Merchants of Doubt

Book by Erik M. Conway and Naomi Oreskes (2010)

In their book Merchants of Doubt, Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway meticulously piece together threads of historical evidence to show “how a handful of scientists obscured the truth on issues from tobacco smoke to global warming”.

The book follows the actions of a small group of physicists who rose to prominence working on the atomic bomb during the start of the Cold War, and who came to occupy very senior scientific positions in the US agencies through the latter half of the twentieth century.

Perhaps disillusioned by public concern over nuclear research, warped by the fear of communist infiltration through growing regulation, or through pure self-interest, this handful of individuals fought a decades-long campaign of disinformation, funded by the tobacco and fossil fuels industry, which first slowed action on smoking and then turned to impairing progress on acid rain, ozone, and climate change.

These individuals exploited their scientific credentials, political connections, and public profiles, to manipulate the scientific process and spread misleading information with the intention of seeding enough doubt in the public and political conscious to slow or even halt change on major threats to the public good.

At the heart of their disinformation campaign was their exploitation of the scientific process. Contrary to popular belief, science doesn’t deal in absolute truth: science is a moving consensus based on the balance of evidence. And that consensus clearly showed the harmful effects of smoking, the destruction of the ozone layer, and warming of the climate.

Yet these bad actors knew exactly how to “cherry pick” any small uncertainties to delay action. They pushed their minority theories as though it were a two-sided debate, despite the fact that nearly all scientists who actually worked in these fields were thinking differently.

They shouted about their half-baked ideas in the media with attention grabbing headlines whilst the credible scientists denounced these theories in scientific journals which the public never read. They downplayed the dangers by using the range of uncertainties to highlight the best possible outcome, or claimed that economic analysis showed solutions were too costly.

The scientific community then had to expend valuable resources trying to dismiss or debunk these theories for confused politicians and the public. Sincere scepticism is good and is a fundamental part of the scientific process, but this was insincere scepticism, twisting the scientific consensus to suit their own agenda. The trail of money and influence often leading back to the tobacco industry and major fossil fuel companies.

The actions of bad actors have long added (and are still adding) to the divide and tensions over climate change. Merchants of Doubt is a must read in order to understand the history and ongoing actions of these bad actors.

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