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

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If you are a candidate for a stroke or heart attack --- or just have fond hopes that your child or grandchild will grow up in a world without a sell-by date --- you really should step back from this screen.

I have read many books that infuriated me, and I was glad for the experience. It's good to get pissed off at injustice, fictional or real, and come away energized, eager to do your small part in correcting whatever wrong the book exposed. But although "Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming" is brilliantly reported and written with brutal clarity, it has left me with a different reaction --- frustration that lobbyists and "experts" have blocked all meaningful steps to avert environment disaster. And will continue to do so, not just until millions are afflicted with skin cancer and the wheat fields are bone dry and the poor are fighting in the streets for water. No. In the very last minute of the very last hour of humanity's very last day on earth, a scientist on the payroll of an oil or coal company --- most likely a scientist who has no expertise in environmental matters and whose scientific contributions ended decades ago --- will be saying there's "still doubt" about global warming.

Naomi Oreskes is a real scientist and historian. She's Professor of History and Science Studies at the University of California, San Diego; her books include "Plate Tectonics: An Insider's History of the Modern Theory of the Earth," cited by Library Journal as one of the best science and technology books of 2002. A few years ago, she tired of the Bush administration's insistence that "most" scientists disagree with the notion of global warming, so she did what a real scientist does --- she read every single piece of science written on the subject to see what "most" scientists said about it.

Not one of them called it a "theory." Her conclusion:

"No scientific conclusion can ever be proven, absolutely, but it is no more a 'belief' to say that Earth is heating up than it is to say that continents move, that germs cause disease, that DNA carries hereditary information or that quarks are the basic building blocks of subatomic matter. You can always find someone, somewhere, to disagree, but these conclusions represent our best available science, and therefore our best basis for reasoned action."

Her new book, written with science journalist Erik Conway, is about the absence of reasoned action --- and not just when the issue is global warming. The real shocker of this book is that it takes us, in just 274 brisk pages, through seven scientific issues that called for decisive government regulation and didn't get it, sometimes for decades, because a few scientists sprinkled doubt-dust in the offices of regulators, politicians and journalists. Suddenly the issue had two sides. Better not to do anything until we know more.

Truth in science is a process: research, followed by scientific writing, followed by peer review. In this way, mistakes are corrected, findings refined, validity confirmed. But the interests of scientists on the payroll of, say, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco wasn't truth. "They were not interested in finding facts," Oreskes and Conway write. "They were interested in fighting them."

Here's the absolute stunner --- some of the scientists who were on the payroll of tobacco companies turn out to be the very same scientists now working for oil and coal companies to create confusion about global warming.

Why you may ask, would scientists who once had impressive reputations pose as "experts" on topics which they have no history of expertise?

Frederick Seitz and Fred Singer --- the most visible of the tobacco-causes-cancer and man-causes-global-warming deniers --- were both physicists. Long ago, Seitz helped built the atomic bomb; long ago, Singer developed satellites. Both were politically conservative. Both supported the War in Vietnam and politicians who were obsessed with the Soviet threat. Both were patriots who believed that defending business had something to do with defending freedom. And both were beneficiaries of the strategy that John Hill, Chairman and CEO of the Hill & Knowlton public relations firm, laid out for tobacco executives in 1953: "Scientific doubts should remain." The way to encourage doubt? Call for "more research" --- and fund it.

You can imagine what this did to media coverage in our country. As early as the 1930s, German scientists had shown that cigarettes caused lung cancer. (No one smoked around Hitler.) By the early 1960s, scientists working for American tobacco companies agreed --- nicotine was "addictive" and its smoke was "carcinogenic." But the incessant call for more research and "balanced" journalism kept the smoking controversy alive until 2006, when a federal judge found the tobacco industry guilty under the RICO statute (that is, guilty of a criminal pattern of fraud.) Fifty years of doubt! Impressive.

"The tobacco road would lead through Star Wars, nuclear winter, acid rain and the ozone hole, all the way to global warming," Oreskes and Conway write. The lay reader may want to read the tobacco stories, skim the middle chapters, and then re-focus on global warming, the subject of the book's second half. There you can thrill to the argument that the sun is to blame. Revel in the attacks on environmental scientists (they're all Luddites, and some are probably pinkos). See politics trump science. (The attack on Rachel Carson, who first alerted us to the dangers of DDT, is especially potent. In a novel, Michael Crichton had a character say, "Banning DDT killed more people than Hitler....It was so safe you could eat it.")

Fifty-six "environmentally skeptical" books were published in the 1990s --- and 92% of them were linked to a network of right-wing foundations. As late as 2007, 40% of the American public believed global warming was still a matter of scientific debate. (It's not just Americans who are now addled. Just today, in the New York Times, I read that "only 26 percent of Britons believe that `climate change is happening and is now established as largely manmade,' down from 41 percent in November 2009. A poll conducted for the German magazine Der Spiegel found that 42 percent of Germans feared global warming, down from 62 percent four years earlier.")

I'm just dancing on the surface of this book's revelations. There's so much more, and it's all of a piece --- as the director of British American Tobacco finally admitted, "A demand for scientific proof is always a formula for inaction and delay, and usually the first reaction of the guilty."

Well said, as far as it goes. When I finished "Merchants of Doubt," I felt a little more strongly about that guilt. I try to have compassion for the failings of others, hoping that they might have compassion for my failings, but I have trouble thinking that these scientists and the CEOs who hired them were misguided or confused or even blinded by the incessant need for profit. I now think there really is such a thing as Evil. In their book, Oreskes and Conway do a great public service --- they give us their names of the villains and tell us their stories.

This book is a model of engaged historical scholarship. It is thorough and documented well, written clearly, and addresses an issue of great contemporary importance. Oreskes and Conway document a series of attempts to dispute important scientific findings related to a series of public health and environmental hazards. From the hazards of tobacco to global warming, the pattern is the same. Supported by generous funding from industries with much to lose from increased regulation, a small group of dissident scientists - generally not experts in the relevant fields - create doubt about the scientific findings via public relations campaigns, lobbying in Congress, and lobbying of the executive branch. These PR campaigns and lobbying efforts generally involve indefensible tactics. As Oreskes and Conway point out, and as demonstrated extremely well in Allan Brandt's excellent book The Cigarette Century, this general approach was pioneered in the 1950s by the tobacco industry in response to emerging epidemiologic and experimental evidence of the dangers of cigarette smoking.

These tactics were used, often effectively, by opponents of efforts to reduce the hazards of smoking, second-hand smoking, acid rain, ozone depletion, and most recently, global warming. Remarkably, a smalll core group of prominent scientists figure over and over again as participants in the generally unprincipled attempts to discredit important scientific findings and their often inconvenient policy implications. These individuals were/are physicists with substantial reputations and impressive records of service in important administrative positions and in important advisory roles at the Federal level. Fred Seitz was a renowned solid state physicist, former head of the National Academy, and former President of Rockefeller University. Bill Nierenberg had been head of the Scripps Institute, and Robert Jastrow had been head of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies. S. Fred Singer was very well known for his work on satellite development. Oreskes and Conway document very well how these accomplished individuals not merely lent their names to unprincipled campaigns but also participated actively, often using their considerable prestige and access to government policy makers to obstruct the progress of regulatory efforts.

What motivated these distinguished scientists to behave this way and why were they often so successful? Its easy to understand why industries with strong vested interests would attempt to hinder inconvenient regulation. Why, however, would men who had devoted much of their lives to furthering American science, become committed to discrediting major scientific findings? Oreskes and Conway point out that all these figures came of age during or immediately after WWII and were committed Cold Warriors. The version of democracy and capitalism they espoused was the libertarian ideal (actually pseudo-libertarian) of individuals like Hayek and Friedman. When scientific findings pointed to serious negative externalities from markets, and the resulting need for government regulation, free-market fundatmentalist ideology trumped science. Their campaigns were relatively successful partly because they were influential figures and partly because what they had to say was very congenial to influential conservative politicians, notably the Reagan era White House.

This book will be a classic study of how complex scientific issues with unpalatable policy implications are handled by our society. Oreskes and Conway provide an even handed but cumulatively scathing analysis of how the failings of our political system and media facilitate these types of policy distortions. It is also a nice dissection of the powerful conjunction of financial interests and simple-minded ideology. Its clear that we need to find a better way to assess and decide about these types of issues.

The historians Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway--who is also a longstanding friend and colleague--have set the bar very high in scholarly anaylsis with this book, located in the vital center of the debate about global climate change. "Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming" is a serious analysis of the opposition to global warming from such contrary scientists as Robert Jastrow, S. Fred Singer, and others. Well documented with 64 pages of endnotes and rigorously analysed, the authors demonstrate the ties between some senior scientists and political and business interests who stand to lose if decisions are taken that direct changes in American policy.

The effort they describe has been built about sowing the seeds of doubt, hence the title, and what Oreskes and Conway would contend is the obfuscation of some entities in the fray. The individuals that have undertaken this effort cut their teeth in the service of corporations that had everything to lose if findings about the dangers of DDT, tobacco smoke, and acid rain settled in the minds of the public. The continuation of this effort, and its particular permutations in relation to the issue of global climate change, are documented in detail here.

As the authors make clear, it has been obvious since the 1970s that some elements of the business community have been irate about the use of scientific studies by government officials as justification for regulations that circumscribe their actions. Those opposed have been successful largely through a questioning of the science on which the government has based its actions. The authors note that the attack on this science has been so broad and sustained that it represents a coordinated and frightening destabilization of scientific consensus. Oreskes and Conway draw connections between key contrarians of global climate change with their actions earlier in other scientific endeavors, and shows their linkage to key corporations, think tanks, and political groups.

This book made me angry. And it should make you angry as well. The title "Merchants of Doubt" comes from the same line from a tobacco company executive used in a similar book that came out a couple of years ago that I recently reviewed (Doubt is Their Product). The basis, first used by the tobacco industry many years ago, was that their goal was to "manufacture doubt" in the minds of the public and policy-makers so that no policy-making action would occur, or at least so that it should be delayed as long as possible. And the tobacco industry succeeded for decades after they themselves knew that tobacco/nicotine was addictive and caused cancer. Yet they carried on a well-funded campaign to confuse and disinform the public.

Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway are science historians. And what they have uncovered with this book should shock even those who are familiar with some of the tactics used by the professional denialist industry. What is even more shocking is how just a handful of scientists and their collaborators have had a hand in nearly every major science denial episode for the last 40 years. And in the center of it all is the George C. Marshall Institute, Fred Seitz, S. Fred Singer, and the lesser known but equally deceptive William Nierenberg and Robert Jastrow.

After the tactics were perfected in the fight to deny that smoking causes cancer, these handful of men with close ties to the Reagan and conservative ideologies employed them over and over again to deny smokestack emissions cause acid rain, CFCs cause ozone depletion, second hand smoke cause cancer in non-smokers, and greenhouse gas emissions cause global warming. In all cases the science has been right, and this group of men helped delay action for many years until even their deceit couldn't hide the truth.

And those tactics, repeated to deny the science in each of these issues, were all the same: employ a few scientists willing to shill for the industry or who are "skeptical" (to create the illusion of credibility), focus the efforts through well-funded right wing think tanks (to create the illusion of independence), create "new" science specifically designed to create uncertainty (i.e., not to answer questions, but to create contrasting data they can misrepresent), hyperventilate about how "the science is not settled" (knowing that science is never settled, but the public won't understand), and of course, using their PR skills, Frank Luntz wordsmithing, and punchy - though meaningless - catchphrases like "sound science" to make it sound like they are saying something when they are not saying anything.

What I found amazing was how the origins of the George C. Marshall Institute and all of its subsequent science denialism came out of the cold war fight against communism. These handful of scientists were atomic bomb builders and astrophysicists who had no expertise in any of the science they were denying. But they had connections, most notably with the Reagan administration and the Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Wars) for which the George C. Marshall Institute was started to sell to the public, the military, and the conservative legislators they were trying to influence. Yet despite this lack of any expertise they continued to insert themselves into the acid rain debate, the CFC debate, the second hand smoke debate, and the climate change debate. And each and every time their goal was to push the denial of the science. They equated environmentalism with communism ("green on the outside, red on the inside"). And using their lobbying skills and influence they were able to create the impression that there was still a raging debate in the science, even though in all cases the science was overwhelming and they represented a very minority opinion. Actually, in all cases they were not being scientists at all, but rather advocates for non-action (all of these men had long-since stopped doing actual research, and none of them had ever done research in the areas of science they were denying).

What is most disturbing is that they routinely employed unscientific methods and deceit to push their political views. These handful of men have almost single-handedly cost the lives of thousands of Americans and increased the cost to taxpayers millions or even billions of dollars through their denial of the science. Most egregious in this has been S. Fred Singer. First as a denier that smoking caused cancer, then as a denier that CFCs caused ozone depletion, and now as a denier of climate change, Singer has used despicable methods to deceive fellow scientists who were too slow to realize that such deceit was possible from one of their own. What he did to Roger Revelle on his death bed is disgraceful. What he did to Justin Lancaster is despicable. What he and others did to Ben Santer is just one more example showing that the denialist industry, led by these few men and paid for by the biggest industries on the planet, will go to no end to deny any science or destroy any scientist in their path. The recent attacks on climate scientists like Michael Mann and Phil Jones are the latest iterations in the denialist industry's tactics.

And according to Oreskes and Conway, the denialist industry isn't even satisfied denying the present and the future, they have also recently turned to denying the past. You may have heard parroted from people here that the banning of DDT by environmentalists has killed millions of people in Africa. Not true. But the denialist industry has decided it needs to deny ALL science, and that means going back to the 1960s to attack Rachel Carson, whose book "Silent Spring" documented the dangers of widespread pesticide spraying. DDT was banned in the US after it was discovered that it caused the thinning of eggshells in raptors like our national symbol, the Bald Eagle. But like all the other denialist attacks, the idea that the US ban cost lives in Africa is completely false. DDT use actually increased in Africa after it was banned in the US, and in fact is still used today. It just doesn't work any more because the mosquitoes it is supposed to kill gained resistance to it, in part because of the overspraying advocated by the manufacturers to sell more product. But this is just one more case where facts are tossed aside in favor of an ideological promotion of an anti-science agenda designed to further the profit of the few at the expense of the many.

Oreskes and Conway end their book with "A New View of Science," which I'll let people read for themselves. And they should. In fact, they must. This book must be on the reading list of anyone and everyone interested in science, so they can read for themselves how just a handful of unscrupulous scientists with deep political connections and a near religious anti-communism fervor have been at the heart of every denial of science in the last several decades. As I indicated to open this review, the book made me angry. And we should be angry. And then we should not let them get away with it any longer.

Merchants of Doubt is a powerful critique of the alliance between corporate money and unethical scientists. The corporate sponsors change (from tobacco companies to Exxon), but the results don't--ideological scientists like Fred Singer unfairly and viciously attack fellow scientists who arrive at results they don't like. As Yogi Berra once said, deja vu all over again. This isn't just a history book--disinformation on climate change is happening today. I learned a lot from the chapter on Rachel Carson and DDT, as I had once thought the banning of DDT was responsible for many deaths in Africa.

I would love a sequel to this book, perhaps on the influence of the drug companies on pharmaceutical research. I rarely give 5 star reviews, but Merchants of Doubt deserved it.

Oreskes and Conway detail the shady dealings of think tank members and others willing to sell their scientific credentials in order to increase a false sense of scientific uncertainty--all to help the bottom line!

If you are at all concerned about the global warming debate--or have kids who might be affected by it, this book is a must read! The claims in this book are carefully researched and well documented. If you find something in there that doesn't seem like it would be the case, check it out yourself. Don't rely on people who stand to profit to define your sense of what's going on.

It should be interesting to see if the some of the people described in the book--folks with a vested interest in maintaining a false sense of uncertainty--might use the amazon rating system to further their agenda. I hope not! I always rely on amazon ratings to help me find good books.

Oreskes and Conway describe an often misunderstood aspect of science in public policy - how scientists create doubt to force more research or inaction on subjects that have actually been settled. The authors provide insightful and thought-provoking evidence. The analysis showing that scientists who produced doubt about the link between smoking and cancer are often the same people who have denied climate change is not only compelling but deeply disturbing. Bravo to Oreskes and Conway for such an important and timely work of scholarship.

When Global Warming, Science, and Markets Collide
William D. Byars
1 November, 2010

This well-researched book sheds light on the underlying motives behind certain key players in the global warming argument and other public forums.
To be well-informed about a scientific topic, we should ask science for answers. But first, we have to know what science is. Not knowing is the basis of the confusion that reigns in the public debate over global warming.
The body of scientific knowledge of any topic is gained through a worldwide fellowship of men and women who have devoted their careers to that field of study. Their process is exhaustive and exhausting. It involves intense study, theorizing, observation, analysis, description, mutual review and criticism, revision or discarding of theories, and more discussion and criticism.
In 1990 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, representing thousands of climatologists worldwide, determined that the most accurate climate models showed that warming caused by rising atmospheric CO2 levels was already underway. It stated that unrestricted fossil fuel use would cause a further increase of approximately 3 degrees C. (5.4 deg. F.) in average global temperatures over the next century. Subsequent measurements have helped to confirm the IPCC's climate models, which incorporate not only CO2 levels, but also fluctuations in volcanic activity and solar radiation.
The loud voices of skepticism that have inserted themselves into the climate argument via the news media have done so almost completely outside of the worldwide fellowship of science. Although some have impressive scientific credentials, few if any are climatologists.
In their hard-hitting book, Merchants of Doubt, Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway point out that some of these same individuals worked as advocates for the tobacco industry to create doubt about the harmful effects of tobacco. Why would any scientist "sell out" to the interests of tobacco, oil, or any other industry? Oreskes and Conway have found a common thread among those involved. To paraphrase and interpret their explanation: most or all of the "merchants of doubt" have allowed their admiration for the undeniable wonders of free-market capitalism to carry them into the realm of free-market worship. They cannot accept that regulation should play any sizeable role in any market. Since global warming will most likely represent the largest-ever failure of free markets, they see science's revelations on this problem as being products of a socialist conspiracy.
The central problem with this approach is that markets can be free only when the public has access to good and accurate information. Whenever confusion reigns, markets cannot possibly be free, even if unregulated.
(My opinion) -American denial has caused us to lag behind in developing alternative energy technologies. It's time for us to learn collectively what science is and what it is not.

I recommend this book without reservation for those who strive to educate themselves. Five years of research and 70 pages of citations went into producing this work, and it is obvious the authors did an amazing amount of legwork that laymen would not even begin to attempt due to the enormity of the task. As they stated, it's no wonder many people are misinformed.

I applaud the authors for several efforts throughout the book, including but not limited to their excellent and thorough descriptions of how science, and the peer review process in particular, actually work. Readers who receive this foundation are certainly more apt to understand the enormous differences between Science magazine and other disseminators of information, such as The Wall Street Journal or their local newspaper. Furthermore, readers are also more likely to comprehend that information is only as good as its source, and due to the fact that we are in the Information Age, that is a highly important lesson.

Those who read this book will be more likely to question what they read and/or hear and not accept it blindly as truth, as so many of us do. The citations corresponding to the authors' arguments openly invite you to research their claims, and you should be driven to do so after reading this book. That is my next undertaking. Given the evidence the authors supply for the juggernaut of misinformation made available to the public, it seems nothing should be accepted at face value, which is rather sad, but not surprising.

Numerous times the authors questioned their arguments, and then discussed both sides, or tried to give the benefit of the doubt to a particular protagonist for argument's sake. At times the authors discussed and proposed explanations for Seitz, Singer, et al. and their motivations, and admitted their confoundedness at how these researchers could continue their actions repeatedly over decades. The authors were required to try to explain this, for their readers would naturally question motivations and insist on an explanation, even if it's only the most likely one at times, as admitted by the authors. Everyone's first question concerning events such as these is, of course, "Why?"

Motivations aside, the events themselves mentioned and cited in the book are flabbergasting. If you doubt them, research into them yourself as I intend to do. Conversely, if you refuse to investigate what has been put forth in the book (obviously using peer-reviewed articles and other reliable literature), then the only claims you can make are those of ignorance. That is the message. Don't assume you know the facts on any topic until you have personally and properly researched the information.

This book is full of intriguing information on the intersection of history, politics, Science, media, and industry. Well worth every moment reading it.

Merchants of Doubt is as much academic reporting as it is political exposé. Its great tragedy is that the manipulations it highlights are extremely partisan in nature, and the people who stand to learn the most from it are likely to reject it as a piece of partisan propaganda. Oreskes and Conway are doing important work in the way of furthering public understanding of science, which, as they demonstrate, is very easily distorted by hired hands carrying the weight of academic authority.