Reply from David Berube, NCSU

Dear readers, No one gets a free pass. Not industry. Not government. Not civil advocacy groups. And not even me. Once you enter the critical dialogue on environmental health and safety as a spokesperson for stakeholders, you are bound to higher levels of accuracy. You are speaking for others and, as a contract of sorts, it carries duties and obligations. The article I wrote speaks for itself. The page from the FOE sunscreen report that became the focus of the exercise was selected purposefully. It is difficult to understand how one page full of inaccuracies can be justified contextually in an argumentative claim. As to factual errors, the material in the article I wrote comes directly from the studies the report cited and from the lead authors who completed the research. As to ‘‘wrong studies’’, all references were traced back to lead authors (something the report should have done). All the claims in the part of the FOE report selected for evaluation were referenced to scientific publications. The researchers for the cited material (but for one) were contacted and responded. They commented on how the claims were supported by their research. No lead author who responded to my queries felt the reference was to another publication of theirs during the same year. I deferred to their insight in every instance. For example, Claims 5, 6 and 7 were challenging for me. There were highly redundant claims from cell death via DNA mutation in Claim 5 to cell death via DNA mutation in Claim 7. As such, distinguishing one claim from another was very difficult, so direct cross-referencing might have suffered a little but not sufficiently to discredit any of my conclusions. If there was any confusion as Mr. Illuminato suggested, it was illuminated since all the studies were vetted and nearly all the researchers contacted. The citations, direct and otherwise, included Oberdorster who addressed DNA mutation and cell death as well as Geiser (unreachable), Li via Nel and Savic via Maysinger. All these studies were appropriately vetted and all but one of the researchers contacted. The studies and the researchers do not concur with Claims 5–7 being made in the report. As to resorting to the position that those who wrote the report were not toxicologists hence not qualified to do so, I would argue you should have tried harder. As to inconsistencies made by the staff of FOE in this report, this is a condemning remark. You are See also DOI 10.1007/s11051-008-9362-7 and DOI 10.1007/s11051-008-9442-8.