Emo's
The Battle of Footnotes
RECEIVED Thu., June 4, 2009
Dear Editor,
In "Return to Forever" ["Page Two," May 29], Louis Black tosses passing scorn at the person who dropped off a book opposing water fluoridation, thick with pages of footnotes: "If, in return, I handed them a book in favor that was even thicker with footnotes, would that change this person's mind? Of course not."
So now there's a battle of footnotes? Well, what about the quality of the information contained therein? Does that count for anything?
I'm not the one who dropped off the book, The Fluoride Deception by Christopher Bryson, but I have read it. The footnotes Mr. Black derides come from a decade of deep research by a determined BBC correspondent who, like himself, started out with no opinion and scant interest in the assignment that had been handed him. Bryson's footnotes come from the archives of the likes of Boston's Forsyth Institute, the Carnegie Institution, the University of Rochester, Sloan-Kettering, the U.S. Department of Defense, private collections of long-dead scientist-bureaucrats, and personal interviews with nonagenarians (including Edward Bernays, the "father of public relations" and author of Propaganda) who helped design and market the fluoridation scheme.
Pro-fluoride publications thick with footnotes certainly abound, but none I've come across boast the caliber of this documentation. While everyone is entitled to their opinion or no opinion at all, it hardly makes sense to dismiss a book one hasn't read by comparison with a second, purely hypothetical book one also hasn't read. This shows ignorance of the learning process - the steps by which we come to place our trust in one source over another. People might rather study The Fluoride Deception side by side with some of the American Dental Association's and Centers for Disease Control's promotional tracts (e.g., ADA's "Fluoridation Facts," easily available online) and then decide for themselves whose footnotes most persuade.
In "Return to Forever" ["Page Two," May 29], Louis Black tosses passing scorn at the person who dropped off a book opposing water fluoridation, thick with pages of footnotes: "If, in return, I handed them a book in favor that was even thicker with footnotes, would that change this person's mind? Of course not."
So now there's a battle of footnotes? Well, what about the quality of the information contained therein? Does that count for anything?
I'm not the one who dropped off the book, The Fluoride Deception by Christopher Bryson, but I have read it. The footnotes Mr. Black derides come from a decade of deep research by a determined BBC correspondent who, like himself, started out with no opinion and scant interest in the assignment that had been handed him. Bryson's footnotes come from the archives of the likes of Boston's Forsyth Institute, the Carnegie Institution, the University of Rochester, Sloan-Kettering, the U.S. Department of Defense, private collections of long-dead scientist-bureaucrats, and personal interviews with nonagenarians (including Edward Bernays, the "father of public relations" and author of Propaganda) who helped design and market the fluoridation scheme.
Pro-fluoride publications thick with footnotes certainly abound, but none I've come across boast the caliber of this documentation. While everyone is entitled to their opinion or no opinion at all, it hardly makes sense to dismiss a book one hasn't read by comparison with a second, purely hypothetical book one also hasn't read. This shows ignorance of the learning process - the steps by which we come to place our trust in one source over another. People might rather study The Fluoride Deception side by side with some of the American Dental Association's and Centers for Disease Control's promotional tracts (e.g., ADA's "Fluoridation Facts," easily available online) and then decide for themselves whose footnotes most persuade.
Rae Nadler-Olenick
[Louis Black responds: In retrospect I agree that I was too glib there. My point was that over the years, often on the most complicated issues, people have referred me to a book or books as well as a website or websites that invariably strongly support their point of view. I was not arguing for or against fluoridation but suggesting that passing on one work, no matter how scholarly, is not the best way to change minds. Let me be perfectly honest here: On fluoridation, as with global warming, I have no opinion. My feeling is that weighing in on such topics requires a great deal of study, searching out and reading materials representing all points of view as well as works that are less opinionated. When dealing with a controversial complex issue, listing scholars and experts, academic and scientific studies that back your point of view doesn't make the case. Almost always, there is as much intellectual weight behind an opposing opinion. Again, on fluoridation I was not taking a stand for or against but trying to address the issue of educating people and changing minds. On that I did a poor job in this case.]