Critical Reviews in Toxicology be developed. Indeed, this was one of our main recommendations. Developing such approaches will be a complicated task, because, uniquely, the issues of adversity and mode of action will have to be dealt with at the same time, which is currently without precedent. In preparing the science summary, we consequently found ourselves in a situation of having to synthesise the literature without being able to rely on established weight of evidence approaches for endocrine disrupters. In much the same way as the WHO/IPCS (2002) report, to which two of the authors of this critique contributed (Foster, van der Kraak), and which Rhomberg et al. hold up as a positive example, we chose a narrative review to address the task we were set. But this does not render our report biased.

The accusation of bias would have been justified, if we had wilfully and consistently ignored evidence pointing in a specific direction. A fair assessment of that question is only possible by engaging scientifically with the content of our report. But this is precisely what Rhomberg et al. fail to do. Instead, they infer bias from the odd missed reference and from the literature search strategy that we have used. They write that “by using ‘endocrine disrupt*’(a term suggesting a conclusion of adverse impacts) as the primary inclusion criterion [in our literature searches], the literature search appears to have biased the review toward studies purporting to show adverse effects of chemicals”. According to Rhomberg et al., we should instead have included the search terms “endocrine-active” or “endocrine modulator” so as to capture papers with a more measured view.