A Wall Street Journal Op-ed by a member of the EU Parliament decries the direction being taken by science there: it s back to the dark ages as fear trumps evidence.
junk science
It is a pleasure to give a shout out to commentator par excellence and ACSH friend Trevor Butterworth. In his recent Forbes op-ed Butterworth sticks his arm deep into the muck created by the mixing of science and politics, and comes up with a disturbing conclusion.
A new "study" purporting to show a link between exposure to common class of chemicals phthalates is a travesty of sound science. The article was clearly written with an outcome in mind, and the authors did an excellent job of getting to that outcome by torturing their data, using multiple study chemicals and multiple analytical tools to get their desired "statistical significance." It's still a load of hooey.
We at ACSH are rarely surprised by anything we see published. Since it is our job to debunk bad science, we get a steady diet of it. But we got a special dessert dropped in our laps, and this one takes the cake.
Although the study in question is from July, it is so jaw-droppingly awful that we decided to include it today. And when you read it, you may want to discontinue your subscription to Scientific American, which according to ACSH s media director Erik Lief should really be called Unscientific American.
The always-excellent Henry Miller does not disappoint in his latest op-ed about the impact of junk science on all of us. It is sad, but
We at ACSH have written countless pieces on the absolute garbage science surrounding BPA a chemical that has been in use for more than 50 years. The primary use of BPA the manufacture numerous plastics.
So, it is only natural that we give a huge shout-out to Trevor Butterworth, a journalist and master junk science (especially statistics) debunker, who has an impressive pedigree of editorial and media exposure.
The always-brilliant Dr. Joe Schwarcz, the director of McGill's Office for Science & Society and a chemist, has once again done what he does best: hunting down junk science (not much of a challenge) and excoriating it.
This time he takes aim at the animal rights zealots at PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), a radical animal rights group that is sometimes sardonically referred to as People Eating Tasty Animals.
Endocrine-disruptor we at ACSH have been fighting an uphill battle against this pseudo-scientific term for years.
According to radical environmental groups and others with similar anti-chemical agendas, we are being bathed in these things and they are doing serious, chronic harm to all of us.