basic request (not a requirement) that anyone submitting scientific comments with the agency should also disclose any possible financial conflict of interest. He did not say that such submissions would be ignored, just in the interest of transparency, financial conflicts of interest should be disclosed.