Symbiosis
How "safety" news gets shaped: a litigation consultant "at the request of trial lawyers "¦ combed through hundreds of coroner's reports and media accounts" and before long ABC had an alarming story to run.
There is a symbiosis between tort lawyers (who want to inflame a jury into giving large awards, or better yet create a mass tort), the media (who want scare stories to boost circulation) and government (populated with legislators just itching to ban or regulate something to show they "care"). Someone should write a book about that.
bryan:
Someone did, it's called State of Fear and it's quite good.
I'm sure your book is good too. It's on the to read list...
May 13, 2009, 11:54 amPeter:
Its a shame that people have gotten so dependent on needing manufacturers to tell them everything that a functioning brain should be able to figure out for itself. If we had never gone down the path of blame the manufacturer for the purchasers failure to use what used to be common sense people would be more in practice of thinking to prevent accidents. What's worse is that soon there will be too many warnings on every product for people to bother reading what might actually be important ones and then we will all have to attend classes at the local retailer before buying a coffee pot just so that they can be sure that you know that the pot may be HOT.
May 13, 2009, 6:45 pm