Junk Science Week

The 13th Annual Junk Science Week kicks off with Terence Corcoran:

... dedicated to exposing the scientists, NGOs, activists, politicians, journalists, media outlets, cranks and quacks who manipulate science data to achieve their objectives. Our standard definition is that junk science occurs when scientific facts are distorted, risk is exaggerated and the science adapted and warped by politics and ideology to serve another agenda. [Last night Lloyd Robertson and his CTV News crew of lazy, scientific illiterates indulged in the pesticide scaremongering featured in this column.]

[...]

and Vivian Krause:

... before the end of this month, an expert panel appointed by the Alberta government is expected to unveil recommendations for a “world-class” system for monitoring the environmental impact of oil sands on the Athabasca River basin.

... It all began to escalate in 2008 ... CBC documentary for The Nature of Things with David Suzuki, fuelled in part by a media-hyped visit by Avatar director James Cameron...

... what we have here isn’t a case of bad science. On the contrary, this is a case of how bad media happened to good science, or at least relatively sound science. The heart of the matter is how — and why — the media blew up a small but reasonable study that produced little new information into a major international scandal.

... U.S. tax returns show that the Sea Change Foundation in 2009 paid the Tides Foundation $2-million “to promote awareness and opposition to tar sands.”

... the Oak Foundation, another U.S. foundation, paid the Tides Foundation $700,000 “to conduct research to determine whether tar sands mining is adversely impacting the Athabasca River of Canada and its tributaries, and to report the findings.” A second goal of the same grant was “to raise the visibility of the tar sands issue and slow the expansion of tar sands production by stopping new infrastructure development, supporting policy reform in the U.S. and Canada, and reducing future demand for tar sands oil.”

What an incestuous circle-jerk. A mainstream media that is simultaneously gullible, scientifically illiterate and headline-seeking promotes the junk science of Rick Smith's Environmental Defense who in turn takes money from murky foreign foundations and environmental scaremongers.  You get the feeling that the last things they give a damn about are the environment or science which, as they practice/promote them, are turned into junk.