DAY 88: Crocker Undercuts Viscusi Testimony on Risk Perception
April 6, 2005 12:21 pm by Gene BorioApr 6, 2005, 12:44 PM
DOJ attorney Elizabeth Crocker seems to be doing a good job of diminishing the impact of W. Kip Viscusi’s testimony on surveys concerning risk perception.
Dr. Viscusi is certainly the closest thing to a heavyweight the Defense has yet offered:
He is the John F. Cogan, Jr. Professor of Law and Economics at Harvard. *
He has written or coauthored hundreds of articles (”I am currently ranked seventh among all economists in the world in terms of articles published in the top peer-reviewed journals”).
He has written over 20 books, 2 of which concern smoking specifically.
AND he makes $850/hour. His fee for testifying is $3400/half-day or any portion thereof, and $6800/full day.
Dr. Viscusi believes that smokers from the 1950’s on were well aware of the risks of smoking, based on surveys. Ms. Crocker has established that the 3 of the 4 surveys he mainly relies on were funded by tobacco industry law firms “for use in litigation,” and has found evidence that finds fault with the numerical aspect of the 3 main questions he relies on (questions that ask respondents for estimates of lung cancer, total smoking mortality and years of life lost in terms of the number “out of 100 smokers”).
She has also brought into evidence Gallop survey questions that he has failed to cite which undercut the import of the ones he does cite
She has established that Dr. Viscusi has worked for the industry off-and-on since 1986. He has worked on 26 liability cases.
**———————————————————
* He seems fairly possessive of his titles. When Ms. Crocker mis-identified an author as “Dr. Hanson,” Dr. Viscusi got quite exercised, and said,
DR. VISCUSI: MR. Hanson is NOT a doctor. You called him a Dr., he is not a Dr.
MS. CROCKER: You are aware he is a professor?
DR. VISCUSI: Yes
MS. CROCKER: And he is a professor at Harvard law school, like yourself?
DR. VISCUSI (with vigor): He does not have a chair, he is not head of a department.. . we do have different ranks.
MS. CROCKER: But he is a professor, like yourself?
DR. VISCUSI (with resigned disdain): We both have jobs at Harvard.
Now I see that there are indeed issues between the two:
April 6th, 2005 at 6:07 pm
Viscusi’s a piece of work all right.
He’s always there for the industry, defending it on taxes, advertising, risk assessment, risk disclosure, regulation, costs of smoking, secondhand smoke.
His “research” comes out with the results the industry likes and uses in its PR. And ends up in the mouths of endless front groups.
He’s a consultant and expert witness for the industry in trial after trial.
He writes and submits extended comments to regulators on the industry’s behalf. And he’s not always upfront in disclosing the sponsor, e.g. “I have been retained by Covington and Burling to provide an analysis of the proposed OSH rule for indoor air quality”
http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/oev70a00
But to me the most noticeable thing about him is how out of touch he is with working people.
For instance, he has such an easy solution for secondhand smoke on the job:
“If workers perceive their exposures to ETS as unpleasant or risky, they will demand compensating differentials for those exposures”
Kip Viscusi, “Secondhand Smoke Facts and Fantasy”, in Regulation, Cato Review of Business and Government
http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/reg18n3e.html
So easy for him to say. But the reality is not so easy. For instance:
“Steve Morris of Stockton is among the unemployed who will lose his federal benefits. The 56-year-old was laid off in February 2001 from his job handling data processing for a San Francisco law firm. He has found off-and-on temp work over the last two years but not a steady job.”
“With his state jobless benefits set to run out in March, Morris is considering moving to Las Vegas to attend a card dealer’s school to learn to deal blackjack and poker in casinos.”
“‘I don’t relish the idea of making less than half of what I’ve made while choking on secondhand smoke … but not working is not an option,’ he said.”
San Francsico Chronicle, December 9 2003
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/12/09/MNGEH3J5K51.DTL
So, will Steve Morris just “demand compensating differentials”? I don’t think so.
The reality is, Steve doesn’t get to make a lot of demands here. Steve’s running out of money. To live on.
Steve doesn’t get $6800 a day as an expert witness.
Steve may have to choke on secondhand smoke. 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week. For whatever they pay him. Which will also not be negotiable. That’s Steve’s reality.
It seems to me that anyone who suggests Steve should just “demand compensating differentials” is completely out of touch with this reality, with the lives of working people.
It seems to me it’s very comfortable from a Harvard office to put forth the opinion that worker health and safety is a problem best left to the market.
I’m guessing that in a Harvard office, you don’t breathe in secondhand smoke 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week, as a condition of your job.
I bet if you understand Steve Morris’s reality, if you have any idea what his life is like, his and millions of working people across America, you don’t come up with pronouncements like he should “demand compensating differentials”.