To recap briefly, Tulane University researchers claimed their laboratory experiments showed combinations of pesticides were up to 1,600 time more potent in estrogenic effect than the individual pesticides.
In June 1996, Science magazine trumpeted the results by publishing the study, a news article and an editorial -- highly unusual treatment for a journal where the vast majority of articles are published without any fanfare whatsoever.
The Tulane research (or rather the press reports of it) revived the floundering environmental estrogen issue. Within two months of Science's commercial for the Tulane research, Congress enacted the Food Quality Protection Act of 1996. Relying on the Tulane research, the new law requires EPA to develop screening tests for pesticides that might have estrogenic properties.
But by November 1996, the Tulane researchers' bubble burst. Five independent research teams from the U.S. and the U.K. tried but failed to reproduce the Tulane results -- such reproducibility being a hallmark of the scientific method.
Science now reports that the Tulane research came under attack at the annual Society for Toxicology meeting in March of this year.
I'd like to say that the new Science article serves as a mea culpa for the journal's role in giving the study way too much credibility. But I'm not sure that Science gets it.
Science closes the article with a quote from John Gierthy of the New York State Department of health,
I just see this as how science works. We're trying to find the truth through debate.
Maybe I'd believe this spin if Science hadn't tried to declare the truth by hype last June.
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