Merchants of Doubt

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Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming
LC Class
Q147 .O74 2010

Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming is a 2010 non-fiction book by American

Fred Seitz, Fred Singer, and a few other contrarian scientists joined forces with conservative think tanks and private corporations to challenge the scientific consensus on many contemporary issues.[2]

Some of the book's subjects have been critical of the book, but most reviewers received it favorably. It was made into a film, Merchants of Doubt, directed by Robert Kenner, released in 2014.[3]

Themes

Fred Singer (2011), a prominent opponent of greenhouse gas regulation

Oreskes and Conway write that a handful of politically conservative scientists, with strong ties to particular industries, have "played a disproportionate role in debates about controversial questions".[4] The authors write that this has resulted in "deliberate obfuscation" of the issues which has had an influence on public opinion and policy-making.[4][5]

The book criticizes the so-called Merchants of Doubt, some predominantly American science key players, above all

anthropogenic climate change.[4] Seitz and Singer have been involved with institutions such as The Heritage Foundation, Competitive Enterprise Institute and George C. Marshall Institute in the United States. Funded by corporations and conservative foundations, these organizations have opposed many forms of state intervention or regulation of U.S. citizens. The book lists similar tactics in each case: "discredit the science, disseminate false information, spread confusion, and promote doubt".[7]

The book states that Seitz, Singer, Nierenberg and

collapse of the Soviet Union, they looked for another great threat to free market capitalism and found it in environmentalism. They feared that an over-reaction to environmental problems would lead to heavy-handed government intervention in the marketplace and intrusion into people's lives.[8] Oreskes and Conway state that the longer the delay the worse these problems get, and the more likely it is that governments will need to take the draconian measures that conservatives and market fundamentalists most fear. They say that Seitz, Singer, Nierenberg and Jastrow denied the scientific evidence, contributed to a strategy of delay, and thereby helped to bring about the situation they most dreaded.[8] The authors have a strong doubt about the ability of the media to differentiate between false truth and the actual science in question; however, they stop short of endorsing censorship in the name of science.[9] According to the authors, the journalistic norm of balanced reporting has been undermined to amplify the misleading messages of the contrarians[7] through false balance.[10] Oreskes and Conway state: "small numbers of people can have large, negative impacts, especially if they are organised, determined and have access to power".[7]

The main conclusion of the book is that there would have been more progress in policy making if not for the influence of the contrarian "experts", who tried for ideological reasons to undermine trust in the science base for regulation.[9] Similar conclusions were already drawn, among others on Frederick Seitz and William Nierenberg in the book Requiem for a Species: Why We Resist the Truth about Climate Change (2010) by Australian academic Clive Hamilton.

Reception

Most reviewers received Merchants of Doubt enthusiastically.[11]

Ben Santer, were exploited or viciously attacked in the press".[4]

In The Christian Science Monitor, Will Buchanan says that Merchants of Doubt is exhaustively researched and documented, and may be one of the most important books of 2010. Oreskes and Conway are seen to demonstrate that the doubt merchants are not "objective scientists" as the term is popularly understood. Instead, they are "science-speaking mercenaries" hired by corporations to process numbers to prove that the corporations' products are safe and useful. Buchanan says they are salesmen, not scientists.[12]

Bud Ward published a review of the book in The Yale Forum on Climate and the Media. He wrote that Oreskes and Conway use a combination of thorough scholarly research combined with writing reminiscent of the best investigative journalism, to "unravel deep common links to past environmental and public health controversies".[13] In terms of climate science, the authors' leave "little doubt about their disdain for what they regard as the misuse and abuse of science by a small cabal of scientists they see as largely lacking in requisite climate science expertise".[13]

Phil England writes in

Exxon Mobil has put into funding groups actively involved in promoting climate change denial and doubt.[14]

A review in The Economist calls this a powerful book which articulates the politics involved and the degree to which scientists have sometimes manufactured and exaggerated environmental uncertainties, but opines that the authors fail to fully explain how environmental action has still often proved possible despite countervailing factors.[15]

Doubt is their Product (2008), Chris Mooney's The Republican War on Science (2009), David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz's Deceit and Denial (2002), and his own book Cancer Wars (1995).[16]

Robin McKie in The Guardian states that Oreskes and Conway deserve considerable praise for exposing the influence of a small group of Cold War ideologues. Their tactic of spreading doubt has confused the public about a series of key scientific issues such as global warming, even though scientists have actually become more certain about their research results. McKie says that Merchants of Doubt includes detailed notes on all sources used, is carefully paced, and is "my runaway contender for best science book of the year".[17]

Sociologist Reiner Grundmann's review in BioSocieties journal, acknowledges that the book is well researched and factually based, but criticizes the book as being written in a black and white manner whereas historians should write a more nuanced description. The book depicts special interests and contrarians misleading the public as being mainly responsible for stopping action on policy. He says this shows a lack of basic understanding of the political process and the mechanisms of knowledge policy, because the authors assume that public policy would follow on from an understanding of the science. While the book provides "all the [formal] hallmarks of science", Grundmann sees it less as a scholarly work than a passionate attack and overall as a problematic book.[9]

Authors

Naomi Oreskes (2015), co-author of Merchants of Doubt

Naomi Oreskes is Professor of History and Science Studies at

Geological Research and the History of Science. Her work came to public attention in 2004 with the publication of "The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change," in Science, in which she wrote that there was no significant disagreement in the scientific community about the reality of global warming from human causes.[18] Erik M. Conway is the historian at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.[19]

See also

Other books on the same theme

References

  1. ^ Steketee, Mike (November 20, 2010). "Some sceptics make it a habit to be wrong". The Australian.
  2. ^ "Merchants of Doubt". Sony Pictures Classics. Retrieved March 8, 2015.
  3. ^ .
  4. doi:10.1146/knowable-052523-1 (inactive January 31, 2024).{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of January 2024 (link
    )
  5. ^ Brown, Seth (May 31, 2010). "'Merchants of Doubt' delves into contrarian scientists". USA Today.
  6. ^ a b c McKie, Robin (August 1, 2010). "A dark ideology is driving those who deny climate change". The Guardian.
  7. ^ a b Oreskes & Conway 2010, pp. 248–255
  8. ^
    S2CID 145249396
    .
  9. . Retrieved June 15, 2023.
  10. .
  11. ^ Buchanan, Will (June 22, 2010). "Merchants of Doubt: How "scientific" misinformation campaigns sold untruths to consumers". The Christian Science Monitor.
  12. ^ a b Ward, Bud (July 8, 2010). "Reviews: Leaving No Doubt on Tobacco, Acid Rain, Climate Change". The Yale Forum on Climate and the Media.
  13. ^ England, Phil (September 10, 2010). "Merchants of Doubt". The Ecologist. No. 16.
  14. ^ "All guns blazing: A question of dodgy science". The Economist. June 17, 2010.
  15. ^
    doi:10.1511/2010.86.424 (inactive January 31, 2024).{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of January 2024 (link
    )
  16. ^ McKie, Robin (August 8, 2010). "Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M Conway". The Guardian.
  17. ^ "Collins Literary Agency Rights Guide/March 2008" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on September 15, 2016. Retrieved November 21, 2010.
  18. ^ "About Me". Erik M Conway - Historian, rocketeer, and author. July 3, 2022. Retrieved November 20, 2023.

External links