"Scientists must be absolutely honest in their reporting, giving both the data that support their conclusions and the data that do not."
"The role of science is not only to discover new facts and phenomena, but to uncover errors appearing in previous investigations," asserts Malcolm Ross of the Science and Environment Policy Project. "Science is continually in the process of correcting previous work; no study is forever fixed in time."
In an interview in the June issue of Environment News, published by the Heartland Institute, Ross warns that American science is becoming increasingly politicized. "Once a political policy initiative has been introduced," he contends, "the initiative persists even when new studies indicate that the premise on which the policy was based is incorrect."
A former research mineralogist with the U.S. Geological Survey and a past president of the Mineralogical Society of America, Ross personally participated in the study of the alleged dangers of asbestos. "We have spent nearly $100 billion to remove asbestos from schools and other buildings," he reports, "despite warnings by many of us that there was no risk to the health of the building occupants."
Adam Lieberman of the American Council on Science and Health offers a chronology of the asbestos scare in a special report called Facts Versus Fear. "From 1940 to 1973 schools across the United States were required to have asbestos insulation as a fire safety measure," Lieberman recalls. "The EPA banned the use of asbestos in schools in 1973; by the late 1970s the agency started formulating regulations in an attempt to reduce the exposure of schoolchildren to the substance."
The federal government apparently made a mistake in requiring asbestos insulation; so, to rectify that error, it made an even bigger one. The Asbestos Hazard Emergency Response Act of 1986 "required all private and public schools to inspect for asbestos, develop asbestos management plans, and implement appropriate actions," says Lieberman. "By 1990 it was estimated that the cost of such abatement work was over $6 billion. The public health benefit of all this," he points out, "was unclear."
Lieberman argues that it would have been better to leave well enough alone. "An EPA report showed that post-removal levels of asbestos were often significantly higher than pre-removal levels," he observes; "thus, poorly conducted asbestos removals may actually increase health risks by releasing more particles into the air."
Enormously expensive and scientifically unsound jihads have also been waged against pesticides, acid rain, radon and lead, electromagnetic fields, chlorinated organic compounds, and global warming. "The idea that humans have significantly enhanced global warming is by far the most massive abuse of science that I have ever seen," Malcolm Ross declares. "The prediction of disastrous global warming is used to justify a policy of centralized control of the world's energy resources." The beneficiaries of this "junk science" are a "power elite" consisting of high-level government bureaucrats, corporate CEOs, and foundation heads. "The foundations," Ross points outs, "regularly funnel money and agendas" to activist environmental groups, who obligingly clamor for more government control.
