Bending Science is an intelligent and compelling blend of investigative journalism and theoretical analysis of the structural and functional flaws of the research enterprise, from the development of testable ideas to the use of its results for practical purposes… Bending Science [is] an indispensable read for our current troubled times. All in all, this book is a must-read not only for researchers devoted to the scientific method but also for all who wish to become competent consumers of research that can influence their lives. The narrative is an eye-opener, which will provide the reader with tools to understand the research process and protect himself/herself from advocacy-based distortions.

Bending Science is so chock-full of ideas and insights… McGarity and Wagner’s insight has large implications both for potential legal reforms and for public faith in the integrity of the scientific process… Bending Science is an immensely important book. It is one of quite a large number of books published recently on the manipulations of science by interest groups and the government. Yet even in this crowded field, Bending Science stakes out its own ground and makes an invaluable contribution to the debate over the role of science in public policy.

Drawing together a host of little-known but dramatic cases, this landmark book documents more comprehensively than any previous study, what has been suspected for years: how extensively scientific data are misused and abused in regulatory and tort law. Society depends on science to guide public policy on health and safety, but as McGarity and Wagner show, many interest groups do all they can to influence—and undermine—independent and honest research. Bending Science shows just how far science has been corrupted, and offers a road to reform.

Thanks to extraordinary detective work into both law and science, Bending Science makes a compelling case that the system of policy-relevant science has gone badly off the tracks, and that law is both part of the problem and the solution. Powerful but not polemical, McGarity and Wagner show groups of all political stripes, and the government itself, have misrepresented and manipulated science.