Customer Reviews

Junk Science: How Politicians, Corporations, and Other Hucksters Betray Us

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Wonder how two politicians with different views can tell you that science supports each of their positions? Wonder how a corporation's research can support an agenda that is later found to be without basis and in opposition to the public well being? This book provides case illustrations of how governments, corporations, religious organizations and individuals have manipulated science to provide erroneous results and invalid conclusions. If you are involved in research (of any kind) or have suspected that you have been misled - this book is a MUST.
Well-written with a definite passion for truth.

I was disappointed in this book. It doesn't deal quite as much with the manipulation of science but often just pure fraud. For example, it has a chapter on the tobacco industry's insistence that smoking isn't harmful. But we know that there wasn't so much bogus science going on as much as the industry hiding the results of actual science that pointed to obvious health problems. More than a full page of the chapter simply quotes lies told to the public by the industry. Surely the majority of people who would pick up a book like this already knows of the fraud that had been perpetuated by Big Tobacco for decades. Chapter 10, which debunks the usefulness of talk therapy, was ripe with irony. I largely agree with the author on this but I was really surprised that he never cited a single research article that actually studied the effectiveness of such therapy. I was especially bemused by his statement that "...psychiatry departments will probably disappear by mid-century." (p. 151). How did he happen to come to this conclusion? Who knows? Junk science, perhaps. It really would have been nice to read about how Freud's theories took hold despite the absence of controlled research behind the theory, but the father of psychotherapy's name only comes up in passing as Agin cites Freudian psychonalysis as one of the 23 types of therapy that he eschews in a single sentence.

The book does have a substantial amount of information and it and the author knows his stuff. It's also an easy read. But the 12-page chapters on individual topics that are poorly documented just didn't excite me. And it doesn't really uncover the kind of manipulative research that I expected to read about. It was more a soapbox diatribe against corrupt corporations and lazy or malevolent legislators (a group worthy of derision) than an expose on how actual science is manipulated.

This book by Dr. Dan Agin, " Junk Science" (How Politicians, Corporations, and Other Hucksters Betray Us) is fascinating. Dr Agin clearly draws the line of separation of weak/bad science from the "TWISTING" of science all for the benefit of the entities that he NAMES.
Dr. Agin's clearness of thought leads to honest conclusions. His personal observations and his chapter called "Sources" provide the American public with awareness why deep suffering is happening now, and that this suffering will only getworse, unless an informed American public insists and pushes for reforms.
Dr. Agin has given Americans the awareness in this book.
We ignore his conclusions and admonitions at our peril.
This book is exceptional, and rates 5 stars from me.
Dr. Howard Theodore Block

"Junk Science" is a disappointment; it contains too much junk science.
The first two chapters are excellent. Chapter 1 covers dogma, Galileo,
Lysenkoism, phrenology, and eugenics. Chapter 2 covers several cases of
fraud and fabrication in science. The next several chapters cover
"healthy foods", prevention of aging, and genetically modified foods.
These cover the issues fairly and reach solid conclusions.

The weaknesses start to appear in the chapter about tobacco. After
fairly condemning smoking, Dr. Agin goes after second hand smoke with
the same intensity. There may be, there probably is, some problem
associated with second hand smoke, but so far the evidence that has
been published is not statistically significant.

There are four chapters about medicine. Agin condemns quack doctors,
and reveals some of the games played by big pharma, but mostly he
complains that health care has not been nationalized yet and that any
statistic that is different for different areas, races, or social
classes is proof of evil doctors, nurses, insurance companies, and
government. For a more detailed and more scientific and less hysterical
treatment of many medical and food issues see junkfoodscience dot com.

Agin gets the economics of pollution right, but goes on to claim
corporations in general are evil. There is a chapter about terrorism.
The small amount of science seems right, but we get more economics,
politics, and moral posturing. The global warming chapter shows all
the signs of bad science that earlier chapters warned us about. There
is dogma, false data, intimidation, bad mathematics, and bad logic,
but Agin says we all should believe the IPCC, because we should believe
the IPCC. This is a very complex subject. For more information visit
wattsupwiththat dot com. For details about the bad math see climateaudit
dot org. By the way, CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and most places on earth
reported rising temperatures during the 1990s. The issue is properly
allocating the increase between natural variation and increased CO2.

Agin does a thorough job of demolishing creationism and its disguised
sibling intelligent design. Along the way he deplores religions,
especially conservative christians. He claims there is no moral
reason for any restricts on embryonic stem cell research. Anyone
with the delusion of a moral opposition is merely practicing bad
science. There is also no mention of the cures based on adult
stem cells and the lack of cures based on embryonic stem cells.

There is another section about genes, behavior, and race. Agin claims
nurture wins over nature, 100% to 0%. Agin is certainly correct that
much evil has been done based on beliefs about race, such as happened
during the Eugenics movement covered in chapter 1. But Agin throws
anybody that even wonders if there might be some difference, any
difference, between races into the racist camp.

There is a notes section with mostly solid references, but more than
a few opinion pieces.

I hope to supply a review of "Lies, Damned Lies, and Science" soon.
So far, it seems far superior, perhaps five stars. If I had read it
first, I probably would have rated "Junk Science" worse, or perhaps not
even finish reading it.

While Agin could have gone into more detail and expounded upon the junk science to be found in various areas of our life, he does an admirable job of highlighting an example (or two) in one area and then moving on to another area. It is then summarized in the end to show that was is most imperative is that we hold on to the need for evidence and for conclusions drawn from evidence or data without a bias; rather than the molding of data to fit a biased conclusion. In essence, the beauty and integrity of science is under attack by the tactful and selfish groups of today (be they political, religious, medicinal, etc) and Agin cannot sit idly by while it happens and hopes that you cannot either.

Junk Science is a thought-provoking, provocative and necessary read. Politics, religion, corporations, media and many forms of organized interests are taken on categorically and in an engaging way. Agin's well-written book causes you to question things around you, things taken for granted as fact. Junk Science is pertinent to anyone interested in seeking knowledge. A Must-Have book.

I looked forward to this book, since I see the misuse of scientific research every day in the lay press and in governmental policy. In Parts I and II, the author addresses many of these issues, though without the depth and specificity I had anticipated. Then in Parts III and IV he heads off the subject entirely, wandering into the politics of health care and global warming. No more debunking of junk science, just a statement of his views on these subjects. Reasonable views to be sure, but definitely off subject, a rehash of Al Gore and others. Overall, this book is disappointing.

Junk Science: How Politicians, Corporations, and Other Hucksters Betray Us covers a variety of important topics such as diet fads, aging and longevity, quack doctoring, the race and IQ myth, among other topics. Having subscribed to the Skeptical Inquirer since the magazine was first published, and other similar journals as well, I was very familiar with much of the material in this book. I found little I disagreed with except the chapter on Intelligent Design. Even in this chapter the author was surprisingly honest. He made it clear that any view of evolution that allows any room at all for the divine is creationism. He is makes his opposition to theistic evolution abundently clear. The testimony of J. F. Haught, who so impressed Judge Jones in the Dover case, University of Chicago Professor Dan Agin calls a "higher creationist." Haught, who believes that God used evolution as His means of creation, is wrong, Agin emphasizes, because in science "one does not introduce supernatural powers or supernatural forces or supernatural entities to explain anything" (Agin stresses the word anything) (p. 204). Agin then adds that "particularly not necessary for the work of science is any 'ultimate reality' such as that proposed by the higher creationist J. F. Haught." He goes on and condemns the Catholic church for "apparently supporting intelligent design theory" (p. 204). As Harvard geneticist Richard Lewontin said in his review of Carl Sagan's posthumously published book, Billions and Billions, evolutionists "have a prior commitment, a commitment to naturalism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door" (1997, p. 31). Those who try to blend theism and evolution, Agin stresses, are not helping the creation evolution problem. The God hypothesis is a"wizard of Oz" explanation "leading back to shamanism and witchcraft" and can not be tolerated. He concluded that we should teach children the reality that our creator is natural law, time, chance, and mutations, and we should not teach myth such as theistic evolution.

Great book on pseudoscience for the budding skeptic. The author covers a wide variety of topics and occasionally shows us his snarky sense of humor. He covers the food industry, big pharma, certain fields of medicine (chiropractic and talk therapists), environmental issues, creationism, stem cell research, and race/IQ studies to name a few.

This is an excellent book for the average reader and may not be for the advanced reader. Junk science is infesting the media (TV, radio and print), the Internet and America's schools, affecting public health, squandering your tax dollars, poisoning sick people and miseducating our children. Pseudoscientific claptrap abounds. Quackery is now found everywhere. However, this book is just a start, more debunking MUST be done.