Scientific Standards and Institutional Interests: Carcinogenic Risk Assessment of Benoxaprofen in the UK and US

Abstract

A systematic methodology for imputing biases in the production and interpretation of scientific knowledge is developed. It is then extensively applied to examine how the interests of industrial and government scientists may have biased the carcinogenic risk assessment of the medical drug `benoxaprofen', in the British and American regulatory contexts. This case study illustrates how commonly agreed technical standards in science can be used to scrutinize the validity of scientific knowledge claims in industry and government, and to identify convergences between patterns of technical inconsistencies and institutional interests in different international contexts. It is argued that the interest-based biases revealed imply deficiencies in regulatory policy. Consequently, a set of political changes are proposed in order to reduce such biases in drug testing and regulation.