Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber of the Center for Media and Democracy are co-authors of Toxic Sludge is Good For You and Mad Cow USA.

Editor's Note: The following is an excerpt from Trust Us, We're Experts!, by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, published in 2001 by Tarcher/Putnam. "Junk Bonds" describes some of the corporate-funded organizations that have rallied against environmental and public health protections by claiming that they are based upon so-called "junk science." As Rampton and Stauber demonstrate earlier in their book, however, the "junk science" label is a PR device that does not reflect the quality or rigor of the research in question.

Casual visitors to Milloy's Junk Science Home Page might be tempted to dismiss him as merely an obnoxious adolescent with a website. They would be surprised to discover that he is a well-connected fixture in conservative Washington policy circles. He currently holds the title of "adjunct scholar" at the libertarian Cato Institute, which was rated the fourth most influential think tank in Washington, D.C., in a 1999 survey of congressional staffers and journalists.

Milloy's vitriolic style may seem strange to outsiders, but it generates and channels the anger that right-wing pseudopopulists have become adept at mobilizing against environmentalists. Milloy's website frequently provides phone and fax numbers that visitors can use to bombard news editors and politicians with correspondence. Using dittoheads to amplify his messages, he has claimed responsibility for engineering the 1999 firing of George Lundberg as editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association, and for the passage of legislation by Congress that substantially alters the rules regarding data disclosure by government-funded scientists.

In addition to the website, Milloy is a prolific author of eco-bashing articles that the Cato Institute helps circulate to newspapers and other publications. His diatribes against junk science have run in publications including the New York Post, the Washington Times, Arizona Republic, Electricity Daily, San Francisco Examiner, Detroit Free Press, Investor's Business Daily, Cincinnati Enquirer, USA Today, New York Post, London Financial Times, San Francisco Examiner, Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer, and Chemical and Engineering News. The Chicago Sun-Times has run "special reports" by Milloy that are offered as news stories rather than editorials, in which he downplays environmental concerns about issues such as biotech foods. He can rein in the rhetoric when he needs to, and some of his stories read like straight news.

Perhaps the most disturbing thing about his writing for the Chicago Sun-Times is the newspaper's failure to provide its readers with any information about his background as an industry lobbyist. It describes him simply as "a Washington-based business writer specializing in science" who "holds advanced degrees in health sciences from Johns Hopkins University and a law degree from Georgetown University." (Milloy's "advanced degree" from Johns Hopkins is a master's degree in biostatistics.) Indeed, some of the publications that quote Milloy tend to inflate or distort his credentials. He has been described in various places as a "risk expert," an "economist," and a "statistician."

Like other corporate-funded front groups, the organizations that flack for sound science are sometimes fly-by-night organizations. Called into existence for a particular cause or legislative lobby campaign, they often dry up and blow away once the campaign is over. The tendency of groups to appear and disappear creates another form of camouflage, making it difficult for journalists and everyday citizens to sort out the bewildering proliferation of names and acronyms. This was indeed what happened with the Advancement of Sound Science Coalition, which was quietly retired in late 1998. Its legacy, however, continues. Milloy's Junk Science Home Page now claims to be sponsored by an organization called "Citizens for the Integrity of Science," about which no further information is publicly available. It is one of dozens, if not hundreds, of industry-funded organizations and conservative think tanks that continue to wave the sound science banner. Some are large and well-known, while others are small-scale operations, as the following examples illustrate:

* The Washington Legal Foundation continues to press the campaign against "junk science in the courtroom." It runs quarter-page advertisements in the New York Times, calling them "public service messages" by "free enterprise advocates with public interest know-how." In a 1997 ad, headlined "Junk Science Makes Junk Law," the WLF recited the familiar litany -- Alar, Bendectin, breast implants. "Just imagine the products Americans will never have because of junk science," it concluded. Internal Philip Morris documents describe WLF as "a close ally of PM for many years. WLF has been involved in numerous aspects of the tobacco industry debate. They have filed amicus briefs against the EPA; they have written and promoted policy papers supporting our position on the advertising/First Amendment issue; and, most recently, they authored a major paper detailing why the tobacco industry is already one of the most highly regulated industries in America and does not need further regulatory control."

• The Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank that spent the 1960s and 1970s envisioning nuclear war scenarios and defending the war in Vietnam, today employs "adjunct scholar" Dennis T. Avery as an in-house, anti-environmentalist expert on junk science. Avery is author of the tract Saving the Planet with Pesticides and Plastic and has championed the idea that organic food is more dangerous than foods grown using synthetic pesticides. In the fall of 1998, Avery began claiming that "people who eat organic and 'natural' foods are eight times as likely as the rest of the population to be attacked by a deadly new strain of E. coli bacteria (0157:H7)." This happens, he says, because organic food is grown in animal manure. He claims his data comes from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the federal agency that tracks outbreaks of foodborne illness. In reality, organic food is no more likely to be grown in animal manure than nonorganic food. The CDC vigorously denies Avery's claim and has even gone to the unusual step of issuing a news release disavowing it. Nevertheless, Avery's message has been repeated in media op-ed pieces written by Avery with titles such as "Organic Foods Can Make You Sick" and in news stories by the Wall Street Journal, the Associated Press, and numerous other publications in the United States and Europe. In February 2000, Avery was the featured expert for an ABC "20/20" story by television reporter John Stossel which speculated that "buying organic could kill you." Stossel's piece made no mention of Avery's affiliation with the Hudson Institute, let alone any mention of the institute's corporate funding from agrichemical and agribusiness heavyweights, including Monsanto, DuPont, Dow-Elanco, Sandoz, Ciba-Geigy, ConAgra, Cargill, and Procter & Gamble.

Stossel also claimed that "20/20"'s own laboratory tests had found as many pesticide residues on organic produce as on the conventionally grown variety -- a claim the network would have to retract later when its researchers admitted that no such tests had been conducted.

* The Competitive Enterprise Institute, backed by major oil companies, claims that "thousands of scientists agree there's no solid evidence of a global-warming problem." It boasts of media hits in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, USA Today, "MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour," "Good Morning America," and "Larry King Live". CEI's activities include a "Death by Regulation" project aimed at "shifting the policy debate" about environmental regulations by making the argument that "government intervention carries its own deadly consequences." It claims, for example, that automobile emissions standards drive consumers to buy smaller, flimsier automobiles, causing more deaths from car crashes. Similarly, it argues that there are "adverse public health effects of medical drug regulation and nutritional labeling." Drug regulations, it says, keep new medications off the market. As for nutritional labeling, it believes that wine makers should be able to advertise that wine consumption prevents heart attacks. However, there should be no requirement for labeling of milk from rBGH-treated cows. During the peak of the PR campaign against EPA's secondhand smoke report, CEI cranked out opinion articles for major newspapers with titles such as "A Smoking Gun Firing Blanks," "EPA's Bad Science Mars ETS Report," and "Safety Is a Relative Thing for Cars; Why Not for Cigarettes?" CEI funders include the American Petroleum Institute, Amoco, ARCO Foundation, Armstrong Foundation, Burlington Northern Railroad Co., Carthage Foundation, Charles C. Koch Charitable Foundation, Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation, Coca-Cola, CSX Corp., David H. Koch Charitable Foundation, Detroit Farming Inc., Dow Chemical, EBCO Corp., Ford Motor Co., General Motors, IBM, JM Foundation, Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, Pfizer Inc., Philip Morris Companies, Phillip M. McKenna Foundation, Precision Valve Corp., Sarah Scaife Foundation, Smith Richardson Foundation, and Texaco Foundation.

* The Illinois-based Heartland Institute publishes anti-environmental books with titles like Eco-Sanity by institute president Joe Bast. It also has a "PolicyFax" system through which it makes position papers available on a wide range of issues, including reprints of essays by Jacob Sullum, ACSH, the Cato Institute, the National Smokers Alliance, Michael Fumento, and the Tobacco Institute. Although the PolicyFax database includes numerous reprints of articles by Elizabeth Whelan, her writings against the tobacco industry are not included. In addition to repeating the conservative line on everything from Alar to biotechnology to dioxin, Heartland enthusiastically reiterates the tobacco industry line on secondhand smoke. Its board of directors hails from General Motors, Amoco, Procter & Gamble, and Philip Morris, companies that are also among its principal contributors. An internal Philip Morris memo from March 1994 notes that Philip Morris "provided technical comments for the Heartland Institute's book on Eco-Sanity."

* The American Policy Center (APC), headed by longtime PR pro Thomas DeWeese, weighs in on what can safely be called the loony fringe of the sound science movement. One issue of the APC's newsletter attacks longtime environmentalist and author Jeremy Rifkin as "anti-industry, anti-civilization, anti-people" and accuses him of preaching "suicide, abortion, cannibalism and sodomy." The APC is also the publisher of a report titled "Safeguarding the Future: Credible Science, Credible Decisions," which says EPA regulatory initiatives rest on "shaky scientific ground." It also publishes a newsletter called EPA Watch, edited by Bonner Cohen, which accuses the EPA of everything from destroying the U.S. economy to trying to stop people from taking showers. A Philip Morris strategy document describes EPA Watch as an "asset" created by PM funding allocated "to establish groups ... that have a broader impact for PM." Another strategy memo discusses plans to promote "EPA Watch/Bonner Cohen as expert on EPA matters, i.e., regular syndicated radio features on EPA activities ... news bureau function, speaking engagements, whatever can be done to increase his visibility and credibility on matters dealing with the EPA."

* The National Anxiety Center calls itself "a think tank headquartered in Maplewood, New Jersey" whose mission is to dispel the "widespread, baseless fears" fostered by environmentalism regarding deforestation, pesticides, garbage, and endangered species. Its founder and sole proprietor is Alan Caruba, a longtime PR adviser to the pesticide industry and a personal friend of Steven Milloy. On his website, Caruba attacks everyone from EPA director Carol Browner to now-deceased oceanologist Jacques Cousteau as co-conspirators in a "green genocide agenda" to "save the earth by killing humans." Caruba also contributes to the newsletter of the American Policy Center.

Since ideology, not science, unites industry's self-proclaimed debunkers of junk science, it is not surprising that many of industry's "experts" on scientific matters are themselves nonscientists. In July 1997, the Clearinghouse on Environmental Advocacy and Research (CLEAR) issued an analysis of the "sound science" movement titled "Show Me the Science! Corporate Polluters and the 'Junk Science' Strategy." It examined the credentials of many leading "science experts" in the Directory of Environmental Scientists and Economists, published in 1996 by the conservative National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR). Ostensibly, the directory purported to identify experts in twenty-seven policy fields, ranging alphabetically from agriculture to wildlife. "The environment is too important to leave in the hands of political activists," it stated in the introduction. "Yet, this is precisely where the United States has left most environmental decision making in recent years. Political activists -- not authentic environmental scholars, scientists and economists -- have come to dominate both the headlines and Washington's legislative agenda." Upon scrutinizing the directory, however, CLEAR found that fewer than half of the experts listed in NCPPR's directory were actual scientists, and in fact only fifty-one of the 141 individuals listed had a Ph.D. in any field whatsoever.

This does not mean that there are no reputable scientists who support the positions taken by groups like TASSC and ACSH. Norman Borlaug, a Nobel Prize recipient, has been involved with ACSH for many years and currently sits on the ACSH board of directors. Former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop and former JAMA editor George Lundberg (whose firing Steven Milloy claims to have helped engineer) are also prominent ACSH supporters. For that matter, TASSC in its heyday was able to call on the support of Frederick J. Seitz, an eminent researcher in the field of solid-state physics, past president of the National Academy of Sciences, and retired president of Rockefeller University.

Even scientists are human beings. They may be brilliant in a particular field of research but naÔve or uninformed about fields outside their specialty, and they are not immune from political ideologies or the lure of money. The conservative political views of Koop and Seitz are well-known. Although Koop certainly deserves credit for his principled stand regarding tobacco, since leaving public office he has participated in several ventures that call into question his objectivity and ability to avoid ethical conflicts of interest. In April 1999, for example, he circulated a letter in Congress urging legislators to allow the Schering-Plough Corporation to extend the patent on its allergy drug Claritin. By keeping the drug under patent, the company would be able to prevent other companies from offering cheaper generic versions, thereby garnering an estimated $1 billion in additional profits. The following month, he met with members of Congress to defend the company's position on legislation involving another drug used to treat hepatitis C. Koop did not disclose that Schering-Plough had given a $1 million grant earlier that year to his nonprofit organization, the Koop Foundation.

On another occasion, Koop testified in defense of latex gloves, which have been linked to life-threatening allergies. Latex allergies affect roughly 3 percent of the general population and upward of 10 percent of health care workers who are regularly exposed through the use of latex gloves and other medical supplies. An estimated 200,000 nurses have developed latex allergies, which can be disabling and even deadly. Alternatives to latex exist and are gradually being adopted by the health care industry, but Koop told Congress that latex glove concerns are "borderline hysteria." He also claimed -- falsely, as he later discovered -- that a study undercutting concerns about latex gloves had been conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In fact, the study he cited had been sponsored by a company that makes the gloves. And Koop had failed to disclose the fact that two years previously another maker of latex gloves had paid him a reported $656,250 in consulting fees to serve as a "spokesman for the company."

"What this long admired and respected man has done in taking money from a glove manufacturer and then speaking out on its behalf is wrong," said Susan Wilburn, senior specialist in occupational safety and health for the American Nurses Association. Another ANA representative, Michelle Nawar, noted that latex allergy "is a very serious disease" that "can be a debilitating, career-ending illness." In fact, five deaths have been reported from using latex gloves, four involving nurses.

The conflicts of interest involving Frederick Seitz are even more telling. Shortly before his retirement from Rockefeller University in 1979, he went to work as a "permanent consultant" to the R. J. Reynolds tobacco company, a hiring that was deliberately not publicized. The tobacco industry eagerly traded on Seitz's reputation, even though R. J. Reynolds CEO William Hobbs privately advised executives at Philip Morris in 1989 that Seitz was "quite elderly and not sufficiently rational to offer advice." In June 1993, the CNN news network ran a report citing claims by Philip Morris that "prominent scientists privately agree" with its opinion of the EPA risk assessment of secondhand smoke. "We asked for specifics, promising anonymity if necessary," stated CNN correspondent Steve Young. "The only name Philip Morris provided was the former president of this prestigious institution, Rockefeller University, in New York." Although CNN never discovered Seitz's background as a tobacco industry consultant, he did not perform well in his role as third-party spokesperson. When Young called Seitz to ask directly if he had said that EPA's report was based on flawed science, Seitz responded, "No, I have not."

"You have not said that?" Young asked again.

"I have not said that, no," Seitz replied.

"Well, why not?"

"I haven't read it," Seitz replied.

That same month, however, Multinational Business Services (Jim Tozzi's lobby shop and Steven Milloy's former employer) reported to Philip Morris that it had "initiated discussions with Dr. Seitz of Rockefeller University to support MBS findings on ETS." The following year, a report appeared with Seitz listed as the author, concluding that "there is no good scientific evidence that moderate passive inhalation of tobacco smoke is truly dangerous under normal circumstances."