Junk Science: An Overdue Indictment of Government, Industry, and Faith Groups That Twist Science for Their Own Gain

By Dan Agin

Book Overview

"A passionate, minutely informed, and scrupulously fair analysis of all the abuses and misuses of science that are rampant today--a clarion call to action that concerns us all."--Oliver Sacks, M.D., author of Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat

The American public is suffering from a rampage against reason by special interests in government, commerce, and the faith industry. In Junk Science, Dan Agin offers an overdue indictment of the groups that twist science for their own gain.

Provocative, comprehensive, and hard-hitting, Agin argues from the center that we will pay a heavy price for the follies of people who consciously distort the public's understanding of the real world. With entertaining candidness, he reveals the data faking, reality ignoring, fear mongering, and outright lying that contribute to intentionally manufactured public ignorance. Agin outs the factions twisting scientific data to maintain riches and power in sections including:

-- "Buyer Beware" (genetically modified foods, aging, and tobacco companies)
-- "Medical Follies" (chiropractics, health care, talk therapy)
-- "Poison and Bombs in the Greenhouse" (pollution, warfare, global warming)
-- "Religion, Embryos, and Cloning"
-- "Genes, Behavior, and Race"

We already pay a heavy price for many groups' conscious manipulation of the public's understanding of science, and Junk Science arms us with understanding, cutting through the fabric of lies and setting the record straight.

"Agin is one angry empiricist...focused, extremely articulate, skilled in debate, and above all, dedicated only to what can be experienced through the senses and duplicated in the laboratory."--Chicago Sun-Times

"An eye- and brain-opener, fraught with insight and plenty of astute observations and illustrative cases-in-point."--The San Diego Union-Tribune

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312374801
• ISBN13: 9780312374808
• Release Date: November 2007
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.5" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Junk Science is not a book of science, but a well crafted polemic that calls out the charlatans.

Dan Agin's "Junk Science" is bound to be controversial. It's a polemic in favor of scientific mainstream (read - mostly liberal and western rationalist) viewpoints. It uses scientific sources to make its points, but doesn't employ the scientific method itself (what polemic ever could?) Agin is very intelligent and is obviously quite familiar with the culture wars involving science: evolution, global warming, cloning, stem cell research, diet fads, pollution controversies, chemical health dangers etc... He isn't shy about taking sides - indeed this is the whole point of the book. He takes a stand on which position is best supported by scientific evidence and accuses the contradicting point of view of fallacy, distortion, or outright fabrication. If you agree with Agin, "Junk Science" will provide a wealth of useful arguments. If you oppose his points of view, you will be enraged. If you're on the fence, "Junk Science" is a good compendium of the rationalists position on a good laundry list of controversial subjects with a bunch of sources cited. Agin starts out with Galileo and the moons of Jupiter - a story that features scientific truth quashed by the Pope's dogma as a way of establishing the theme. Then, to balance things, he points out examples of scientific fraud - both as a caution to not take all science at face value, and as an object demonstration of how bad science damages and misleads - and how it is inevitably flushed out by good science in the end. His examples here range from Piltdown man to the Eugenics movement (supporting class and ethnic bias). It's pretty powerful stuff and a good setup to his main arguments - pointing out examples where corporate or religious biased agendas attempt to shape the debate on a host of controversial topics. Don't make the mistake of dismissing this book just because it takes a stand. You can't dismiss Akin simply because his arguments are not dispassionate science in an of themselves - or because they make you feel uncomfortable. Buy this book because it challenges your assumptions, or because it gives you ammo. It will do plenty of both. Whether or not Agin convinces you, you will be well served by the exercise of thinking with some rigor about these topics.

A Scientist Serves the Public Interest: A Dark Era Warning

I agree with Dan Agin's assessment: something is wrong in the way we are living. We're putting up with the bogus, with lies, half-truths, deliberate distortions from the media, government, politicians, corporations, schools and universities, and we're allowing the cowboys of junk science to ride roughshod over the American citizens' public interest so that corporate profits may grow and purveyors of ignorance and racism may become famous while special interests grab more power. While facts and evidence are not in evidence either in politics or in issues involving health, neither are they about such things as stem cell research, creationism, global warming, and our scientists are doing very little or nothing to protect the integrity of science or to teach the young the value of such respect for evidence. Dan Agin is trying to correct this destructive trend with the publication of this book (and his online articles). While I was particularly and initially interested in Dan Agin's views on fraud in science through such current hot-topic scams as fad diets, fat-burning foods, health supplements, anti-depressants, talk therapy, Dan Agin's project and aim is much larger than covering these tidy niche areas of economics and fraud. In his introduction he states "our subject" is "the socially destructive twisting of science by special interests or by scientists themselves" and further adds that "the focus is on corruption of science with societal effects that are often dangerous and sometimes catastrophic." Junk science, according to Dan Agin, is "science corrupted in objectivity and/or method" such that false statements about the world are a consequence. One of the most sinister methods for creating just such false statements about the world I learned from reading this book is the hiding of information -- which both government and corporations perpetrate, in general, and on a vast scale. Eleven (11) chapters are devoted to false ideas about nutrition, genetically modified foods, anti-aging medicines and homeopathic and chiropractic treatments, tobacco, corporate polluting and poisoning, dirty bombs, and global warming. The last six (6) chapters of the book are wholly devoted to teaching the reader -- and I love Dan Agin for doing this -- about the life-giving, future-making values for Man in terms of (a) why creationism is a political rather than a scientific agenda; (b) why stem cell research is not only wonderful but important and why a blastocyte is not an embryo; and (c) why evolutionary psychology (sociobiology and psychometrics) is not science at all. Dan Agin's explanations on these questions are provided so as to illuminate for the reader just what the societal effects are and why they are often dangerous and sometimes catastrophic. Dan Agin taught me a lot of science on the very "hot" and "controversial" topics that had been so distorted for me by media and my anti-intellectual culture called the "head-fixing industry" by so

A broad, sweeping review of science slants

While Agin could have gone into more detail and expounded upon the junk science to be found in various areas of our life, he does an admirable job of highlighting an example (or two) in one area and then moving on to another area. It is then summarized in the end to show that was is most imperative is that we hold on to the need for evidence and for conclusions drawn from evidence or data without a bias; rather than the molding of data to fit a biased conclusion. In essence, the beauty and integrity of science is under attack by the tactful and selfish groups of today (be they political, religious, medicinal, etc) and Agin cannot sit idly by while it happens and hopes that you cannot either.

A Thought-provoking read

Junk Science is a thought-provoking, provocative and necessary read. Politics, religion, corporations, media and many forms of organized interests are taken on categorically and in an engaging way. Agin's well-written book causes you to question things around you, things taken for granted as fact. Junk Science is pertinent to anyone interested in seeking knowledge. A Must-Have book.

Junk Science, ....a call to reforms

This book by Dr. Dan Agin, " Junk Science" (How Politicians, Corporations, and Other Hucksters Betray Us) is fascinating. Dr Agin clearly draws the line of separation of weak/bad science from the "TWISTING" of science all for the benefit of the entities that he NAMES. Dr. Agin's clearness of thought leads to honest conclusions. His personal observations and his chapter called "Sources" provide the American public with awareness why deep suffering is happening now, and that this suffering will only getworse, unless an informed American public insists and pushes for reforms. Dr. Agin has given Americans the awareness in this book. We ignore his conclusions and admonitions at our peril. This book is exceptional, and rates 5 stars from me. Dr. Howard Theodore Block