Walter Goodman has Stossel's Number

[Guest guest]

The New York Times

January 9, 1997

Seeing Motives in Scientific Scares

By WALTER GOODMAN

Tonight Stossel takes aim at medical researchers who stir up fears on

the basis of scant or dubious evidence; at lawyers who win

multimillion-dollar judgments with the help of rented expert witnesses, and

at Government officials who spend fortunes on needless projects. " Junk

Science: What You Know That May Not Be So, " a climax to several reports on

this week's " Good Morning America, " charges that the public is being " taken

in " and " ripped off. "

The particular objects of Mr. Stossel's skeptical attentions are allegations

that breast implants cause connective-tissue diseases; dire accounts that

" crack babies " are irreparably damaged, and the unending Federal cleanup of

an area in Times Beach, Mo., that was contaminated with dioxin. In

interviews with those implicated in such scares, he minces no insults.

" You're pushing junk science, " he tells a doctor who spread the " crack baby "

diagnosis.

Mr. Stossel, who has become a favorite of business groups, discerns greed,

careerism and political interests behind the alarms over this or that

peril-of-the-week. (He comes on as a champion of salt against charges that

its overuse can shorten your life.) And he draws attention to the part that

television and the press play in frightening the nation and enriching

lawyers, leaving the impression that the jurors who awarded enormous sums to

plaintiffs in breast-implant cases had been influenced by the tales on

" Oprah " and " . "

Environmentalists and public-health groups take exception to Mr. Stossel's

reporting on matters like dioxin and silicon. I must leave such matters to

the experts. But the program invites a different sort of criticism. For

example, making a young woman who was labeled a " crack baby " but grew up to

be talented, good-looking and evidently healthy the centerpiece of a report

owes more to her camera appeal than to her importance as evidence one way or

the other.

It's very much a television ploy, the sort of thing that this otherwise

hard-nosed program is attacking. Maybe Mr. Stossel is planning to kick

around his own techniques in a future expose of junk journalism.