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One of the most well-documented episodes of scientific manipulation and overt fraud was the scandal involving Industrial Bio-Test Laboratories (IBT) in the 1970s and the chronic toxicity tests it conducted on behalf of Monsanto that ultimately led to the indictment and conviction of employees of IBT and the Monsanto Corporation. IBT, at the time the nation's largest private laboratory, served a range of industries and government agencies. IBT conducted about 22 000 toxicology studies for scores of corporations, representing between 35% and 40% of all tests conducted in private labs in the country. IBT has been justly condemned for its fraudulent activities in the 1970s, but no one has looked at the relationship between the corporate funders of IBT's research and its fraudulent practices. We use previously secret corporate documents that detail the role of IBT's largest customer, Monsanto, which used fraudulent data to influence government. This material, revealed through legal discovery proceedings now under way regarding polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and Roundup, show the long-lasting impact of Monsanto's behavior on efforts to regulate large corporations as well as on the long-term effects on human health. (Am J Public Health. 2023;113(6):661–666. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2023.307247) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the past two decades, historians have been brought into legal cases in unprecedented numbers. As the courts have tried to adjudicate responsibility for environmental and occupational diseases, history and historians have played an increasingly central role in shaping decisions in the cases themselves as well as in related social policy. In suits over tobacco-related diseases, asbestosis, harm from radiation, and other toxic substances, historians of technology and science, social history, and public health are being brought to the courts in growing numbers to provide expert testimony aimed at assessing responsibility for damages that have arisen years, sometimes decades, after exposure. As the role of the historian has expanded, so, too, has the controversy surrounding the participation of historians in legal cases. In this essay, the authors have gone through their own internal process in deciding whether to work for those injured by industries, institutions, or products. The authors share their experience when they became expert witnesses in two cases. Their experience and the controversies that are roiling the historical community take on a special resonance in the light of the recent BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.