Bad Science, Bad Law Poor policies cause a flood of damage By Candace C. Crandall Widespread distortion of scientific evidence, aided by scientific illiteracy among journalists and policy makers, has led to health and environmental policies that are increasingly driven by advocacy and activism, by emotion rather than by reason. Not surprisingly, more and more people are coming to the conclusion that U.S. environmental policies are wrong-headed, incredibly wasteful, at times counterproductive, and frequently enacted before we know if they will do any good - or even if the suspected problem is real. Environmental regulation now costs the public close to $150 billion a year - that's $1,500 for each household on average, more than the projected tab for Hillary Rodham Clinton's health care package. And what does the public get from these huge outlays? Superfund, which was supposed to deal with toxic waste cleanup but spent 80 percent of its billions on litigation and legal fees. Love Canal, where studies later showed no increased cancer or other health effects, and people lined up to buy the abandoned homes. Times Beach, Missouri, wiped off the map in a $32 million government buyout, because of a dioxin scare now declared by Environmental Protection Agency officials to be "an expensive mistake." Alar, a cancer scare fed to CBS' "60 Minutes" by an activist public relations firm, which cost U.S. apple growers millions. Asbestos, focus of a mandated $156 billion plan to remove it from schools and other public buildings that is considered now more risky than simply leaving the material alone. Environmental costs will escalate even more sharply over the next three years as the EPA moves to enforce an accelerated phase-out of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), carbon tetrachloride halons and other useful chemicals suspected of harming the stratospheric ozone layer. These chemicals - now used in refrigerators, air conditioners, fire extinguishers, and cleaning agents - have such a broad impact on our lives that a truly comprehensive consumer cost estimate hasn't even been attempted. Substitute chemicals, those that are available, are as much as five times more costly, and in some cases pose health and safety hazards. And more than $100 billion worth of equipment in cars, homes, factories, and restaurants will have to be retrofitted or replaced in order to use them. That's just the tip of the iceberg. Yet even as we plunge ahead with another costly "solution," the government is beginning to admit that there may not be definitive data to justify such hasty action. CFCs alone may not be sufficient to destroy ozone molecules; the process also seems to require particulates, such as volcanic dust, which we've seen an unusual amount of in recent years. The ozone-related stories of blind sheep, blind rabbits, plankton death, and epidemics of melanoma have been shown to be false. Natural fluctuations in ozone are far greater than anything that has been measured for alleged man-made disturbances. And in any case, the claimed 5% ozone depletion would cause just a 10% increase in ultraviolet radiation, equivalent to moving 60 miles closer to the equator. New Englanders moving to Florida already experience more than a 200% increase in UV. At the center of this deplorable waste of resources, after you peel away the media hype and activist rhetoric, is generally some scientist with a theory that predicts catastrophe if drastic steps aren't taken immediately to change the way we live. Such theories - particularly those that extrapolate cancer deaths from trace chemicals or global catastrophes from atmospheric pollution - are seldom backed by realistic laboratory tests or by observations of actual climate trends. Data from rats fed near-toxic doses of chemicals are hardly an accurate measure of effects in humans exposed to far lower levels. And climate theories, based on assumptions about how the atmosphere works, are little more than unverified computer exercises. What are these scientists up to? No indictment of the scientific profession is in order, but it is clear that something has gone wrong with the system. To obtain funding, scientists (even mathematicians and astronomers) now have to show that their work is relevant to societal problems. If a scientist gets a $1 million grant to study some threat to the planet, and then finds none, he's not likely to get another grant - and that's bad news if he has a family and staff dependent on the income. On the other hand, by producing yet another dark screed a scientist gains funding, fame, and the fellowship of like-minded activists; his supporters in government gain bigger budgets and more positions, political power, prestige, and perks; and the congressional sponsors - far from feeling bamboozled - bask in the limelight of televised hearings and boast to their constituents that they've just saved the world. Ronald Bailey, formerly with Forbes magazine, lists some egregious examples in his just-published book Eco-Scam. He skewers Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb, whose prophesies were crowned with not only a MacArthur Foundation Genius Award but also the Swedish Academy's Crafoord Prize. In 1969, Ehrlich predicted that many would soon perish in "smog disasters" in New York and Los Angeles, that the oceans would die of DDT poisoning by 1979, and that U.S. life expectancy would plunge to 42 years by 1980 due to cancer epidemics caused by pollution. Another MacArthur genius is Lester Brown, president of the Worldwatch Institute. He wrote that global oil production would peak in 1990 and saw the world running out of food at least three times - always within the next few years. MacArthur genius Stephen Schneider, an enthusiastic promoter of the global warming scare, just as enthusiastically promoted a coming ice age some 15 years ago. As Bailey observes: "Freeze or fry, the problem is always industrial capitalism, and the solution is always international socialism." It's a puzzle why the public continues to buy into these failed prophesies and hyped disasters, and to put the blame on modern technology. Media promotion of environmental scares is undoubtedly part of it; these three scientists continue to be trotted out by the television networks, along with Carl Sagan, whose unsuccessful attempt to rehash elements of his "nuclear winter" theory during the Kuwaiti oil well fires sparked the quip: "Where there's smoke, there's Sagan." But another factor is that the public still regards scientists - unlike lawyers and politicians - as unbiased searchers for truth: Albert Einstein, Jonas Salk, and Thomas Edison all rolled into one. The public is unaware that scientific information is often misused - sometimes even by scientists themselves - and presented to the lay audience with misdirection, distorted logic, and a selective use of data. Thus, in the popular mind, cancer has become associated with toxic waste, pesticides, second-hand smoke, nuclear power plants, electromagnetic fields, etc., even as advances in science and technology have led to steadily increasing life spans, the eradication of debilitating diseases, adequate food and shelter, and access to all sorts of creature comforts for an increasing fraction of the human population. People no longer die young in epidemics of typhoid or diphtheria; it's not surprising therefore that cancer, strokes and heart attacks - largely diseases of old age - have become the leading causes of death. Yet the more America spends to improve health and safety and the quality of the environment, the less secure the public seems to feel. The situation is not all black. Change is coming about on a number of fronts. Journalists, the cheerleaders of the environmental movement, are getting wise to the lack of scientific evidence for many of these scares and are beginning to ask more penetrating questions. Articles on the front pages of the New York Times and Washington Post in recent months have challenged the doom-and- gloom forecasts and exposed the scientific fudging, sending activists scrambling to do damage control. Bailey, with Eco-Scam, and Investor's Business Daily journalist Michael Fumento, with his new book Science Under Siege, scathingly criticize perpetrators of global climate disasters and environmental cancer scares. The U.S. Supreme Court - seeking to stem the tide of environment- related health claims - is examining the problem of junk science in the courtroom and what standards, if any, can be set before a scientist's testimony or research is admissible as evidence. Scientists, too, are waking up to the harm done to their own credibility when social activism becomes the main motivation for research. Some 3,000 physicists, chemists, physicians, and other scientists from 102 countries have now signed the Heidelberg Appeal, a document that calls on world governments to consider the scientific evidence before adopting dramatic and far-reaching policies that jeopardize the well-being of billions of people. Moreover, survey after survey has shown that most working scientists do not concur with the disaster scenarios. What does it all mean? It does not mean that we have no environmental problems: we do. But policies driven by incomplete and misleading data simply waste scarce public resources and terrify the public. Scientific societies, including Sigma Xi, have been holding intense discussions this past year on scientific integrity and the responsibility that scientists have to the public and to their profession. A two-day conference in Washington, D.C., was held in May 1993 to attempt to develop guidelines that can better ensure scientific credibility without imposing orthodoxy. These are encouraging signs. We may yet see a sound scientific base for health and environmental policies that affect the lives and pocketbooks of all citizens. But until then the public would be wise to show a healthy skepticism when someone in a white lab coat says the world is coming to an end. Reprinted with permission from The San Diego Union-Tribune, May 23, 1993 Table of Contents | 1994 Issues | Subscribe Truth Seeker | Feedback | Freethought.com Webmaster Credit card Orders call: 800-321-9054 or fax: (619)676-0433 Or send check or money order to: Truth Seeker / 16935 W. Bernardo Drive, Suite 103 / San Diego, CA 92127 $20.00 annual U.S. subscription ($35.00 international). Individual issues—$10.00 + $2.50 postage and handling Or be a committed freethinker and send $35.00 for a two year subscription. Truth Seeker is published by Truth Seeker Co., Inc. (ISSN 0041-3712) © 1996