Posted on 12/28/2006 10:03:01 PM PST by neverdem
10. California’s Not-so-deadly Air. Bill Clinton and Julia Roberts stumped for California’s Proposition 87 which would tax oil to fund alternative energy research. Mr. Clinton and Ms. Roberts claimed that California’s air is the “worst in the nation” and that it was linked with more asthma, bronchitis, lung cancer, heart disease, lung disease and premature death. But data (as opposed to political rhetoric) indicate that California’s public health is generally better than that of states which fully meet federal air quality standards. Maybe that’s one reason why voters rejected Proposition 87.
9. Food police indict SpongeBob Squarepants. Several anti-fun food activist groups sued Nickelodeon and Kellogg for using cartoon characters to advertise food products to children. “Nickelodeon and Kellogg engage in business practices that literally sicken our children,” the groups claimed. Though the activists attempted to exploit a widely publicized report from the Institute of Medicine concluding that advertising to kids is effective, the IOM report did not examine and, therefore, did not link advertising to kids’ health problems.
8. Woodpecker Racket. The 2005 reported sighting of the thought-to-be-extinct Ivory-billed Woodpecker in eastern Arkansas raised hopes of bird-watchers everywhere. But a prominent bird expert cast serious doubt on the report in 2006, characterizing it as “faith-based” ornithology and “a disservice to science.” But the debunking may not matter. Environmental groups used the dubious sighting to convince a federal judge in July 2006 to stop a nearby $320 million Army Corps of Engineers irrigation project. Given that the anti-development Nature Conservancy funded the “search” for the woodpecker in the first place, the supposed “sighting” turned out to be quite convenient.
7. Low-fat diet myth busted. The widely-held 30-year old notion that low-fat diets are good for your health went “poof” this year. They didn’t reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease or cancer, according to three large studies published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Sadly, the lesson of low-fat diet myth seems lost on the media which looked the other way as public health nannies fomented the scientifically dubious trans fat scare.
6. Stem cell fraud and futility. Incoming Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi plans to introduce legislation lifting the limits on federal funding of embryonic stem cell (ESC) research. But she ought to pay attention to what did, and what did not happen, in ESC research during 2006. What did happen was the indictment of prominent South Korean ESC researcher Hwang Woo-suk for faking his research. What didn’t happen was any meaningful advance in ESC research. One alleged ESC research advance hyped in the journal Nature (harvesting of ESCs without destroying the embryos) had to be corrected to note that none of the embryos in question actually survived the procedure -- oops.
5. Cosmic ray study fails to penetrate lead-lined media. Swedish researchers provided experimental evidence that cosmic rays may be a major factor in climate change. They calculated that just 5 years of cosmic ray activity can have 85 percent of the effect on the Earth’s climate as 200 years of manmade carbon dioxide emissions. Though the study was published in the prestigious Proceedings of the Royal Society A, the findings went largely unreported by the Al Gore-smitten media.
4. Day of Reckoning for DDT Foes? It only took 30 years, tens of millions of lives lost, billions sickened and trillions of dollars of economic growth foregone, but the World Health Organization finally ended its ban on use of the insecticide DDT to kill malaria-bearing mosquitoes. It’s great news for developing nations that want to employ the most affordable and effective anti-malarial tool. So what should happen to those environmental activists and government regulators who used junk science to have DDT banned in the first place?
3. What Hurricane Season? The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s prediction for the 2006 hurricane season was about as wrong as wrong can be. NOAA predicted only a 5 percent chance of a below-normal hurricane season -- but a below-normal season is precisely what happened. If NOAA’s experts can be so wrong about an imminent hurricane season, why have any confidence in far more complex predictions of climate change 100 years into the future?
2. Board of Health or Bored of Science? New York City’s Board of Health banned restaurants from serving foods cooked with vegetable oils containing trans fats. It apparently mattered little to the Board that the Food and Drug Administration classifies trans fats as “generally recognized as safe” and that the sort of “science” the Board relied on could also be used to ban potatoes, peas, meat, dairy products and many other food items from restaurants.
1. Some Real Inconvenient Truth. Al Gore whipped the world into a global warming frenzy with his doomsday documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth.” Milloy personally asked Mr. Gore to help arrange a debate between scientists about the purported climate catastrophe. He declined (twice) without explanation -- leaving me to wonder why global warming alarmists are unwilling to explain why they believe in non-validated and always-wrong computer guess-timations of future climate change rather than actual temperature measurements and greenhouse-effect physics that indicate manmade emissions of greenhouse gases are not a problem.
View the complete “Top Ten Junk Science Moments for 2006” report here.
My bad--I was confusing points 7 and 2. Although I have my doubts about 2.
Links?
Back to Tums?
ping
What most people didn't realize about the low fat diets was: The gallbladder actually needs fat to function properly after a meal and in order to compensate for the lack of fat manufacturers added more sugar to their foods, which in turn made people fatter.
The problem with fat isn't so much the fat as it is the type of fats... we make and eat a "healthy" butter where we take a pound of butter and mix it half and half with a healthy fat source like Almond Oil (ummmmm).... my husband (who eats eggs six days a week) had a cholesterol of 156 and LDL is 86 and he still has his gallbladder (as do I). The reason for adding the almond oil is to offset the omega 6 in the butter with a healthy omega 3 oil. Balance out your diet with more Omega 3's and everyone will be a lot healthier.... BTW Olive Oil is an Omega 9 -- a monunsaturated (healthy) fat... avocado's fall into the Omega 9 category as well.
Best to stay far away from a lot of the cheap fats and stick to real butter, almond, walnut or grapeseed oils, olive oil, etc..... and stay away from Canola Oil.
I have a problem with that... to be blunt, the FDA has little credibility with me these days. They allow too many things through because of testing by the very people making the product instead of independent tests (with nothing to gain financially).
The FDA reversed their decision because of many studies printed in the New England Journal of Medicine. It was junk science.
I actually save my bacon drippings to cook my eggs in.
Did I mention my cholestrol is fine?
I use olive oil and real butter and some animal fat
>>Please note that of the 10 listed, one of them (the DDT hoax) cost the lives of millions of people who could have been helped but weren't because of a bogus study and do-good-ism.<<
But hey, it got rid of the "excess population".
/s
The last sentence is a bit of a non sequitur. The people who fear trans fats don't do so because they're fats per se. They believe trans fats have other deleterious effects. (And since CSPI/PETA/etc foisted the trans fatty oils on us to get rid of lard, I'm not sure those people aren't correct). Thinking's theorem: if liberals came up with an idea, it will eventually be proven wrong.
Same here. They NEVER worried about what they ate, never heard of cholesterol, high blood pressure, yada, yada, yada,... Kind of makes your wonder how the human race survived.
Because that would take away the power issue they want to use to subjugate us carbon-serfs.
Real food will, and should, rot. If it don't rot, it's not food.
BTTT
Ever wonder why poor folks are so fat? processed food. Its cheap for the consumer because its cheap for the merchant. It will stay on the shelf for years and it will make you fat. eating Kraft mac and cheese everyday will pump you up!
Hydrogenated oil was invented for shelflife abd nothing more. It doesnt taste better and it isnt better for you. Sure it makes a flakey pie crust, but so will cold butter
I love the twinky experiment. Some teacher has had a twinky in his classroom for like 25 years and it is only now showing a few tiny green specks
Zackly. Rotting is just digestion outside your body. If it won't digest outside, how is it supposed to digest inside?
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