There's nothing scientific about the Center for Science in the Public Interest, nor does the Center have any interest in the interests of the public.
Do this! Don't do that! Eat this repulsive vegetable. Stay away from that tantalizing pastry. Don't smoke, don't drink, don't enjoy any unauthorized pleasure. Don't make value judgements. Don't confuse us with facts and logic. Do what you're told. It's for your own good. Wear your seatbelt, wear your helmet, wear a pink ribbon. Smile!
Nag, nag, nag. Know-it-alls and busybodies everywhere. Aren't you sick of them? Even if their unsolicited advice did have any merit -- which it rarely does -- the deleterious effects of their incessant nagging would nullify it all. Isn't it about time that the surgeon general required all professional scolds to display a warning label, starting with the facetiously named Center for Science in the Public Interest?
The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) is "not content to use the old-fashioned and honorable tool of moral suasion," declare James Bennett and Thomas DiLorenzo. "It is not enough for them to try to convince the rest of us to renounce the 'sinful' acts of devouring a bacon-cheeseburger or drinking a beer while reclining on a couch and enjoying a football game. No," say the two economists, "the neoprohibitionists are not satisfied with saying their piece in the marketplace of ideas. They reach for that ever-ready cudgel of the censorious scoundrel: the coercive power of the state."
In a recent issue of Organization Trends, a publication of the Capital Research Center, Bennett and DiLorenzo relate that CSPI "was founded in 1971 by a trio of self-styled consumer advocates who had worked for Ralph Nader's Center for the Study of Responsive Law." Over the years the group's budget, now in excess of $13 million, has been augmented by grants from the Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation, the Louis & Anne Abrons Foundation, the S.H. Cowell Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Rockefeller Family Fund, the Helena Rubinstein Foundation, the Smith Richardson Foundation, and the Streisand Foundation.
Bennett and DiLorenzo recall that CSPI "became known to many consumers in 1993, when the Center began to release controversial studies disparaging Chinese, Italian, and Mexican restaurants for serving high-fat and unhealthy foods." They say "the Center's greatest media ploy is its ongoing campaign to smear the makers and users of olestra, the first no-fat, no-calorie fat substitute." Recent public relations triumphs have come at the expense of the tobacco industry, and spirit distillers look to be their next target. Bennet and DiLorenzo report that CSPI's Alcohol Policies Project is "leading an effort to restrict alcohol consumption by government controls on products and advertisers."
The moral preening of the prigs at the Center for Science in the Public Interest is becoming harder and harder to bear. "They're not do-gooders; they're bullies," Bennett and DiLorenzo conclude. "And cowardly bullies at that, eager to drag in the coercive arm of the state to fight their battles for them."
