Remember the Madeleine Jacobs Principle? It's the herd mentality applied to science. Might is right. And Science's Jocelyn Kaiser wins this week's Madeleine Jacobs Trophy.
Jocelyn penned an article on the EPA's recently issued air quality standards titled Showdown Over Clean Air Science. I thought the article was relatively balanced (emphasis on "relatively") until I got to the end.
Jocelyn started the conclusion of her article by writing:
Most experts contacted by Science [magazine] agreed that EPA was justified in setting a [new fine particulate matter] standard.
Hey Jocelyn, what does this sentence mean? Does this impromptu Science poll mean EPA was justified in issuing the standards? You sure make it sound like they were.
But how many "experts" were surveyed? Who were they? What qualified them as "experts?" What are their connections to EPA and the extreme environmental/public health community that so blindly and vigorously did EPA's bidding? Exactly what is it that makes some "experts" right and some "experts" wrong? What questions were they asked? And last, but not least, does one have to know anything about science before writing about it for a major journal?
I only have one question. Exactly what would be wrong with a little RESPONSIBLE science journalism?
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