Headlines continue to appear to claiming that a recent
study has shown that the chemical bisphenol A increases the risk of
miscarriage, which I addressed in a Forbes article last week. There are many
problems with this research, such as the fact that it is not available in a
published, peer-reviewed format. Check out my piece here for more details.
This issue raises a bigger concern about the state of
science today, particularly when the research is related to chemical safety.
Reliance on hard facts, scientific standards, and cautious conclusions seems to
be withering away. Even well-school researchers have become involved in the
game of activism and alarmism, using carefully chosen rhetoric to generate
headlines and fear based on inconclusive and largely meaningless studies and
even unpublished research.
There are some terms that should make you wary. Key among
them are headlines that condemn a chemical because a study “links it” to or
“suggests” its a problem or simply because the study is “consistent with” other
equally unimpressive studies or even mere theories. Researchers increasingly
use these phrases to describe weak statistical associations and weak studies
that are often too small to provide much value......To Read More....
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