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In theory we should put all this money towards welcoming scientific study. In fact I’m sure chemical analysis would be far cheaper than lawyers. Does talc reall

In theory we should put all this money towards welcoming scientific study. In fact I’m sure chemical analysis would be far cheaper than lawyers. Does talc really cause cancer or not ? My understanding is that it is a bit like vermiculite insulation, which on its own it’s completely fine, but most vermiculite mines are naturally “contaminated” with asbestos. Wouldn’t it be great if we knew what about talc caused cancer and we could make it safe and have use of it without fear? Probably 3% of the money spent on litigating all this could have gotten us good testing and an industrial process to produce clean talc. Unfortunately, I think that, this isn’t that - J&J wants to obfuscate the science and get off the financial hook :( And what the hell is the “revised standard” that j&j lawyers feel they can now meet? That sounds like the con of the century.

cryptonym 3y ago
I think like you, their finance and lawyers are not stupid. They did the maths or already know. Doing actual scientific study might be more risky, proving product is not good. Producing clean stuff might be impossible or too expensive, too risky to go there if regulation doesn't require it. They may have to pay reparation to existing customers.
- bluGill 3y ago
  They are going to court - science is a very different bar. Even if the science shows it is safe, someone will testify that it isn't and sway the jury with how bad life is for the heirs of someone who died from cancer. Of course in reality science gives probabilities not absolutes and so the jury gets told this causes cancer in .0001% of cases but this person was that one even though there is no way to determine that and cancer has many different causes. What matters is what you can convince a jury who doesn't have a background in science or statistics.
vasco 3y ago
> And what the hell is the “revised standard” that j&j lawyers feel they can now meet? Sounds to me like it could be the engineering equivalent of reducing SLO thresholds and admitting defeat either due to not enough traffic or not enough capacity to deal with the problem properly [1]: > You might also want to reconsider if the impact of a single failure on the error budget accurately reflects its impact on users. If a small number of errors causes you to lose error budget, do you really need to page an engineer to fix the issue immediately? If not, users would be equally happy with a lower SLO. With a lower SLO, an engineer is notified only of a larger sustained outage. Without thinking of: > Lowering the SLO does have a downside: it involves a product decision. Changing the SLO affects other aspects of the system, such as expectations around system behavior and when to enact the error budget policy. These other requirements may be more important to the product than avoiding some number of low-signal alerts. The "product decision" is the court ruling and the "other aspects of the system" is how many people will die. [1] https://sre.google/workbook/alerting-on-slos/ https://sre.google/workbook/alerting-on-slos/
- username332211 3y ago
  > Sounds to me like it could be the engineering equivalent of reducing SLO thresholds and admitting defeat either due to not enough traffic or not enough capacity to deal with the problem properly [1] No, actually, the article describes it as a "change to the federal rule of evidence governing expert testimony, which emphasized courts' role in vetting experts' conclusions and methodology before allowing them to present evidence to a jury."

cryptonym 3y ago

I think like you, their finance and lawyers are not stupid. They did the maths or already know. Doing actual scientific study might be more risky, proving product is not good. Producing clean stuff might be impossible or too expensive, too risky to go there if regulation doesn't require it. They may have to pay reparation to existing customers.

bluGill 3y ago
They are going to court - science is a very different bar. Even if the science shows it is safe, someone will testify that it isn't and sway the jury with how bad life is for the heirs of someone who died from cancer. Of course in reality science gives probabilities not absolutes and so the jury gets told this causes cancer in .0001% of cases but this person was that one even though there is no way to determine that and cancer has many different causes. What matters is what you can convince a jury who doesn't have a background in science or statistics.

vasco 3y ago

> And what the hell is the “revised standard” that j&j lawyers feel they can now meet? Sounds to me like it could be the engineering equivalent of reducing SLO thresholds and admitting defeat either due to not enough traffic or not enough capacity to deal with the problem properly [1]: > You might also want to reconsider if the impact of a single failure on the error budget accurately reflects its impact on users. If a small number of errors causes you to lose error budget, do you really need to page an engineer to fix the issue immediately? If not, users would be equally happy with a lower SLO. With a lower SLO, an engineer is notified only of a larger sustained outage. Without thinking of: > Lowering the SLO does have a downside: it involves a product decision. Changing the SLO affects other aspects of the system, such as expectations around system behavior and when to enact the error budget policy. These other requirements may be more important to the product than avoiding some number of low-signal alerts. The "product decision" is the court ruling and the "other aspects of the system" is how many people will die. [1] https://sre.google/workbook/alerting-on-slos/ https://sre.google/workbook/alerting-on-slos/

username332211 3y ago
> Sounds to me like it could be the engineering equivalent of reducing SLO thresholds and admitting defeat either due to not enough traffic or not enough capacity to deal with the problem properly [1] No, actually, the article describes it as a "change to the federal rule of evidence governing expert testimony, which emphasized courts' role in vetting experts' conclusions and methodology before allowing them to present evidence to a jury."