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Junk Science and just, plain junk...



for conspiracy theorists, the attached, from Agnet 8 July, might help you avoid missing the latest alarums....

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JUNKMAN TAKES ON JUNK SCIENCE: SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS
TWIST RESEARCH TO SERVE THEIR OWN ENDS
July 8, 1999
The Edmonton Journal A12
Lorne Gunter
A story about Steven Milloy, who by day is an adjunct scholar at the Cato
institute, a libertarian think-tank in Washington, D.C. But when special
interest lobbyists, government scientists or industry executives,
politicians or litigation lawyers attempt to twist science to their own
self-serving ends, Milloy transforms into his alter-ego, Junkman.
Milloy chuckles at such hyperbolic descriptions of his work as publisher
of the Junk Science Home Page (www.junkscience.com), designated one of the
top 50 science web sites of 1998 by Popular Science.
But if Milloy is not a superhero, his single-handed effort to preserve
scientific objectivity in public policy debates by debunking misleading
and alarmist science is, the story says, heroic.
Milloy says that the food police, the people who
shriek on about the dangers of genetically modified food, or
compare movie theatre popcorn unfavourably with fast food
hamburgers, or generate panic over the unfounded contamination of
Coke on European store shelves, are often motivated by hostility to
profits or hatred of multinationals, or just an evangelical zeal
 for vegetarianism and animal rights.
Cell phones, power lines, pesticides, apples, breast implants, soothers
and intravenous bags have ``all been declared hazardous by one group or
another, based on incomplete science or a subjective interpretation of
results,'' says Milloy. All were later declared non-hazardous by panels of
respected scientists, but not before tens of billions of economic damage
had been done.


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