While I appreciate being quoted in a front-page Washington Post article about a crowning glory of my fight against junk science, I don’t appreciate being lied about.
The online WaPo article is here.
This is the offending passage is below in print and online.
So note the underlined words, “independent research.” According to the WaPo, I “have long tried to discredit independent research the agency used to justify limiting air pollution from burning coal and other fossil fuels.” Stop.
As JunkScience.com readers well know and the well-informed WaPo reporters should know, the research in question is anything but “independent.”
The utterly fraudulent Harvard Six Cities and the Arden Pope/American Cancer Society-II lines of research not only were funded by the EPA, but they were then rubber-stamped into a basis for regulation by the corrupt, pal-review process known as the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee.
- Harvard’s Doug Dockery, lead author of the Six Cities study, has shared in $50,290,729 worth of grants from EPA.
- Clive Arden Pope, III, lead author of the ACS-II line of studies, has shared in $50,145,870 worth of grants from the EPA.
- Both Dockery and Pope have been part of the processes for reviewing their work as members of the EPA Science Advisory Board, EPA Clean Air Act Science Advisory Committee and the EPA-funded Health Effects Institute.
This might be “independence” in Winston’s Smith’s world, but not ours. Or are we already in 1984?
Much to EPA chief Scott Pruitt’s credit, the Trump EPA has already taken action to prevent these egregious conflicts of interest. Last fall, Pruitt banned EPA grantees from serving as “independent” advisors.
For more on the secret science controversy, check out my March 26 Wall Street Journal op-ed.