In a May 16 blog post about the possibility of Dennis Paustenbach being appointed to a federal asbestos committee, we said that Paustenbach's firm ChemRisk "committed scientific fraud on behalf of a client" by placing in a scientific journal an article concluding that chromium-6 does not cause cancer. The study was published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health in 1997 under the byline of a Chinese scientist without disclosing ChemRisk's involvement in the study. Our statement that ChemRisk committed scientific fraud was in error. The Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health did retract the study, but it stated the reason it was doing so was that "financial and intellectual input to the paper by outside parties was not disclosed. Although it is impossible to know what the impact of such disclosure would have been, it is possible that full knowledge of the circumstances may have altered the review process or the subsequent interpretation of the study by readers." On Dec. 23, 2005, The Wall Street Journal cited court documents that "indicate the . . . study was conceived, drafted, edited and submitted to medical journals" by ChemRisk, working for Pacific Gas & Electric Co., "a utility company being sued for alleged chromium pollution." The Wall Street Journal has not retracted or corrected these statements.
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