Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming

Freedom of the press is important so that citizens have access to information and can make informed decisions. However, “some ‘sides’ represent deliberate disinformation spread by well-organized and well-funded vested interests, or ideologically driven denial of the facts” (240).

The Internet has allowed the purveyance and the immortality of disinformation: “The result is plain to see…Nearly a quarter still think that there’s no solid evidence that smoking kills. And as recently as 2007, 40 percent of American believed that scientific experts were still arguing about the reality of global warming” (241). Many of these skeptical claims are based on ignoring evidence, and the media failed to report that these skeptics also had ties to the industries they were defending. Although some of this can be forgiven in terms of ignorance, there is also proof that some media sources worked directly with these industries to promote disruptive claims, especially regarding the tobacco issues. In most of these cases, “‘balance’ became a form of bias, whereby the media coverage was biased in favor of minority—in some cases extreme minority—views” (243).

Disinformation continues to happen, including with the War on Terror, during which retired generals spoke as so-called independent experts on the success of the war; recently, it has come to light that many were hired by military contractors with stakes in keeping the war going. Like the generals, Jastrow, Seitz, Nierenberg, and Singer knew how to make their claims sound credible as they had the bona fides of being retired physicists from WWII and the Cold War.

“A Scientific Potemkin Village”

In order to persuade people, the claims needed to appear to be scientific, and many so-called research institutes were created to achieve this goal by creating groups of experts who would provide soundbites, newsletters, and even allegedly peer-reviewed journals on par with industry objectives. The tobacco industry’s Tobacco Institute and Center for Indoor Air Research as well as the Marshall Institute are prime examples of this pseudoscience. These scientists organized public petitions to refute mainstream science such as global warming, atypical of scientific practice. Seitz emphasized his connection with the National Academy of Sciences to give the appearance that his claims were sanctioned by them; although the NAS publicly denounced his claims, Singer celebrated Seitz’s allegations of NAS support in the mainstream media: “In creating the appearance of science, the merchants of doubt sold a plausible story about scientific debate” (245), constructing a Potemkin village populated, in a few cases, by a few scientists.

“Free Speech and Free Markets”

In 1973, Emil Mrak spoke to Philip Morris about his concern for scientific uncertainties in toxicology and oncology. Nixon dissolved the President’s Science Advisory Committee before they had a chance to review acid rain, the ozone hole, ETS, and global warming, although the committee might not have made a difference considering how extensive and well-funded the doubt campaigns were. The think tanks were often funded by corporations, such as how Exxon Mobil channeled more than $8 million, including almost $100 grand to one journalist, over a few years to challenge evidence of global warming. The Heartland Institute, under Nierenberg and later Singer, insisted global warming was not a problem and also worked closely with Philip Morris to ensure that people not be discouraged from smoking. The defense of the free market links the tobacco industry, conservative think tanks, and scientists.

“Market Fundamentalism and the Cold War Legacy”

American foreign policy was dominated by anti-Communism which Seitz, Singer, Jastrow, and Nierenberg all shared, building weaponry and rocketry programs and using pseudoscience to argue for continuous rearmament. After the Cold War ended, they turned their aggression towards environmentalists who they viewed as watermelons: “green on the outside, red on the inside” (248). Due to the neighborhood effects of these environmental threats, the government needed to step in with regulations of these market failures, which terrified these scientists, who believed regulations would lead to socialism and eventually communism.

Singer mentioned his fear of socialist environmentalists in his argument against the ozone hole and secondhand smoke, perpetuating the idea that losing economic freedom meant a loss of civic freedom, that free markets must be defended like free speech, religion, and assembly, an idea known as free market fundamentalism: “Free market fundamentalists can perhaps hold their views because often they have very little direct experience in commerce or industry” (250), such as Seitz et al., although these men also directly benefited from government funding of their research and spent much of their careers in the government. Similarly, the collapse of the market during the Great Depression and its savoir in the New Deal demonstrates that sometimes markets do fail and government intervention is needed, despite that conservatives mostly believe the New Deal was a mistake. After the beginning of the Cold War, it was likened to communism and seen by conservatives as an enemy of freedom. This language was then translated to environmentalists as well as any scientist who contributed to environmental goals.

Dixy Lee Ray repeated this argument, saying that sustainability was replacing progress in American politics, and liberty needed progress in order to continue. Economic stagnation would result in further government regulation of resources, which would eventually lead to government controlling people, with “the specter of expanded government control…often linked to the threat of global governance” (252), as many conservatives feared global treaties (including those on climate change) decreased national sovereignty. Ray believed the UN was a socialist front.

Global warming, in the early 90s, “changed from a prediction about the future to a fact about the present” (253). But in 2009, when world leaders tried to craft an agreement to control greenhouse gases, conservatives declaimed it as socialism. Regardless, denying problems does not make them disappear; refusing to act merely ensures the worsening of these problems, requiring more drastic measures be taken down the line, including radicalizing politicians and the advocacy for the dismantling of capitalism.

“Can’t Technology Save Us?”

The Reagan administration believed that technology was the key to environmentalism—the central idea in Cornucopianism: that technology will indefinitely make the material conditions of life continue to get better for most people in most countries most of the time—but not everyone agrees that free markets will be able to produce those in time or give free access to them.

Free marketers decry this thinking as doom-filled wolf-crying. Singer tried to head off global warming debates before they even started, failing to realize that although evidence did not show as much effect in 1970, the effects would exponentially increase over time. Singer and Seitz were heavily influenced by Cornucopianism, as evidenced in their writings, and modern cornucopians repeat the same claims: “that Rachel Carson was wrong about DDT, that global warming isn’t a serious problem, that our forests are doing fine […. In short] there’s ‘no need to worry about the future’” (258); however, much of the statistics used in these arguments have been criticized as being misused.

Similarly, many of the arguments posited contain logical fallacies, such as the false dichotomy between global warming and world hunger—that is, that only one can be solved, not both, and that global warming will in fact worsen world hunger—and omit important information, such as the impact of human activities on nonhuman species or future ramifications (i.e., quality of life when the world left to future generations is ecologically and aesthetically impoverished, which was one of Carson’s concerns). Of course, these cornucopians have many links to the same organizations as free market fundamentalists, like the Heartland Institute, and believe that the government is the problem, not the solution. Two problems occur in their philosophy: the presumption that advances will necessarily continue, which is uncertain, and that past advances have only been the result of free market systems, which is entirely false.

“Technofideism”

“Many technologies crucial to the advance of civilization were invented before the advent of capitalism” (260), and the Soviet Union was technologically innovative, although their people did not necessarily reap its benefits. Cornucopians are guilty of technofideism, or blind faith in technology. Free marketers believe that centralized government has never been responsible for the great advances of civilization, although machine-created interchangeable parts were invented as a result of fifty years of Army research and work. There are many other examples as well, including computers and the Internet. In many cases, government action and support enabled many inventions, without which they would have failed:“The enemies of government regulation of the marketplace became the enemies of science” (262).

“Why Didn’t Scientists Stand Up?”

Besides the scientific community’s support of Ben Santer, scientists rarely fought back. A few sought help from scientific agencies, and fewer still spoke out themselves or tried to correct misrepresentations. Part of this is due to the collective nature of science: “The IPCC today attempts to summarize the work of thousands. A scientist who steps out to speak on behalf of his colleagues risks censure, lest colleagues think he is trying to take all the credit for himself” (263).

Additionally, any of the formal statements issued are difficult for laypeople to understand and boring, if nonscientists even know that these organizations exist (or which ones are credible) and if the scientists themselves can even effectively communicate their positions (as this is not their forte). Scientists believed themselves to be in charge of the production of knowledge, not its dissemination, and some even look down on so-called popularizers or those who allegedly politicize science. Scientists who do get involved in politics are often attacked by their opponents, as in Ben Santer’s case, who continues to be harassed today, which causes some scientists to be reluctant to make strong claims, erring on the side of secure conservatism in estimates.