By Steven J. Milloy
April 1, 2001

JunkScience.com is five years old today. Love it or hate it, there is no denying JunkScience.com has had an impact. Consider some highlights of the past five years:

1. Bye-bye George! The Washington Post helped bring down President Nixon, JunkScience.com helped bring down the editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

   In January 1999, former President Clinton was about to be tried in the U.S. Senate. One accusation was that he lied in denying under oath whether he "had sex" with Monica Lewinsky. Part of his defense was that oral sex didn't constitute "sex." About a week before the trial began, JunkScience.com learned that the January 20, 1999 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association would contain a study titled, "60 Percent of Those Surveyed Do Not Define Oral Sex as Having 'Had Sex'."

   JunkScience.com was appalled and outraged. The supposedly prestigious JAMA was about to insert itself into the impeachment proceedings against the President on the subject of whether oral sex was "sex" - a social and political debate not remotely connected to the medical journal. Moreover, why would any self-respecting medical journal publish an eight-year old survey of what 600 college students thought about sex? The college students didn't even all agree that penile-vaginal intercourse was "sex."

   JunkScience.com swung into action, breaking the news five days ahead of when the media were allowed to report the story. The only thing more surprising than the JAMA study was what happened next.

   The Washington Times picked up the story from JunkScience.com and investigated. The next day, January 15, 1999, the Times' front-page headline read:

   AMA Releases Old Survey on Oral Sex
   Just in Time for President's Trial

   But before I had picked up the newspaper that morning, the American Medical Association had fired editor George Lundberg, stating,

   Dr. Lundberg, through his recent actions, has threatened the historic tradition and integrity of the Journal of the American Medical Association by inappropriately and inexcusably interjecting JAMA into a major political debate that has nothing to do with science or medicine. This is unacceptable.

   JunkScience.com agreed.

   Lundberg arrogantly abused his position as editor of JAMA to publish much unabashed junk science. Rushing to publication just in time for the impeachment trial a stale survey of what a few dopey college kids thought about sex was only his latest outlandish act.

2. Disinfecting the anti-bacterial debate. During the summer of 2000, Tufts University professor Stuart Levy promoted a scare involving consumer anti-microbial products. Appearing on CNN's Talk Back Live on July 19, 2000, I surprised Levy by confronting him with his unreported conflict of interest. While disparaging consumer anti-microbials, Levy headed a business that appeared to be preparing to enter the consumer anti-microbial market.

   Levy's fearmongering days are over.

3. Stopping EPA's sneaky plan to cheat on risk assessments. In May 1996, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency proposed new guidelines for conducting cancer risk assessments. JunkScence.com discovered that the EPA surrepticiously deleted the requirement that epidemiologic data be statistically significant before they can be used to infer cause-and-effect relationships.

   JunkScience.com asked EPA staff whether they intended to delete the requirement or whether the omission was innocent. Surprisingly, the EPA staff denied the requirement had been deleted. When other members of the public inquired about the deletion/omission, the EPA denied it. When members of Congress inquired about the deletion, the EPA again denied it.

   I brought the issue to the EPA's Science Advisory Board which rejected the EPA's denials. In its review letter to EPA administrator Carol Browner, the SAB wrote in polite bureaucrat-ese,

   There is no explicit statement in the proposal that statistical significance should be a basic requirement for determining causality. This lack of an explicit statement has been interpreted as misleading and implying there is a hidden intent to eliminate statistical significance as a consideration in assessing causality. Adding appropriate and specific language concerning statistical significance should rectify this problem.

   The cancer risk assessment guidelines have yet to see the light of day.

4. A Scoop of Debunkey Monkey. JunkScience.com debunked the dioxin scare once and for all. Ice cream manufacturer and eco-activist supporter Ben & Jerry's Homemade claimed in marketing materials that,

   "Dioxin is known to cause cancer, genetic and reproductive defects and learning disabilities ... The only safe level of dioxin exposure is no exposure at all,"

   JunkScience.com tested Ben & Jerry's ice for the presence of dioxin. The Ben & Jerry's sample tested was found to have about 200 times the amount of dioxin the EPA said was safe.

   If dioxin was so dangerous, it is unlikely that Ben & Jerry's would be selling ice cream. Certainly, an appropriate new flavor would be "Tasty Toxics." But since Ben & Jerry's continues to sell its "dioxin-laden" ice cream, that must mean that dioxin is not dangerous -- in which case an appropriate new flavor might be "World's Best Hypocrisy."

   The study results were presented at the Dioxin 2000 conference and publshed in the proceedings. I testified about the results before the EPA Science Advisory Board panel reviewing the EPA's latest assessment of dioxin, in which the EPA claims that dioxin is 10 times more dangerous than previsouly thought!

5. Fighting 'Secret Science'. JunkScience.com was instrumental in the fight for "data access" -- the right of the public to review taxpayer-funded scientific data used to support federal regulation. Here's one way, JunkScience.com helped.

   Science reported on April 2, 1999,

   Scientists opposing a controversial data-access proposal appear to be headed for a lopsided win in an unusual skirmish--even as their opponents are raffling off prizes to gain allies.

   Acting on legislation pushed by Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL), the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in January released a controversial proposal to require taxpayer-funded researchers to hand over their raw data to anyone who files a request (Science, 12 February, p. 914). The agency gave the public until 5 April to comment, sparking a furious letter-writing campaign both for and against the proposal. Last month, rule opponents--including most scientific societies--were alarmed to discover that the other side was ahead in the comment contest, in part because it was offering a creative incentive: People who used the Junk Science Web page (www.junkscience.com) to write to OMB could win a subscription to an environmental policy newsletter or the electronic Wall Street Journal. But the tide has turned in the last few weeks: The 1600-and-counting comments OMB has received so far are running 4 to 1 against the rule, says the Washington-based American Association of Universities. Whether the landslide will persuade OMB to rewrite the proposal, however, won't be known until later this year, when it must finalize the rule.

   Two weeks later, Science reported,

   In an 11th-hour campaign to tip the scales in their favor, supporters of a controversial new data-access law flooded the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in early April with letters supporting its implementation. Many scientists oppose the provision, pushed by Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL), which would force taxpayer-funded researchers to hand over raw data to the public on request (Science, 2 April, p. 23). But when a public comment period closed on 5 April, supporters appeared to have cranked out the majority of more than 10,000 comments sent to OMB, although no exact count was available.

   The data access rule is in place. "Secret science" is on its way out.

6. Irritating Enviros. In 1999, the heads of the 11 largest enviro groups demanded the Cato Institute disassociate itself from me. Signatories to the demand included, Leon Billings of Clean Air Trust, Phil Clapp of National Environmental Trust, Joan Claybrook of Public Citizen, Shelly Davis of Farm Workers Defense Fund, Lois Gibbs of the Center for Health, Environment and Justice, Gene Kimmelman of Consumers Union, Fred Krupp of Environmental Defense Fund, Bob Musil of Physicians for Social Responsibility, John Passacantando of Ozone Action, and Arlie Schardt of Environmental Media Services.

   JunkScience.com measures its success by the enemies it's generated.

7. Recognition. JunkScience.com has been recognized many times including being named:
   • a "Top Resource" by Yahoo!

   • "One of the 50 Best Web Sites of 1998" by Popular Science

   • a "Hot Pick" by Science.

   In January 2001, JunkScience.com was ranked the sixth most popular general science web site, garnering 168,000 unique visitors. The only general science web sites with greater traffic were NationalGeographic.com, Discover.com, SciAm.com (Scientific American),ScienceMag.org (Science), and Lycaeum.org. Not bad for a web site with a tiny fraction of the resources available to those other sites.