# Junkscience.com **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 25, 2006, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/junkscience-com/358187 "2006-05-25T16:18:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2006, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/junkscience-com/358187/1 "2006-05-25T16:18:44Z")
I normally like debunking sites, but the global warming discussion on [junkscience.com](http://junkscience.com) smells of obfuscation. Looking the site over quickly I can’t figure out whether they just have a mania on this one subject or are as loopy on everything else as well. Those of you who are familiar with the site, what say you? And do you also think it’s strange that the book featured on their front page, _Shattered Consensus: The True State of Global Warming_, by Patrick J. Michaels doesn’t even have a single review on the Amazon page it links to? ---
**Author:** ![Quercus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/7ab992/32.png) [@Quercus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quercus)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2006, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/junkscience-com/358187/2 "2006-05-25T17:57:14Z")
> [@Exapno Mapcase](#): > > I normally like debunking sites, but the global warming discussion on [junkscience.com](http://junkscience.com) smells of obfuscation. Looking the site over quickly I can’t figure out whether they just have a mania on this one subject or are as loopy on everything else as well. > > Those of you who are familiar with the site, what say you? > > And do you also think it’s strange that the book featured on their front page, _Shattered Consensus: The True State of Global Warming_, by Patrick J. Michaels doesn’t even have a single review on the Amazon page it links to? Ah, yes [junkscience.com](http://junkscience.com). I suppose it’s to their credit that they were bashing environmental scientists even before ExxonMobil and friends made it so lucrative. But the bottom line is the site pretty much defines ‘junk science’ as anything that will either cost large businesses money or would contradict the author’s lifestyle or prejudices. ---
**Author:** ![wevets](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9a140/32.png) [@wevets](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wevets)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2006, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/junkscience-com/358187/3 "2006-05-25T18:57:47Z")
Yeah, [junkscience.com](http://junkscience.com) pretty much serves as a shill for global climate change skeptics and pro-DDT lobbyists. I came across it a couple of years ago. Oddly enough, IIRC, it used to be listed on [crank.net](http://crank.net) as cranky, but now it’s listed as anticrank? Wierd. Anyway, there may be some legit stuff on the site, but I would look for a different source. After all, they claim the [Top Ten Junk Science Claims of 2005](http://www.junkscience.com/fox/milloy123005.htm) don’t include the fraudulent claim of cloning human embryos from South Korea, but instead offhand mentions an endocrine disruptor scare, as if endocrine disruptors were not a [serious field of research](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endocrine_disruptor)? Sounds political to me. ---
**Author:** ![Szlater](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/90ced4/32.png) [@Szlater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Szlater)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2006, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/junkscience-com/358187/4 "2006-05-25T19:12:45Z")
[Junkscience.com](http://Junkscience.com) is/was run by Stephen Milloy, who is on the payroll of the [Cato Institute](http://www.accuracy.org/article.php?articleId=51) and Fox News. To call it partisan would be an understatement. Cato recieves a great deal of its funding from the oil industry, and Rupert Murdoch (Owner of Fox and News International and director of Philip Morris) sits on its board. ---
**Author:** ![UncleBeer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/977dab/32.png) [@UncleBeer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UncleBeer)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2006, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/junkscience-com/358187/5 "2006-05-25T19:37:03Z")
To be fair, they haven’t always been such bugs about global warming, tho. I used to be a semi-active member of the message board there. There was a wealth of discussion about second-hand smoke in the days of yore. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2006, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/junkscience-com/358187/6 "2006-05-25T23:26:33Z")
So. Is it second-hand smoke that is causing global warming? Or protecting us from global warming? ---
**Author:** ![bonzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/45deac/32.png) [@bonzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bonzer)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2006, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/junkscience-com/358187/7 "2006-05-25T23:49:43Z")
> [@Quercus](#): > > But the bottom line is the site pretty much defines ‘junk science’ as anything that will either cost large businesses money or would contradict the author’s lifestyle or prejudices. Mooney’s _The Republican War on Science_ (Basic, 2005) devotes an entire chapter to the use of “sound science” and “junk science” as political slogans, with Milloy and [JunkScience.com](http://JunkScience.com) fingered as an example (p74). ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2006, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/junkscience-com/358187/8 "2006-05-26T00:43:04Z")
Thanks. That’s pretty much what I wanted to know. ---
**Author:** ![Plan\_B](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Plan\_B](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Plan_B)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2006, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/junkscience-com/358187/9 "2006-05-26T01:36:43Z")
I’ve read it on and off for a couple of years. Never had a problem with anything they said. Never saw a decent rebuttal of anything they wrote. And I learned a few useful things along the way. I do have a problem with the guilt by association approach. And BTW what"s the problem with Cato or Fox? I’d be more impressed if someone could take the time to show me that one of these three groups had ever lied. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2006, 4:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/junkscience-com/358187/10 "2006-05-26T04:50:26Z")
> [@Plan B](#): > > I’ve read it on and off for a couple of years. Never had a problem with anything they said. Never saw a decent rebuttal of anything they wrote. And I learned a few useful things along the way. > > I do have a problem with the guilt by association approach. And BTW what"s the problem with Cato or Fox? I’d be more impressed if someone could take the time to show me that one of these three groups had ever lied. A great reply came from the science writer at the Post some years ago, the big problem is that places like Junkscience are made with the purpose to stop discussion: [http://www.skeptictank.org/hs/tscience.htm](http://www.skeptictank.org/hs/tscience.htm) > [@](#): > > If You Seek the Truth, Don’t Trash the Science - By John Schwartz - Washington Post. > > … > > The mug gives the Web address, www . junkscience . com (motto: “All the junk that’s fit to debunk”), and the rest of the mug is decorated with acronyms and phrases that exemplify Milloy’s idea of debunked junk: DDT, EMFs (electromagnetic fields), Gulf War Syndrome, alar, global warming, silicone breast implants and more. > > There’s a huge irony at work here, of course. It’s science, after all, that has effectively laid some of those controversies to rest (no authoritative study has found that EMFs from overhead power lines cause cancer, for example). But others, such as global warming, are still part of a serious ongoing debate. And so it should be. If there is one clear way in which science is abused, it is by reducing its deliberate, complex method of discovery to the kind of epigrams that you can display on a coffee mug. Yet, here is the self-proclaimed “Junkman” calling the ball dead on controversy after controversy. > > When I called him up and asked him about it, Milloy emphasized that he was simply trying to attract people to his site, where they could read more. And while that might be true, **the problem with terms such as “junk science”–which, like “political correctness,” originated in conservative circles–is that they are used not to spark debate but to cut it short. Science, on the other hand, is in large part about keeping the conversation going.** > > What happens if we cut short the conversation on topics such as global warming? It is pretty well established that temperatures are on the rise. But there are huge gaps in our knowledge about whether human activity has caused that rise, and what human activity might be able to do to reverse the process. Can we afford to dismiss the topic now, putting off any study of what prudent steps we might need to take to be certain that there’s nothing to worry about? > > … > > What’s a consumer to do? How can you hope to find out whether a given product is actually safe (which is all most of us are really interested in)? Anyone hoping to make sense of the science news and the political battles surrounding it has to develop antennae for judging each new story and study. The most reliable information is likely to come from that peer-reviewed journal, though that’s no guarantee. A good story should say whether a finding is new, or confirms an existing body of research–anyone who stopped drinking coffee in 1981 out of fears of getting pancreatic cancer suffered through a lot of bleary-eyed mornings for nothing. And let’s hope people aren’t put off eating cancer-fighting fresh fruits and vegetables by the report last week about the possible health risks of pesticide residues on those foods. > > But most of all, any reader’s ears should prick up when they hear phrases like “politicized science” or “junk science” being tossed about. The claim may be right–but anyone who makes it should be vetted for politics and junk as well.