Dictionary

junk science en · NOUN

Meanings

1. (countable, derogatory, uncountable) Assertions or methods that have the appearance, but not the actuality, of scientific legitimacy.
   • Tom Hockaday was an APCO employee, and March 1993 found him working closely with Philip Morris vice president Ellen Merlo to develop scientific articles to defend secondhand smoke and promote the idea that the EPA work was “junk science.” 2010, Naomi Oreskes, Erik M. Conway, chapter 5, in Merchants of Doubt:
   • Climate policy is being dragged into the culture wars with misinformation and junk science being spread across the internet by a relatively small group of individuals and groups, according to a study. 2022 June 9, Matthew Taylor, “Climate policy dragged into culture wars as a ‘delay’ tactic, finds study”, in The Guardian:
   • Our field falls neither in the category of immediately acceptable DNA experts at one end of the spectrum nor in the category of the immediately unacceptable so-called junk sciences at the other end. 2006, Roger W. Shuy, Linguistics in the Courtroom: A Practical Guide, page 99:
   • His testimony was worse than science fiction: it was junk science.

Forms

Relateds

pseudoscience