Junk Science Judo-- Freedom Book of the Month from Free-Market.Net: The Freedom Network

Junk Science Judo

Freedom Book of the Month for October, 2001:

Junk Science Judo
by Steven J. Milloy, Cato Institute 2001, paperback, 150 pp., $13.26

Someone -- it may have been Mark Twain -- once referred to three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies and statistics. Most of us can identify with that sentiment, but it's still easy to be blind-sided by what purport to be "scientific" evaluations of facts or events and to make erroneous judgments based on those evaluations.

Junk Science Judo: Self-Defense Against Health Scares and Scams is the kind of book that should be kept within arms' reach. It's a literary vaccination against the temptation to let others do one's thinking.

Divided into twelve "lessons" (ranging from "Know Thine Enemy" to "Know Your Friends," with little gems like "Statistics Aren't Science" and "Epidemiology is Statistics" in between), Junk Science Judo takes apart fraudulent health claims and shows what makes them tick.

It's one thing to realize that statistical correlation and real causation aren't the same. It's another to be able to look at a claim and determine whether that claim is the result of a potentially flawed statistical study alone or of real science. The latter may use statistics to point itself at likely targets, but it ultimately requires independent reproducibility of its results and a narrowing of scope to the point where hypothesis perfectly explains reality.

Author Steven J. Milloy gets right to the heart of the matter when he targets "the precautionary principle" as a favorite tool of politically or financially motivated junk science. The precautionary principle reverses the burden of proof. Rather than leaving that alone which has not been proven unsafe, it demands that claims of danger be taken as true -- for the purposes of action -- unless they are disproven. "Just in case," you know. "Better safe than sorry."

The precautionary principle, the acceptance of often irrelevant statistics as "science" and the natural tendency of media to hop onto "stories" with a saleable angle of crisis or tragedy, combine to produce the majority of illegitimate health scares.

Case in point: A statistical study showing a correlation between massive consumption of the pesticide Alar and a rare cancer in lab rats, combined with a manufactured media scare and the application of precautionary principle by legislators and manufacturers served to remove a patently safe pesticide from the market.

In an increasingly complex world, most of us simply don't have the time to tear apart every claim of a new health hazard or threat to our safety. To do so would require the investment of massive amounts of our time. What Junk Science Judo offers is a basic toolbox for recognizing and rejecting the most specious claims, separating signal from noise so that we can limit our worries to that which is worthwhile. And that, of course, makes the book itself worth its weight in gold.

Order Junk Science Judo ($13.26 from Amazon.Com).

Visit Steven J. Milloy's JunkScience.Com.

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edited by Thomas L. Knapp

Past Winners:

September 2001: Jonathan Gullible by Ken Schoolland.

August 2001: Hope by L. Neil Smith and Aaron Zelman

July 2001: Dissenting Electorate edited by Wendy McElroy and Carl Watner

June 2001: Tethered Citizens by Sheldon Richman

May 2001: Lever Action by L. Neil Smith

April 2001: The Cato Handbook for Congressfrom the Cato Institute

March 2001: The Contested Legacy of Ayn Rand by David Kelley