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From the LA Times on Exponent who did most of the scientific studies for the Wells Report:
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/feb/18/business/la-fi-toyota-exponent18-2010feb18
So this is hired gun company hired by large companies to produce data that helps them win cases even if it flies in the face of real science.
But Exponent's research has come under fire from critics, including engineers, attorneys and academics who say the company tends to deliver to clients the reports they need to mount a public defense.
"If I were Toyota, I wouldn't have picked somebody like Exponent to do analysis," said Stanton Glantz, a cardiologist at UC San Francisco who runs a database on the tobacco industry that contains thousands of pages of Exponent research arguing, among other things, that secondhand smoke does not cause cancer. "I would have picked a firm with more of a reputation of neutrality."
In the late 1980s, it was hired by Suzuki to conduct tests that showed that the Samurai sport utility vehicle wouldn't tip over during turns at 38 mph, disputing research published by Consumer Reports magazine. In Exponent's research, the Samurai successfully completed turns at 43 mph. It called the Consumer Reports test "stunt like."
About 10 years ago, Ford, General Motors Corp. and Chrysler hired Exponent to help with their defense in a slew of lawsuits filed by mechanics who alleged that asbestos in brakes caused them health problems. Exponent's findings upheld the automakers' argument that the brakes were not a hazard.
The firm was hired by Exxon to show that a double hull probably would not have prevented the Valdez disaster of 1989. It was also hired by NASA to help determine causes of the Challenger shuttle explosion, and by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to survey the damages to the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building after the Oklahoma City bombing.
Swiss Re, an insurer of the World Trade Center, hired Exponent after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks to argue its case that it should have to pay only half the $7 billion in claims sought on the grounds that the collapse of one tower would have compromised the entire complex even if the second tower had not fallen.
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/feb/18/business/la-fi-toyota-exponent18-2010feb18
So this is hired gun company hired by large companies to produce data that helps them win cases even if it flies in the face of real science.