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De Omnibus Dubitandum - Lux Veritas

Saturday, November 17, 2012

Conclusions in Search of Data? Could Be!

By Rich Kozlovich

For the average casual reader it is virtually impossible to decide whether an article about some new scare is scare mongering junk science or a valid concern.   For society to determine what is science versus junk science is so difficult is because the media is as full of junk journalists as science is full of junk scientists….who knows….maybe even worse.  The reason is that the media publishes “studies” as factual without really finding out what the facts are because the media has a rule....and that rule is; “if it bleeds it leads”, and so any “startling” new “study” that pops up gets published as startling new revelations about how modern life is killing, maiming, or in some way harming our children, whether it is valid or not, and the media could care less.   And when it is children involved it doesn’t take much scaring.  That is why so much junk science involves claims about children.  Please remember this......no one.....I mean no one..... is allowed to test children with these substances, including pesticides.  So any "science" depicting harm is based on speculation, extrapolation and ideology.

 The American Chemistry Council [noted that] the report "does not appear to show clear evidence of a cause-and-effect relationship between exposures and the observed behaviors."    The fact that this” study” appeared in journal, Environmental Health Perspectives, should also give pause to everyone.  The question that we should be asking is this:  Why didn’t this appear in other science publications? From my perspective; if it appears there it’s not science, until proved otherwise.   

Those who have been reading, writing and taking positions on green issues for years find that certain names keep appearing and re-appearing.  Some of them have been shown to be honest brokers of information and others have been shown to be…..let’s say…..problematic. 

In the next link regarding the flame retardant PBDE and a study out of UC Berkeley (which alone should draw some skepticism) I noticed that Brenda Eskenazi was involved, and the reason I recognized it is because her name has been attached to a great deal of work that is clearly anti-chemical and anti-pesticide.    The link to the first article is the latest “study”, but this isn’t anything new.  I have linked two articles after that you may find worth reading.  One deals directly with PBDE and the other deal with pesticides.  I have linked that one to show the thrust of these people.  Both of the last two articles were published in 2011. 

Stephanie M. Lee
Published 12:03 a.m., Thursday, November 15, 2012

Flame retardant compounds pervasive in most California households appear to delay the neurodevelopment of children exposed to the chemicals from the womb through the first years of life, UC Berkeley researchers say in a new study.  Researchers say their findings, published Thursday, add to worries about a class of endocrine-disrupting compounds called polybrominated diphenyl ethers, or PBDEs, that are widely used in furniture, infant products, electronics and other goods.   Studies have shown California children have among the highest concentrations of the chemicals in the world, likely because of the state's strict fire-safety law, enacted in 1975, which requires that furniture withstand 12 seconds of flame without catching fire. Manufacturers used large amounts of PBDEs to comply…..


UC-Berkeley’s anti-flame retardant crusader Brenda Eskenazi is back at it with a new study claiming to link maternal exposure to polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) with reduced infant birth weight.

Although the reported correlation between maternal PBDE serum levels and infant birth weight vanished into statistical insignificance when enough potential confounding risk factors were considered, Eskenazi nevertheless said in a media release that,
“There is a growing body of evidence that PBDE exposure impacts human health, and not a lot of evidence that these chemicals are making our homes safer from fires… Other chemical flame retardants are replacing the old PBDEs, but more information is needed about exposure to the newer chemicals. More attention should also be given to finding non-chemical approaches to achieving fire safety.

As discussed last April in “PBDE study spotlights need for junk science retardants, we’re not sure what “growing body of evidence” to which Eskenazi refers, but we’re glad to easily extinguish her 10-alarm junk science.

By Steve Milloy 

While it’s not surprising that children from the inner city and Latino farmworker communities might perform slightly less well than average American children on development tests, anti-pesticide activists can make it news if they can link that performance to pesticides. And so they have tried.  Environmental Health Perspectives published three studies today purporting to link prenatal exposure to organophosphate pesticides with substandard performance on development tests by the aforementioned groups of children.

I’m sure than the well-known anti-pesticide activist-researchers involved (Brenda Eskenazi, Frederica Perera and Mary Wolff) expect to overwhelm the media with their message by simultaneously releasing all three studies right before Earth Day, but here are the underlying fatal flaws common to all three studies:

·         Even accepting the study results at face value for the sake of argument, the test score deficiencies are insignificant. There is no meaningful developmental difference between a child who scores a 100 on an IQ test vs. one who scores a 101.4.
·         Childhood development is a complex, multifactorial phenomenon, which these researchers have magically reduced down to blood levels of pesticide metabolites. While most reasonable people would point to the children’s general plight in Lower Social-economia as the likely cause of whatever development issues they may have, Eskenazi, Perera and Wolff have conjured up a superficial statistical analyses to advance their personal financial and political agendas as well as the bureaucratic and political agenda of their funding agency, the anti-pesticide EPA.
·         There is no known biological mechanism that explains how legal exposures to pesticides might lead to developmental problems.
·        
Interestingly and as we pointed out last week, Eskenazi and Perera are also blaming these same children’s developmental issues on brominated (PBDE) flame retardants.
Can’t wait to see what gets blamed next week.

Here are the three “studies”:


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