One of Steven Milloy’s claims to infamy is that he runs a web site called JunkScience.com where he purports to debunk all sorts of “junk”, which is anything he thinks is false science. However, you should be aware that JunkScience.com was originally funded by the tobacco industry, then later gained funding from many major industry polluters. That’s who Milloy has worked for and lied for over many years.
His latest attempt to deceive is regarding recent moves by the new EPA director to remove scientists from some of the advisory committees. In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal (link to Milloy op-ed), Milloy lauds this action as something that will bring “scientific integrity” to the EPA. What he really is trying to do is erode the public’s trust in real scientists and enable polluters to profit more while poisoning our country and its people.
Milloy starts his deception by saying that there is no evidence to support the idea that fine particulate matter (PM) kills thousands of people. In fact, there is ample evidence and it continues to grow. Everyone’s homework assignment is to do an internet search on this topic. You will see the usual blatantly biased right-wing sites repeating the same old tired lies, and then you will find many other sites pointing to valid scientific studies that prove the harmfulness of fine particulates. The right-wing sites will seldom if ever point to a serious scientific study.
Milloy tries to bolster his case by saying that an advisory committee (CASAC) to the EPA in 1996 “concluded that the scientific evidence did not support the agency’s regulatory conclusion,” and he links to a CASAC published report (link to CASAC report). Yet when I looked at this publication, I found praise for the EPA’s work on PM: for example, the EPA report was “its best ever example of a true integrative summary of the state of knowledge about the health effects of airborne PM.” It is true that some CASAC members thought the EPA’s case “may be overstated” but other members felt it was appropriate. The committee definitely did not say there was no support for the idea of increased mortality from fine particulates.
Milloy tries to cast doubt on the EPA and the scientists it employs by claiming that the CASAC became more biased as the years went on, and that’s why its membership must be radically changed. Yet Milloy’s claim is obvious bunk. For one thing, he points to changes during the Bush administration where more and more committee members were recipients of EPA grants and thus supposedly were simply doing the agency’s bidding by producing studies that came to pre-determined conclusions. Then the membership became even more biased with more scientists getting EPA grants during the Obama administration.
But are we really supposed to believe that the Republican Bush administration, an administration so deeply tied to the fossil fuel industry, would be packing EPA-related committees with biased scientists? The CASAC actually recommended tighter restrictions on PM in 2006 during the Bush years, and I’m sure they would not make scientifically unsupportable claims, knowing that their claims were likely to be scrutinized closely. Yet this is what Milloy is saying. He thinks that to make committees more unbiased you should fire the scientists who do real science and hire people from the industries being regulated. However, it’s obvious that anyone who comes from an industry background is highly likely to be biased. Their current and future paychecks may very directly depend on the views they express. The scientists on the committee, if they truly wanted to get more grants, would not push a specific conclusion; they would push for the need for more research.
And are the EPA scientists biased? No. One only need look at the source of the many studies on particulate matter. You will find that they are done by researchers from around the world. If the EPA scientists were biased, their conclusions would differ from those of non-American scientists. And, no, it’s not reasonable to reply that all the scientists around the world are in a global conspiracy to trick everyone in to believing false ideas so that they can achieve world domination.
There will always be people who persist in taking contrarian points of view. Just the other day, I saw lengthy comments on a science web site by someone confidently attacking Einstein’s theories, only of course to be mercilessly shredded by people who understood the theories better and could even explain them! Yet Milloy is in a different category. He is not limited to making crackpot claims in a comment thread. He gets to appear in major publications and he was part of Trump’s EPA transition team, so his wrong and potentially dangerous ideas get more distribution than they deserve.
That’s a problem that America faces more now than perhaps at any time in the past, and it’s not likely to get better until people take upon themselves the responsibility to educate themselves and view anything they read or hear with a healthy skepticism, whether it’s from scientists or non-scientists.
Trump, of course, does not have the intelligence to understand the science nor does he have the wisdom or judgment to select advisors who know the science. It is that type of ignorance that all citizens of a democracy must constantly fight against, or the ignorant among them will throw away that democracy.
