Steven Milloy

Steven J. Milloy is the "Junk Science" commentator for FoxNews.com and runs the website Junkscience.com, which is dedicated to debunking what Milloy labels "faulty scientific data and analysis."

Among the topics Milloy has addressed are what he believes to be false claims regarding DDT, global warming, Alar, breast implants, secondhand smoke, ozone depletion, and mad cow disease. Milloy also runs CSRWatch.com, which monitors and criticizes the corporate social responsibility movement. From the 1990s until the end of 2005, he was an adjunct scholar at the libertarian Cato Institute, which hosted the JunkScience.com website. He is currently an adjunct scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Milloy is head of the Free Enterprise Action Fund, a mutual fund he runs with former tobacco executive Tom Borelli. He also operates the Advancement of Sound Science Center, a non-profit organization which is critical of environmental science, from his home in Potomac, Maryland. Milloy has authored four books.

Milloy's close financial and organizational ties to tobacco and oil companies have been the subject of criticism from a number of sources, in light of his attacks on the science linking secondhand smoke to health risks and human activity to global warming.

Background

Milloy holds a B.A. in Natural Sciences from Johns Hopkins University, a Master of Health Sciences in Biostatistics from the Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health, a Juris Doctor from the University of Baltimore, and a Master of Laws from the Georgetown University Law Center.

Junk science

Main article: junk science

Milloy defines junk science as "faulty scientific data and analysis used to further a special agenda." Critics claim that, in practice, Milloy regularly criticises research suggesting that corporate activities harm the environment or public health as "junk science", while praising scientific analysis that supports his preferred positions.

The American Nonsmokers' Rights Foundation says Milloy's campaign against what he calls "junk science" is a carefully-crafted facade on behalf of the tobacco industry and other elements of big business to mislead the public in order to protect their profits:

Steven Milloy has adopted the role of a tobacco industry 'sound science' defender. Milloy has made it his life’s work to deny scientific studies conducted and published by the world’s most reputable and credible scientific agencies—such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the World Health Organization—and legitimate peer reviewed periodicals—such as Science, Nature, the Lancet, and the Journal of the American Medical Association—and label their objective evidence as “junk science"…Milloy has a lucrative and lengthy relationship with the tobacco industry that has resulted in his incarnation as Big Tobacco’s poster boy for 'junk science.'

Secondhand smoke

Milloy has criticized research linking secondhand tobacco smoke to cancer, claiming that "the vast majority of studies reported no statistical association" between secondhand smoke and cancer. In 1993, Milloy dismissed an Environmental Protection Agency report linking secondhand tobacco smoke to cancer as "a joke." Five years later Milloy claimed vindication after a federal court found that the "EPA disregarded information and made findings on selective information; ... deviated from its [standard procedures]; failed to disclose important findings and reasoning; and left significant questions without answers." The court's finding against the EPA was later overturned on appeal.

When the British Medical Journal published a similar meta-analysis in 1997, Milloy wrote, "Of the 37 studies, only 7--less than 19 percent--reported statistically significant increases in lung cancer incidence... Meta-analysis of the secondhand smoke studies was a joke when EPA did it in 1993. And it remains a joke today." When another researcher published a study linking secondhand smoke to cancer, Milloy wrote that she, "…must have pictures of journal editors in compromising positions with farm animals. How else can you explain her studies seeing the light of day?"

While at FoxNews.com, Milloy has continued to criticize claims that secondhand tobacco smoke causes cancer. During the time that Milloy was criticizing claims of a link between secondhand smoke and cancer, his junkscience.com website was reviewed and revised by a public relations firm hired by the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. Milloy also worked as executive director of The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (TASSC), a "front group" established in 1993 by Philip Morris and its public relations firm "to expand and assist Philip Morris in its efforts with issues in targeted states." Philip Morris memos describe "utilizing TASSC as a tool in targeted legislative battles"; a 1994 Philip Morris memo listed TASSC under "PM Tools to Affect Legislative Decisions". In 2000 & 2001, Milloy received a total of $180,000 in payments from Philip Morris for consulting services. According the its 1997 annual report, TASSC "sponsored" junkscience.com.

U.S. Surgeon General

In 1998, Milloy, writing on behalf of TASSC, co-wrote an article which called for the abolition of the position of United States Surgeon General. "We have not had a surgeon general for three years. Has anyone noticed? Is anyone's health at risk," asked the authors.

DDT

Milloy has campaigned against the 1972 ban on agricultural use of DDT in the United States, and in favour of wider use of DDT against malaria, which he claims could be largely eliminated if DDT was used. He has been particularly critical of Rachel Carson, who he wrote, "misrepresented the existing science on bird reproduction and was wrong about DDT causing cancer."

Milloy's junkscience.com web site features The Malaria Clock, which he claims counts up the approximate number of new malaria cases and deaths in the world, most of which he says could have been prevented by the use of DDT. As of June, 2007, the toll stands at more than 94 million dead, 90% of whom are said to have been expectant mothers and children under five years of age. "Infanticide on this scale appears without parallel in human history," writes Milloy. "This is not ecology. This is not conservation. This is genocide." A footnote at the bottom of the webpage states, "Note that some of these cases would have occurred irrespective of DDT use. Note also that, while enormously influential, the US ban did not immediately terminate global DDT use and that developing world malaria mortality increased over time rather than instantly leaping to the estimated value of 2,700,000 deaths per year. However, certain in the knowledge that even one human sacrificed on the altar of green misanthropy is infinitely too many, I let stand the linear extrapolation of numbers from an instant start on the 1st of the month following this murderous ban."

Responding to an opinion column relying on Milloy’s arguments, parasitologists Alan Lymbery and Andrew Thompson wrote, in 2004:

The use of DDT...is not banned for public health use in most areas of the world where malaria is endemic. Indeed, DDT was recently exempted from a proposed worldwide ban on organophosphate [sic] chemicals.

One of the important factors in declining use of DDT was decreasing effectiveness and greater costs because of the development of resistance in mosquitoes. Resistance was largely caused by the indiscriminate, widespread use of DDT to control agricultural pests in the tropics.

To blame a reduction in DDT usage for the death of 10-30 million people from malaria is not just simple-minded, it is demonstrably wrong.

In 2006, following a press release by the World Health Organization that recommended more extensive use of indoor residual spraying with DDT and other pesticides, Milloy wrote, "It’s a relief that the WHO has finally come to its senses."

Asbestos and the World Trade Center

On September 14 2001, three days after terrorist attacks destroyed the World Trade Center, Milloy reported on the opinions of experts who believed that the World Trade Center towers might have stood longer, preventing many casualties, had the use of asbestos fire-resistant lagging not been discontinued during the Towers' construction. Milloy's article reported that, "In 1971, New York City banned the use of asbestos in spray fireproofing. At that time, asbestos insulating material had only been sprayed up to the 64th floor of the World Trade Center towers," and cited experts who questioned the efficacy of the asbestos-free lagging that was used on the steel in the upper floors.

The environment

Milloy has been critical of the Clean Air Act, acknowledging that it has improved air quality but arguing that it has forced Americans to "surrender many freedoms." Milloy argued that "air pollution in the U.S. was more of an aesthetic than a public health problem [in 1970]. That is even more the case today."

Milloy has consistently argued from the position of a global warming skeptic that human activity has little impact on climate change and that regulations to limit greenhouse gas emissions are unwarranted and harmful to business interests.

In 2004, when the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment was released by the intergovernmental Arctic Council and the non-governmental International Arctic Science Committee, Milloy wrote that the report "pretty much debunks itself," in part because it showed that Arctic temperatures fluctuate in approximately 40 year cycles, with the most recent cooling period, in the mid-20th century, having occurred despite steadily rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide. In response, lead author James McCarthy wrote, "In order to take that position you have to refute what are hundreds of scientific papers that reconstruct various pieces of this climate puzzle." Climate scientist Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research also disagreed with Milloy's claim, stating "Scientifically, this argument holds no water: it is simply not possible to draw conclusions about the causes of climate variations by just looking at one time series" and criticized Milloy for taking "one result out of context and present[ing] unwarranted conclusions, knowing that a lay audience will not easily recognise their fallacy."

In April 1998 Milloy was part of the "Global Climate Science Team," which was founded in part by ExxonMobil to work out a strategy to influence the media to "understand (recognize) uncertainties in climate science."

Milloy and long-time collaborator Tom Borelli are also involved with demanddebate.com, an organization that seeks to eliminate what it calls "bias" in environmental education. According to Iain Murray of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Milloy is the "boss" of the group, and a Competitive Enterprise Institute press release says he "coordinated" the group's activities at the recent Live Earth concert in New York, at which a plane circled the event pulling a banner reading, "DON’T BELIEVE AL GORE – DEMAND DEBATE.COM."

Food safety

Responding to criticism of the safety of the food product Quorn by the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), Milloy accused CSPI of having an undisclosed relationship with Quorn's main competitor, Gardenburger. Writing for FoxNews.com, Milloy said that "CSPI appears to have an unsavory relationship with Quorn competitor, Gardenburger" and called the CSPI's complaints "unscrupulous shrieking". Gardenburger denied Milloy's accusation, stating that Milloy's allegation of an "unsavory relationship" was "untrue and groundless".

Evolution

Milloy's views on [evolution] are as follows:

Explanations of human evolution are not likely to move beyond the stage of hypothesis or conjecture. There is no scientific way - i.e., no experiment or other means of reliable study - for explaining how humans developed. Without a valid scientific method for proving a hypothesis, no indisputable explanation can exist.

The process of evolution can be scientifically demonstrated in some lower life forms, but this is a far cry from explaining how humans developed.

That said, some sort of evolutionary process seems most likely in my opinion. But there will probably always be enough uncertainty in any explanation of human evolution to give critics plenty of room for doubt.

Registration as a lobbyist

The United States Senate Lobby Filing Disclosure Program lists Milloy was as a registered lobbyist for the EOP Group for the years 1998-2000. The guidebook Washington Representatives also listed him as a lobbyist for the EOP Group in 1996. The EOP Group's clients include the American Crop Protection Association (pesticides), the Chlorine Chemistry Council, Edison Electric Institute (fossil and nuclear energy), Fort Howard Corp. (a paper manufacturer) and the National Mining Association. Milloy himself was personally registered as a lobbyist for Monsanto and the International Food Additives Council.

Milloy denies ever lobbying, and in a 1998 email response to his registration as a lobbyist under EOP he wrote:

I do not lobby for ANYONE. Before I became executive director of TASSC, I did some technical consulting for a D.C. firm which had the policy of registering all its employees and consultants as lobbyists (whether or not they lobbied) pursuant to a new law passed in 1995. I am aware of the listing and have asked it to be corrected since I no longer work for that firm.

Corporate activism

Milloy and former tobacco executive Tom Borelli run a mutual fund called the Free Enterprise Action Fund (FEAF). The fund has criticised companies that voluntarily adopt high environmental standards. A statement issued by the FEAF on November 30 2005 began:

Action Fund Management LLC (AFM), investment adviser to the Free Enterprise Action Fund, requested that Goldman Sachs’ (NYSE: GS) Audit and Corporate Governance Committees review the firm’s recently announced Environmental Policy. “We are concerned that CEO Henry Paulson may have had a material conflict of interest and management may have breached its fiduciary duty to shareholders by adopting the policy,” said AFM’s Steve Milloy.

Through the platform of the FEAF, Milloy has criticized a number of other corporations for adopting environmental initiatives:

• The FEAF criticized Microsoft for abandoning the use of PVC in its packing materials.
• Milloy accused the Business Roundtable, a pro-business organization of CEO's, of being "silent about current threats to business", adding, "Last September, we warned 18 member company CEOs participating in the BRT’s 'sustainable growth' initiative to stop wasting corporate resources."
• Milloy and Borelli argued that General Electric is harming its shareholders by launching a program to curtail greenhouse gas emissions. They also accused G.E. of ignoring the input of global warming skeptic groups such as the Cato Institute and the oil-industry-funded Competitive Enterprise Institute in forming their environmental policy.

FEAF has been criticised by investment analyst Chuck Jaffe as being "an advocacy group in search of assets." Jaffe concludes "Strip away the rhetoric, and you’re getting a very expensive, underperforming index fund, while Milloy and his partner Thomas Borelli get a platform for raising their pet issues."

Similarly, Daniel Gross, in a Slate magazine article, wrote that FEAF "seems to be a lobbying enterprise masquerading as a mutual fund." Gross noted that Milloy and Tom Borelli, the former head of corporate scientific affairs for Philip Morris, lack any money management experience; he also noted that FEAF had badly underperformed the S&P 500 during its first 10 months of existence. Gross concluded that "...in the short term, it looks like Borelli and Milloy are essentially paying the fund for the privilege of using it as a platform to broadcast their views on corporate governance, global warming, and a host of other issues."

Criticism

Milloy has been accused by his critics of making misleading and false claims, and of misrepresenting himself as an impartial journalist on health and environmental matters while accepting funding and editorial input from tobacco and oil companies. Critics claim that, in practice, Milloy regularly criticises research suggesting that corporate activities harm the environment or public health as "junk science," while praising scientific analysis that supports his preferred positions.

Biographical claim

Milloy's biography on his junkscience.com website claims that he was a member of the judging panel for the 2004 American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Journalism Awards. However, the AAAS website does not list him among the 2004 judges. Journalist Paul D. Thacker reported that the AAAS initially invited Milloy as a judge, because he was listed in a media directory of journalists as a "science editor". However, Milloy quickly notified the other panelists that he had a conflict of interest due to his affiliation with the Cato Institute. His input was not considered and he was removed from the AAAS' list of judges, though Milloy's website maintains that he was a member of the judging panel.

The AAAS drew criticism for initially including Milloy on the judging panel; Sheldon Glantz, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, said that "...for AAAS to have someone participating on their science journalism panel whose fundamental job is spreading anti-science and confusion... it’s just stunning." Tom Rosenstiel, the director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, criticized the AAAS for not doing its homework, saying "They can’t have made him a judge and then take it away from him."

Journalistic ethics

Critics, including Paul Thacker and George Monbiot, have contended that Milloy is a paid advocate for Philip Morris, R. J. Reynolds Tobacco, and other companies. Tobacco-industry documents show that Milloy's website content was discussed, reviewed, and revised by a public relations firm hired by RJR Tobacco.

In January 2006, Paul D. Thacker reported in The New Republic that Milloy, who is presented by Fox News as an independent journalist, was under contract to provide consulting services to Philip Morris through the end of 2005. Philip Morris documents showed that Milloy was budgeted hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments while writing for FoxNews.com. In the May/June 2005 issue of Mother Jones, Chris Mooney reported that non-profit organizations operated out of Milloy's home have also received large payments from ExxonMobil during his tenure with Fox News.

A spokesperson for Fox News stated, "Fox News was unaware of Milloy's connection with Philip Morris. Any affiliation he had should have been disclosed." Regarding ties to ExxonMobil, a Fox News spokesperson stated that Milloy is "...affiliated with several not-for-profit groups that possibly may receive funding from Exxon, but he certainly does not receive funding directly from Exxon."

Journalists who take money to write pieces favorable to corporate interests are widely considered to be breaching journalistic ethics. Milloy's association with the Cato Institute has since ended; however, as of October 2006, he continues to write for FoxNews.com, where he is described as a "junk science expert."

Reaction to death of political opponents

In 1999, David Platt Rall, a prominent environmental scientist, died in a car accident. Milloy noted Rall's death on junkscience.com as the "Obituary of the Day," writing: "Scratch one junk scientist who promoted the bankrupt idea that poisoning rats with a chemical predicts cancer in humans exposed to much lower levels of the chemical — a notion that, at the very least, has wasted billions and billions of public and private dollars." Cato Institute President Edward Crane called Milloy's attack an "inexcusable lapse in judgement and civility", but Milloy continued his attack on Rall, writing: "As far as David Rall is concerned, he was a bad guy when he was alive — shamelessly promoting the bankrupt notion that human cancer risk can be predicted by poisoning rats with chemicals. …Death did not improve his track record — no matter how many letters the Environmental Working Group sends to the Cato Institute." Since that time, Milloy has removed the attacks from his website, although he has not apologized.

Following the death of Senator John Chafee (R-R.I.) in 1999, Milloy highlighted Chafee's death as the "Obituary of the Day", writing: "Unfortunately, Sen. Chafee too often acted like a Democrat on environmental and regulatory reform issues. The good news is his replacement as Committee chairman will be Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) who has shown courage in opposing the Kyoto protocol and the EPA air quality proposals."

World Trade Center tragedy

Advocates for banning asbestos were highly critical of Milloy's September 14 2001 article about asbestos fire-resistant cladding in the WTC Towers. They questioned his motives and disputed his conclusions, and charged him with "insensitivity that is hard to fathom."

Laurie Kazan-Allen of the International Ban Asbestos Secretariat wrote:

It takes a certain kind of person to capitalize on a human catastrophe such as the attacks on the World Trade Centre. While the rest of us remained desperate for news, some were plotting how these events could be used to maximum advantage. ... The fact that Milloy chose to make this and other such statements as ground zero was still smouldering shows an insensitivity that is hard to fathom. What decent human being could do anything during those early days but watch and wait as the emergency services worked 24/7 to locate survivors?

Responses

Milloy and Borelli have defended Exxon against criticism for funding global warming sceptics and others, though without declaring their own financial interest. In September 2006, Milloy's Junkscience.com site reproduced the following excerpt of a piece by Borelli published in Townhall.com, criticising the British Royal Society:

Battle for the boardroom - After over 200 years of independence, the British are still trying to direct U.S. public policy. The Royal Society – the British equivalent of the National Academy of Sciences – recently admonished Exxon Mobil for supporting organizations that question the link between man-made greenhouse gas emissions and global warming.

Notwithstanding the offensive nature of a prestigious organization attempting to silence scientific debate, the Royal Society’s letter sheds light on the larger effort employed by agents of the Left to shut-down corporate support for pro-growth political organizations, politicians and policies. By cutting-off the financial supply lines for free-market thought and policies, these agents – labor unions, NGOs, the media – hope to dominate public debate and control public opinion. As these tactics continue to meet with success, liberal policies and politicians will gain a huge strategic advantage.

For those of us interested in promoting pro-growth ideas, loss of corporate support represents a huge threat to sound public policy. There is too much money, power and influence wielded by companies and free-market advocates can’t afford to give up that high ground to the Left.

Books

Milloy has authored four books.

• Junk Science Judo: Self-defense Against Health Scares and Scams, Cato Institute, 2001, ISBN-10: 1930865120
• Silencing Science, Cato Institute, 1999, ISBN-10: 1882577728, (with Michael Gough)
• Science Without Sense: The Risky Business of Public Health Research, Cato Institute, 1996, ISBN-10: 1882577345
• Science-Based Risk Assessment: A Piece of the Superfund Puzzle, National Environmental Policy Institute, 1995, ISBN-10: 0964746301

Milloy's junkscience.com site lists positive comments, derived from prepublication reviews of his books Silencing Science and Junk Science Judo, published on the back cover (blurb) of those books. Those cited on junkscience.com are the late Philip Abelson, editor of Science from 1962 to 1984, and D.A. Henderson, Dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health from 1977 to 1990. Abelson's review states "Milloy is one of a small group who devotes time, energy and intelligence to the defense of the truth of science."

Others with favourable reviews cited in the blurb of Junk Science Judo are Ronald Bailey, Frederick Seitz and John Stossel.

See also

• Global Climate Coalition
• American Petroleum Institute

External links

Milloy's Websites

• Junkscience.com
• CSRWatch.com

Tobacco Documents

• The Legacy Tobacco Documents Library at the University of California, San Francisco. Contains documentary evidence of the editorial and financial connections between Milloy and the tobacco industry.
• The Philip Morris USA Document Site, containing documentary evidence of Milloy's advocacy for and financial ties to Philip Morris.

Critical links

• "The Trashman Speweth" and "How Big Tobacco Helped Create "'the Junkman'" at PR Watch
• Junkscience at the Skeptic's Dictionary
• Steven Milloy at SourceWatch
• Steven Milloy at the History Commons
• "The Junkman Climbs to the Top" at Environmental Science & Technology, May 11, 2005
• "Smoked Out" at The New Republic (also available at Freepress.net), January 26, 2006
• "Strange bedfellows: Politics and investment fund" in the Boston Herald, January 24, 2006
• "Climate Change, The Denial Industry", The Guardian, September 19, 2006
• "Exxon Secrets"
• "Some Like It Hot" article on Milloy's connection to ExxonMobil at Mother Jones, May/June 2005
• "If You Seek the Truth, Don't Trash the Science", Washington Post, by John Schwartz, February 21, 1999