On the heels of Canada’s recently announced ban on bisphenol-A (BPA), The New York Times has a substantial report reviewing the state of the science regarding the safety of this substance. Used primarily to line food and drink cans, some studies have shown BPA to be a hormone disruptor and a potential factor in the rise of obesity. Even the FDA has acknowledged we should reduce our exposure to it.

The Times piece is dedicated to comments from scientists, rather than from industry spokespeople, which is all to the good, though I’m not crazy about the headline: “In Feast of Data on BPA Plastic, No Final Answer.” The good news is that the thrust of the article undercuts this declaration quite a bit.

It’s true that the piece is chock full of scientific circumspection — many scientists are waiting for definitive results before declaring an unequivocal position on the BPA controversy, including whether low-dose exposure to the chemical truly represents a health risk. But most scientists quoted in the article chalked up much of the uncertainty to details of the experimental techniques used, rather than to real doubts about the underlying hypotheses. In fact, the only denials mentioned were from industry and the Republican party — and no corporate or GOP spokesperson seemed willing to offer a quote on the subject.

The real takeaway from this latest review is that just about everyone is waiting for the completion of the two-year, government-sponsored National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences safety studies that are currently under way. As Times reporter Denise Grady put it, “disputes arise in part because scientists from different disciplines — endocrinologists versus toxicologists, academic researchers versus those at regulatory agencies — do research in different ways that can make findings hard to reconcile.” Once again: It’s the process, not the facts themselves, that keeps the BPA “debate” alive.