The Hindu Business Line : What's so scientific about junk science?

THERE was a time, not so long ago, when any proposition was accepted or rejected on the basis of its `scientific' validity. Thus, the characterisation of any proposition as `scientific' was thought to establish its truth beyond dispute while its description as `unscientific' implied that it did not merit any further consideration.

In retrospect, the elevation of science to the status of the only acceptable criterion of truth seems...charmingly naive in that it rested on the assumption that science existed in a state of complete purity, untainted by commercial and other extraneous considerations.

With the on-going corporatisation of science in recent years and the consequent, commercially modulated interaction between town and gown, the qualifier term `scientific' has, in recent times, lost much of its cachet.

Thus, if a proposition is endorsed as `scientific' today, one is immediately driven to ask: "Yes, but according to whose science.''

One is compelled to ask this question when told that there is no reason to harbour any concerns about the carcinogenicity of the insulin sensitiser, Ragaglitazar, evolved for the treatment of diabetes. One is again compelled to ask this question when organisations such as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Agency for Toxic Substances Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), both of the US, hedge their bets when evaluating the toxicity of the pesticide, endosulfan, even as the people of Padre village in Kerala's Kasargode district experience central nervous system and other disorders associated with the ingestion of this pesticide which is banned in various countries and the use of which is severely restricted in others. Above all, one is forced to ask this question when one encounters the term "junk science'' with increasingly disconcerting regularity... Ironically, there is some dispute as to who exactly coined the term "junk science.''

Some hold that the term was evolved by Mr E. Bruce Harrison, a well-known American public relations practitioner and lobbyist, who was funded by the US National Agricultural Chemical Association, the trade association representing the interests of pesticide producers, to counter the impact of Ms Rachel Carson's apocalyptic work, Silent Spring. Others attribute the term to Mr. Peter Huber, the tobacco industry anti-tort campaigner.

Moving on, the intriguing thing about junk science is that, the contention of the anti-globalisationwallahs that it is a product of big capital notwithstanding, it is practised and propogated by, among others, corporates, fronts for corporates and anti-corporate activists/advocacy groups.

An increasing amount of `scientific' research is being funded by corporates which inevitably mandate the outcome. Thus, there are all kinds of studies and research findings that find their way into the media, attributable to thinktanks that profess independence but are coy about the source(s) of their funding, pay-for-service polling outfits.... and even public relations organisations!

Further, we are deluged by `scientific' findings put out by fake, grassroots (astroturf) organisations which engage in what is known as `greenwashing': obfuscating the malfeasance of corporates through fake data presented in politically correct terms.

And, then again, there are genuine grassroots organisations which tend to allow their zeal to cloud their reason and propogate self-serving `scientific' data. As for these organisations, science that does not endorse their views is `junk science.'

According to www.junkscience.com ("All the Junk that is Fit to Debunk''), the junk science `mob' also includes:

The media which use it for sensational headlines and programming;

Personal injury lawyers who may use it to bamboozle juries into awarding huge verdicts which are then used to extort even larger sums of money from deep-pocket businesses fearful of future jury verdicts;

Government regulators who use junk science to expand their authority and, inevitably, budgets;

Politicians who use it to curry favour with special interest groups or to be politically correct; and

Individual scientists who may use it to achieve fame and fortune.

Corporates and their fronts, obviously, have an edge over the other proponents of junk science in that they have more money which they use to get themselves heard in societies deafened by the ceaseless clamour of debate over junk science issues.

The success of corporates in shouting down the opposition has resulted in something referred to as `tobacco science', an expression that is used to refer to the outcome of scientific research carried out in accordance with complex agreements between corporates and the researchers which specify the area of research and the conditions governing of release of findings, if any. Tobacco science, of course, is a generic expression and is not limited to the research shenanigans that tobacco majors usually get up to.

Fortunately for us all, there are still some scientists around who revel in poking fun at junk science. Mr Steven Milloy, for instance. This publisher of JunkScience.com, adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute and the author of Junk Science Judo: Self-Defence Against Health Scares and Scams, writes a delighful column for Fox News Channel in which he holds up to ridicule individuals and organisations who try and bamboozle ordinary people with junk science.

The Indian reader will be especially interested in an article titled Rethinking DDT (Fox News/June 20, 2002) in which Mr Milloy wrote: "June 30, 1972, is a date that lives in junk science infamy. That is when the US Environmental Protection Agency banned the insecticide DDT. The ban survives 30 years later, even as it has helped kill millions of people, mostly children.''

"Widespread DDT use began in the US in 1945 to control mosquitoes and cotton, soybean and peanut pests. DDT's efficacy and low cost were — and remain — unsurpassed''.

According to Mr Milloy, Ms Rachel Carson "inflamed the public against DDT with her book, Silent Spring. She claimed that DDT harmed bird reproduction and caused cancer. But Ms Carson `misrepresented' the then existing science on bird reproduction and was "dead wrong about DDT causing cancer''.

Mr Milloy pointed out in his article: "Carson predicted a cancer epidemic that could hit `practically 100 per cent' of the human population. This prediction never materialised, no doubt because it was based on a 1961 epidemic of liver cancer in middle-aged rainbow trout — an outbreak later attributed to aflatoxin, a toxic byproduct of certain fungi.

Activists blamed DDT for the disappearance of great birds such as the bald eagle and the peregrine falcon. Supposedly, the insecticide harmed bird reproduction by thinning egg shells. But the bald eagle and the peregrine falcon were hunted to near extinction decades before DDT was first used in the US...''

Mr Milloy added that anti-DDT activism led to hearings before an EPA administrative judge in 1971-72. After seven months and 9,000 pages of testimony, the judge concluded that DDT is not a carcinogenic, mutagenic or tetratogenic hazard to man. But the EPA administrator, Mr William Ruckelshaus, who never attended the hearings nor read the transcripts, went ahead and banned the DDT anyway. But the activists who lobbied against DDT did nothing about malaria-causing mosquitoes...

The JunkScience.com publisher makes interesting reading on another subject which is very much in the news now — hormone replacement therapy (HRT).

In an article titled Hormone Hysteria or Hype (Fox News/August 2/2002), he kicked off with: "Women have been scared during the last several weeks with new studies about alleged health risks from hormone replacement therapy. This scare contrasts starkly with the preceding decades of HRT being touted as the fountain of youth. What should women and their physicians believe? Past hype? Recent hysteria? Neither...''

HRT, originally estrogen alone and later estrogen combined with progestin, was approved by the FDA in 1942 to relieve the short-term symptoms of menopause such as night sweats hot flashes.

Two decades later, after Dr Robert Wlson published a book called Feminine Forever (financed by Wyeth-Ayerst which makes Premarin), HRT was touted in various studies as a wonder drug for the long-term health concerns of women, and not just menopausal symptoms.

Mr Milloy wrote: "But anyone who paid attention to data rather than the hype would have known that these studies did not at all demonstrate HRT to be a panacea.

The studies invariably reported weak statistical correlation between HRT use and long-term health benefits — and that is with the study populations biased in favour of the reported results.

The study populations taking HRT tended to be comprised of thinner, wealthier and better-educated women under physician care. It is not surprising that these women were healthier than the women in the control group.''

As for the current scare, Mr Milloy is dismissive: "...the most notable of recent studies reported that, among 8,506 estrogen-plus-progestin HRT users, there was only a 29 per cent increase in heart disease occurrence. That result was barely statistically significant, meaning there's a worrisome possibility it was a fluke.

The study reported a 26 per cent increase in breast cancer occurence. That result was not statistically significant. The study's reported results for other health concerns were of similar magnitude and statistical significance — that is to say, weak.''

Again, for the Indian reader, Mr Milloy on the World Health Organisation (WHO) is irresistible: "The WHO reported last week (May, 2002) that 5,500 children die every day from the consumption of food and water contaminated with bacteria. So why is the WHO worrying about obesity, French fries, cell phones, the "economy class syndrome'' and — worst of all — augmenting its own bureaucratic sprawl?

The WHO report paints a shockingly bleak picture for millions of Third World children: 1.3 million under the age of five die annually from diarrhoeal diseases caused by unsafe food and water; another 2.2 million die from respiratory infections caused or exacerbated by poor sanitation. In activist parlance, this death toll equates to about 40 Jumbo jets filled with kids crashing every day'' (stress added).

But the WHO-sponsored, New York City meeting on children's welfare held in May this year focused on...childhood obesity!

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