Junk Science - by Dan Agin (Paperback)

About the Book

Provocative and hard-hitting, "Junk Science" takes on the government, industry, and faith groups, all of whom twist scientific fact for their own gain.

Book Synopsis

"A passionate, minutely informed, and scrupulously fair analysis of all the abuses and misuses of science that are rampant today--a clarion call to action that concerns us all."--Oliver Sacks, M.D., author of Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat

The American public is suffering from a rampage against reason by special interests in government, commerce, and the faith industry. In Junk Science, Dan Agin offers an overdue indictment of the groups that twist science for their own gain.

Provocative, comprehensive, and hard-hitting, Agin argues from the center that we will pay a heavy price for the follies of people who consciously distort the public's understanding of the real world. With entertaining candidness, he reveals the data faking, reality ignoring, fear mongering, and outright lying that contribute to intentionally manufactured public ignorance. Agin outs the factions twisting scientific data to maintain riches and power in sections including:

-- "Buyer Beware" (genetically modified foods, aging, and tobacco companies)
-- "Medical Follies" (chiropractics, health care, talk therapy)
-- "Poison and Bombs in the Greenhouse" (pollution, warfare, global warming)
-- "Religion, Embryos, and Cloning"
-- "Genes, Behavior, and Race"

We already pay a heavy price for many groups' conscious manipulation of the public's understanding of science, and Junk Science arms us with understanding, cutting through the fabric of lies and setting the record straight.

"Agin is one angry empiricist...focused, extremely articulate, skilled in debate, and above all, dedicated only to what can be experienced through the senses and duplicated in the laboratory."--Chicago Sun-Times

"An eye- and brain-opener, fraught with insight and plenty of astute observations and illustrative cases-in-point."--The San Diego Union-Tribune

Review Quotes

"JUNK SCIENCE is a passionate, minutely-informed and scrupulously fair analysis of all the abuses and misuses of science that are rampant today--a clarion call to action which concerns us all. One might wish that such a book were not needed, but it is, more now than ever before." --Oliver Sacks, M.D., author of Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat

About the Author

Dan Agin has a Ph.D. in biological psychology and thirty years of laboratory-research experience in neurobiology. He is Associate Professor Emeritus of Molecular Genetics and Cell Biology at the University of Chicago, and editor in chief of the online journal ScienceWeek.