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NOTES AND REFERENCES
The main corporate funders of the GCC are:
Amoco, American Forest & Paper Association, American Petroleum Institute, Shell Oil, Texaco, Chevron, Chrysler, US Chamber of Commerce, Exxon, General Motors, Ford, National Assoc. of Manufacturers,
and more than 40 other corporations and trade associations.
The main corporate funders of the EOP Group are:
American Petroleum Institute, American Crop Protection Association, Business Roundtable, Chlorine Chemistry Council, Edison Electric Institute, FMC Corporation, International Food Additives Council, National Mining Association, Nuclear Energy Institute, Monsanto Co.
Contact details:
E-mail to Stewart Fist
Address: 70 Middle Harbour Road,
LINDFIELD, NSW, 2070, Australia
Phone: +61 2 9416 7458 (H & W)
Facsimile: +61 2 9416 4582
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The origins of junk-science spin-doctoring;
how the claim is misused?
The highly emotive term 'junk science' was invented by E. Bruce Harrison in 1962, and it has been taken up by legitimate scientists to attack shoddy science. Harrison is a prominent US PR man and lobbyist who was funded by the National Agricultural Chemical Association (the trade association for pesticide producers), to devise a strategy against Rachael Carson's book "Silent Spring".
So it has both a legitimate and a public-relations use today -- and the two are often deliberately entangled.
[Note: other knowledgeable sources say that the tobacco-industry anti-tort promoter, Peter Huber, was the originator of the term "junk-science", and they could well be right.]
The 'junk-science" term was later taken up and popularised by the two giants of global PR, Burson-Marsteller and Hill & Knowlton, and also by Harrison's company which later became a subsidiary of PR giant Ruder Finn. You can almost date, to the month, when this deprecating slogan began to be circulated around the world to attack any science or scientist who might effect corporate profits.
It is important to know that the larger PR firms tend to work together and share the spoils of the largest industry-sector accounts, such as the problems of the tobacco industry, the attack on carbon taxes, tort-reform and product liability, and also some of the more extreme environmental issues.
Harrison is still actively associated with the Global Climate Coalition (GCC was a creation of Burson-Marsteller), which is active in Australia and elsewhere opposing the Kyoto Earth Summit treaty on carbon emissions. GCC has a $US1 million plus annual budget, while Burson-Marsteller picks up the odd million or two independently from the American Petroleum Institute for computer-driven 'grassroots' letter and phone-in campaigns to block carbon taxes.
In Washington DC, GCC operates out of the offices of the National Association of Manufacturers, and its funding comes from American industry associations and companies involved in vehicle manufacture, oil and coal, and electricity-generation. The main ones are: Amoco, the American Forest & Paper Association, American Petroleum Institute, Shell Oil, Texaco, Chevron, Chrysler, the US Chamber of Commerce, Exxon, General Motors, Ford and more than 40 other corporations and trade associations.
GCC employs an organisation known as the EOP Group as its major US lobbyist, and the EOP's own client-list reads like a who's-who of global polluters. [just a sample: American Petroleum Institute, American Crop Protection Association (an industry lobby for agrichemicals), the Business Roundtable, the Chlorine Chemistry Council, Edison Electric Institute, FMC Corporation, the International Food Additives Council, the National Mining Association, the Nuclear Energy Institute and Monsanto Co.]
Burson-Marstellar also employs the EOP Group to lobby on behalf of some of its clients.
Harrison's invention of the term 'junk-science' was quite brilliant from a corporate viewpoint, and there's no doubt that a lot of so-called scientific research deserves this tag. Defamation-by-association is extremely effective.
For instance, the evidence supporting global-warming and rising sea-levels is extremely thin and highly disputable, so activist-certainties in the face of genuine scientific doubt always infuriate anyone devoted to a rational examination of the evidence. If claims of global-warming and sea-level rises can be associated with attacks on genuine environmental research, the PR companies will already have half the scientists and most of the politicians on side before they start.
Similarly, it is pretty widely accepted that cellphone towers produce far too low a level of radio-signal densities at distances of a 30 metres or so to cause any possible harm, but a cellphone is the first radio transmission device ever invented which is jammed up against the side of the head for long periods of time. Those who understand the Inverse Square Law of radiation, realise instantly that the handset is about a million times more potentially dangerous to human health than the towers.
But while the activists continue to identify the towers as the problem because they are big, dominant and ugly -- something concrete that can be understood, and rejected -- all of the research revealing disturbing links between radio waves at handset levels and DNA strand-breaks, tumour promotion, Altzheimers, etc. can be dismissed as 'nothing more than the ravings of nuts" -- which is how many engineers in the industry see the problem.
The term 'junk-science' also appeals to many genuine scientists because it flatters their egos and sets them apart from their associates. It appears to take a sly-shot at their less-worthy colleagues (those who engage in lesser research, or those who dispute their findings) while simultaneously denigrating the mob-ignorance of the hoi-polloi.
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