Rev. C. Scot Giles, D.Min., LLC

The phrase “junk science” refers to information that appears to be backed by science but on closer examination is flawed. This stuff really worries me.

We live in an age that is full of it. Newspapers and media need content. On slow days it seems they are prone to use whatever they have on hand, without much reflection on the quality. The result is a public that is confused about issues, unclear about cause and uncertain about how to proceed.

My intellectual respect for rigorous thought is deep. I have two degrees in philosophy, one with a strong emphasis on logic. Therefore, this probably bothers me more than most. It seems to me that modern people are rapidly losing the ability to think discursively, and that scares me because it implies that we can be manipulated easily.

In past ages every educated person was taught “rhetoric” and “logic.” There were classes in High School. Everyone knew the classic principles of verbal argument, and if a politician pulled a fast one in a speech, people would raise an eyebrow and note that he or she had evaded, rather than answered, a question.

Not so now. These days they bob and weave and few notice.

Similarly, everyone studied logic. They knew the difference between a sound argument and a flawed one. If a newspaper article claimed one thing caused another because they happened at about the same time, people would recognize it as dubious.

Every schoolchild knew that “cum hoc ergo propter hoc (with this, therefore because of this)” was not a logically valid way to reach a conclusion. Correlation isn’t cause.

For example, if the economy improved after a new government policy went into effect it doesn’t mean the policy caused the improvement. It might; but something else could be responsible. You need a lot more evidence before you assert causation. Regrettably, schoolchildren don’t know that anymore. Most people don’t.

Instead, in our “modern and scientific” age, anything that has the “look and feel” of science is taken seriously even if it is really based on little or nothing. The media report the sound-bite as if it were fact, with no contextual information or analysis.

“Study links frequent multivitamin use and advanced prostate cancer,” claimed a headline last week. “Supplements could have unintended consequences for our health” one authority stated. It seems a study in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute showed that men who died of prostate cancer were more likely to be taking megadoses of vitamins than other men.

“So what?” “ Why is that important?” “What does it mean?”

These are the analytic questions a sophomore from a hundred years ago would have known to ask.

The study might mean that vitamins cause (or help) prostate cancer in men. Or, it might mean nothing of the kind.

It could easily be that men who knew they are a significant risk for prostate cancer because of a strong family history were trying to cut that risk by taking a lot of vitamins. In fact, that’s likely. Accordingly, heavy vitamin-takers would be over-represented in any sample of men who got prostate cancer.

The vitamins may have done nothing. These men got cancer because they were always at high risk. Alternatively, for all we can tell, the vitamins might have helped. It’s possible that there would have been more high risk men with who got the disease if they had not taken the supplements.

In short, this “study” gives us no real information. We don’t have a clue if vitamins help or hurt men who might get prostate cancer. The “link” between vitamin use and the cancer could be completely circumstantial. However, not a single article I saw about this study pointed that out.

That’s junk science.