Junk Science and Environmental Policy: Obscuring Public Debate with Misleading Discourse

Although the term "junk science" has become a fixture in the popular media, content analysis of news stories for a five-year period reveals almost no evidence of s ubsta ntive or procedural inadequacies in the science used to support environmental or public health policies. Instead, the charge of "junk science" is meaningful primarily from a political or ideological perspective,and plays a strategic role in contrarian, anti-regulatory discourse.