By Brian Carnell

Sunday, February 17, 2002

In 1996 Tulane university researcher Steven Arnold provided what was the first (and to my knowledge the only) study ever to find that combinations of chemicals could together act as endocrine disrupters that were far more powerful than the individual chemicals acting on their own. Environmentalists pushing the whole endocrine disrupter scare seized on the research an it played a role in the approval of a 1996 government program to screen chemicals for their potential as endocrine disrupters.

Other researchers could not replicate the research, however, and skeptics like Steve Milloy pounced on the credulous way in which Arnold's research was blindly accepted in some quarters because it fulfilled their preconceived conceptions.

In November 2001, the last act in this five year old drama was finally played out. Milloy reported in his Fox News column that Arnold had been sanctioned by the federal Office of Research Integrity which found that he had, "committed scientific misconduct by intentionally falsifying the research results published in the journal Science and by providing falsified and fabricated materials to investigating officials."

The ORI imposed a five year ban on Arnold receiving federal grants -- a penalty which Milloy notes is awfully mild for someone found guilty of intentionally falsifying his research.

Source:

EPA Program Based on False Information. Steven Milloy, Fox News, November 9, 2001.

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