junk science

Supreme Court Overturns Certification of Class-Action Lawsuit Against Wal-Mart in Multi-Billion Dollar Lawsuit

by Hans Bader on June 20, 2011 · 5 comments

in Economy, Employment, Features, Labor, Legal

Post image for Supreme Court Overturns Certification of Class-Action Lawsuit Against Wal-Mart in Multi-Billion Dollar Lawsuit

Yahoo! News reports that “the Supreme Court has ruled for Wal-Mart in its fight to block a massive sex discrimination lawsuit on behalf of women who work there.  The court ruled unanimously Monday that the lawsuit against Wal-Mart Stores Inc. cannot proceed as a class action, reversing a decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. The lawsuit could have involved up to 1.6 million women, with Wal-Mart facing potentially billions of dollars in damages. Now, the handful of women who brought the lawsuit may pursue their claims on their own, with much less money at stake and less pressure on Wal-Mart to settle.”

I earlier explained why the class-action lawsuit against Wal-Mart was baseless, how it was based on politically-correct junk science (like a sociology “expert” hired by the women’s lawyers falsely claiming that white male managers are somehow more sexist than managers of other races, which is hard to square with the fact that women have long had more legal rights in European countries than in the Third World, where practices like female infanticide and marriage by abduction occur), how it ignored the plain language of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, and was effectively a form of forum-shopping.

Letting a San Francisco judge and jury hear a class-action against Wal-Mart over its employment practices all over the country amounted to forum-shopping, in that the lawyers suing Wal-Mart deliberately picked one of the most liberal, anti-employer jurisdictions in which to file their lawsuit (the San Francisco Bay area) in order to have that idiosyncratic region effectively decide a national case against the company. This effectively deprives Wal-Mart of a representative jury and judge in the case against it, and it inflicts the jurisprudence of one region on an entire national company, to the exclusion of other regions, whose judges would effectively be unable to apply their long-established precedents limiting the use of junk science in discrimination cases, to the Wal-Mart stores within their region. (Judges vary a lot from region to region in how they handle discrimination cases and how they interpret the rules regarding class-action lawsuits.)

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Cell Phone Cancer Scare Refuses to Die

by Ryan Young on June 16, 2010

in Health and Illness, Precaution & Risk, Regulation, Tech & Telecom

Some people are scared that cell phones cause brain tumors. There are enough of these bedwetters that San Francisco just passed a new law to “require all retailers to display the amount of radiation each phone emits.”

For most phones, that’s roughly one watt; the legal limit in the U.S. is 1.6 watts.

Studies have yet to find a link between cell phones and brain cancer. The main reason is that it is physically impossible; one watt of radiation just isn’t enough to cause any tissue damage.

The human body naturally generates about 100 times as much energy at rest, and 1000 times as much during exercise. One measly watt isn’t enough to affect anything.

One wonders why the bed-wetters are only worried about brain cancer; cell phones are held in the hand. And unlike the brain, which is shielded by hair, scalp, and skull, the hand is completely unprotected from cell phone radiation. If cell phones did cause cancer, activists should be at least as worried about skin and bone cancers in the hand.

But they aren’t. One reason is that those cancers don’t sound as scary as brain tumors do; it’s harder to get people worked up and frightened.

The other reason is that cell phones don’t cause cancer. Not in the hand. Not in the brain. Not in the face, the, jaw, or any other body part might take the brunt of the single watt of energy our cell phones emit.

The Enviro-Left Machine in Action

by Iain Murray on May 11, 2010

in Environment, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Precaution & Risk, Regulation, Sanctimony, Zeitgeist

Fenton Communications has a long history of work within the left-wing advocacy apparatus. I’m delighted to see a great addition to the blogosphere, the Junk Science Mom, drill down into Fenton’s involvement in the manufactured campaign against bisphenol A, the plastics additive known as BPA. JSM presents a pretty good case study of how scare campaigns are orchestrated and nicely stitches together the interconnected relationships between activist groups, commercial businesses that stand to profit from these campaigns and the people who tie them all together (yet another example of a bootlegger-and-Baptist alliance). Fenton’s own website not only extols the firm’s success working with a corporation that specializes in BPA-free products it also trumpets the PR firm’s “partnership” with the Environmental Working Group and the Natural Resources Defense Council, both of which are virulently anti-BPA. Check it out!

Senate Committee Rubberstamps Left-Wing Ideologue to Head Powerful OSHA Agency Despite His Anti-Gun and Pro-Junk-Science Views

by Hans Bader on November 18, 2009 · 2 comments

in Employment, Health and Illness, Labor, Legal, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Precaution & Risk, Regulation, Sanctimony

David Michaels, a left-wing ideologue who supports junk science and seeks to restrict gun possession, has been approved by the Senate Health Committee to head the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Only two committee members, both Republicans, voted against Michaels.

The vote occurred with no discussion, and no hearing was even held on his nomination, although hearings have consistently been held on OSHA nominees in the past, even for far less controversial picks.

Lawyer and Second Amendment expert, David Kopel explains how Michaels wants to ban guns in and near workplaces, and could use his position at OSHA to do so, if the political climate shifts in favor of gun control. (Some businessmen in high-crime areas possess guns to protect themselves against armed robbers, and even strict local gun-control laws have generally contained exceptions to allow such businesses to defend themselves.)

The fact that such bans might undermine, rather than enhance, workplace safety would not deter Michaels, who would be happy to rely on junk science.   Michaels wants to reverse the Supreme Court’s Daubert decision limiting the use of junk science.

As the Washington Times noted, “Mr. Michaels also is an anti-gun zealot who has described ‘gun violence’ as an issue of ‘public health’ that ‘invariably demands more and stronger regulation, not less.’ As Walter Olson of the Manhattan Institute explained, by way of warning, on Aug. 15: ‘That’s by no means irrelevant to the agenda of an agency like OSHA, because once you start viewing private gun ownership as a public health menace, it begins to seem logical to use the powers of government to urge or even require employers to forbid workers from possessing guns on company premises, up to and including parking lots, ostensibly for the protection of co-workers. In addition, OSHA has authority to regulate the working conditions of various job categories associated with firearms use (security guards, hunting guides, etc.) and could in that capacity do much to bring grief to Second Amendment values.’”

As I noted in a New York Times story, Michaels’ appointment could “dramatically alter OSHA’s approach to ensuring workplace safety.” Michaels has been called “one the nation’s foremost proponents of allowing junk science to be used in jackpot-justice lawsuits.”

Many business groups raised concerns about his nomination and extreme views.

Iain Murray notes that Michaels seeks to ban useful products from the workplace based on imaginary risks. One newspaper calls Michaels “virulently anti-business.”

The lopsided committee vote in favor of Michaels is probably explained by log-rolling.  As The Wall Street Journal has noted, some Republican committee members likely voted along with their Democratic colleagues to approve Michaels, in exchange for Obama’s recent nomination of an aide to the ranking Republican committee member, to sit on the board of an independent agency that is supposed to be bipartisan (the NLRB), but which Obama could conceivably have made even more partisan and liberal than it is by nominating a liberal RINO rather than a GOP aide to that post (that might have invited a filibuster, but there are only 40 Republican Senators, and it takes 41 votes to successfully filibuster a nomination).

OSHA Nominee Is Anti-Gun Ideologue and Junk Science Peddler

by Hans Bader on August 17, 2009 · 6 comments

in Labor, Legal, Personal Liberty, Precaution & Risk

Obama has nominated David Michaels, an anti-gun activist, to head the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), a powerful agency that regulates real and perceived hazards in the workplace. This raises the specter of federal bans on the storage or carrying of firearms in or near workplaces (even though some businessmen in high-crime areas possess guns to protect themselves against armed robbers).

Michaels also has links to wealthy breast implant lawyers, who relied on junk science to drive silicone implants from the market, even though they remained available to consumers in most other Western countries because of their lack of major health risks. (The lawsuits over silicone also harmed patients who need life-saving silicone products like silicone shunts that had nothing to do with breast implants or cosmetic procedures, making them scarcer, less available, and more expensive).

Michaels wants to reverse the Supreme Court’s Daubert decision limiting the use of junk science.

If OSHA succeeds in restricting the storage or possession of guns in workplaces, it may take some time to undo even if a less liberal administration comes to power. For example, in March, a judge blocked a Bush Administration change allowing visitors to national parks to carry concealed weapons, claiming that it might have environmental impacts. A judge could rely on similarly conjectural reasoning to block revisions to OSHA regulations needed to repeal an OSHA ban on people storing their guns in the workplace.

Other Obama appointees, like attorney general Eric Holder, are also big supporters of gun control. (Holder has argued that the Second Amendment does not protect any individual right).

Many (but not all) state constitutions protect the right to possess a firearm. But liberal administrations often seek to use federal workplace laws to try to override rights protected by state constitutions or laws. For example, the Clinton Administration argued that a federal law called Title VII overrode California’s broad equal-protection guarantees, which forbade racial quotas and preferences in government contracting, college admissions, and public employment. This “preemption” argument was rejected by a federal appeals court in Coalition for Economic Equity v. Wilson (1997). (Ironically, liberal lawyers often oppose preemption when it expands individual freedom, like federal curbs on baseless state-court lawsuits. The Obama Administration opposes preemption when it would prevent trial lawyers from bringing lawsuits). By the way, discriminatory racial preferences are included in the health-care “reform” bills backed by the Obama Administration, drawing criticism from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.