The folks at JunkScience.com dedicate themselves to debunking major scientific theories. This year’s top 10 junk science moments included:
The woodpecker sham: The world watched in awe in 2005 as teary-eyed scientists pronounced the ivory-billed woodpecker extinct no more after a research team from Cornell claimed they had a credible sighting. To protect the bird, a judge stopped a $320 million Army Corps of Engineers project. Then ornithologists took a closer look at the evidence and discovered it amounted to no more than a grainy film in which the bird was virtually indistinguishable and a few eyewitness reports.
Hurricane hell that wasn’t: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecast a devastating 2006 hurricane season. NOAA predicted 12 to 15 named storms, seven to nine hurricanes and three to four major hurricanes. Instead there were just nine named-storms, five hurricanes and two major hurricanes — none of which hit the United States.
DDT ban ditched: In the 1960s, the pesticide DDT was hailed as one of the great environmental evils of the 20th century, and environmentalists spent decades working to ban it, even though many of the claims about the damages it supposedly caused had never been proven. In September, the World Health Organization quietly lifted its ban on DDT.
This article appears in Dec 27, 2006 – Jan 2, 2007.
Well, one more award before the end of the year. The idea of a web site that addresses junk science sounded good. Unfortunatly, junkscience.com is perhaps the most poorly designed web site I have ever seen.
These three pokes at science seem to have a political bias but it is hard to tell which way. Do we want to line our kids up & fog them with DDT again or is it saying we shouldn’t have legalized DDT again. I read articles about the debate to use DDT to mitigate malaria in some areas, this was not done quietly at all. Find someone else to predict hurricanes? I hope the woodpeckers are there, it is nice to keep a big bad swamp they help fill the water table.
Dear Tara,
The millions of people in the world dying of malaria should rejoice. Are you embarrassing Creative Loafing? I listen to you on WBT whenever I can and read your columns regularly. As someone said, you are the only real newsprint reporter in Charlotte. However, it has become more and more difficult to find your columns online at CL. They seem to be buried. Whassup?
If dying from malaria is something to party about then its going to be a big celebration. The range of the mosquito that spreads the disease is being extended by the warmer climate trend and warm sewers like in NYC where West Nile virus laden insects found a home.