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Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Climate Change Paperback – May 31, 2011

4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 1,891 ratings

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Featuring a new Foreword by former Vice President Al Gore

Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize

"Important and timely. We ignore this message at our peril."-Elizabeth Kolbert

Merchants of Doubt has been praised-and attacked-around the world, for reasons easy to understand. This book tells, with “brutal clarity” (Huffington Post), the disquieting story of how a loose-knit group of high-level scientists and scientific advisers, with deep connections in politics and industry, ran effective campaigns to mislead the public and deny well-established scientific knowledge over four decades. The same individuals who claim the science of global warming is “not settled” have also denied the truth about studies linking smoking to lung cancer, coal smoke to acid rain, and CFCs to the ozone hole. “Doubt is our product,” wrote one tobacco executive. These “experts” supplied it. Merchants of Doubt rolls back the rug on this dark corner of American science. Now with a new Foreword by former Vice President Al Gore, and with a new Postscript by the authors.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Anyone concerned about the state of democracy in America should read this book.” ―Former Vice President Al Gore, author of AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH

“A fascinating account of a very thorny problem.” ―
Bill McKibben, author of EAARTH: MAKING A LIFE ON A TOUGH NEW PLANET

Merchants of Doubt should finally put to rest the question of whether the science of climate change is settled. It is, and we ignore this message at our peril.” ―Elizabeth Kolbert, author of THE SIXTH EXTINCTION and FIELD NOTES FROM A CATASTROPHE

“If you read just one book on climate change this year, read
Merchants of Doubt. And if you have time to read two, reread Merchants of Doubt.” ―Grist

“Brilliantly reported and written with brutal clarity . . . Oreskes and Conway do a great public service.” ―
The Huffington Post

“A powerful dissection of how right wing think tanks and private corporations sow doubt on scientific consensus to block action on critical climate and public health issues.” ―
Tom Steyer, via Twitter

“An important book . . . The next time a friend or Fox News commentator or political candidate assaults you with the claim that 'climate change isn't happening' or 'isn't caused by human activities,' you will recognize the source of their colossal misunderstanding.” ―
Star Tribune (Minneapolis-St. Paul)

“It is tempting to require that all those engaged in the business of conveying scientific information to the general public should read it.” ―
Science

About the Author

Naomi Oreskes is Professor of the History of Science at Harvard University. Her opinion pieces have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and many other outlets. Her TED talk, “Why We Should Trust Scientists,” was viewed more than a million times.

Erik Conway is a historian of science and technology and works for the California Institute of Technology. He is the author of seven books and dozens of articles and essays. He lives in Pasadena, California.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Bloomsbury Publishing; Reprint edition (May 31, 2011)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 368 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1608193942
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1608193943
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.55 x 1.05 x 8.25 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 1,891 ratings

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4.5 out of 5 stars
1,891 global ratings

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Customers say

Customers find the book well-researched and presented with facts. They describe it as an excellent, entertaining read that draws them in as the plot unfolds. Readers praise the writing quality as informative and easy to understand. Many find the story engaging and enthralling. However, opinions differ on the historical accuracy - some find it interesting and dispassionate, while others consider it troubling and chilling.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews

157 customers mention "Enlightened"147 positive10 negative

Customers find the book well-researched and presented. They appreciate its thorough examination of the Cold War era with good logical reasoning. The book provides a detailed and compelling case against the claims made by the author.

"...This movement has turned into a stealthy financed, powerful, conglomerate of various organizations bent on attacking the science in order to achieve..." Read more

"...observations, and in some ways it holds the greatest promise of understanding and describing reality...." Read more

"...Merchants of Doubt, meticulously researched and elegantly written, should be required reading in every science class in this nation from high school..." Read more

"...They also demonstrate a remarkable knowledge of the science in play and the scientific literature that is strewn between the lines of the history,..." Read more

96 customers mention "Reading quality"72 positive24 negative

Customers find the book well-written and easy to read. They appreciate its informative writing and understandable language. The synthesis accurately portrays the chapters and is easy for them to comprehend.

"This book is a very well written narrative that weaves together the characters and events involved in several different (seemingly unrelated)..." Read more

"...The book explains what happened and what is going on in great detail. It explains the science and sheds light on misinformation...." Read more

"...Merchants of Doubt, meticulously researched and elegantly written, should be required reading in every science class in this nation from high school..." Read more

"...I rated this four stars vs five because it is a bit rambling and long, and some of the most important and clear arguments are near the end, so many..." Read more

91 customers mention "Readability"91 positive0 negative

Customers find the book easy to read and engaging. They appreciate the thorough research and convincing presentation of the global warming science. The book provides a valuable public service by identifying key players.

"...This movement has turned into a stealthy financed, powerful, conglomerate of various organizations bent on attacking the science in order to achieve..." Read more

"...is the most fundamental concept in toxicology; indeed, there is a wonderful book called The Does Makes the Poison by Alice Ottoboni that explores..." Read more

"This is an important book (and also a movie, but I have not seen that), which meticulously and factually (half the book is the references) documents..." Read more

"...The book does a good job in terms of picking apart the scientific method, and how certain scientists skipped steps...." Read more

7 customers mention "Enthralling story"7 positive0 negative

Customers find the story engaging and instructive. They say it starts slowly but draws them in as the plot unfolds.

"...This was a riveting chapter. It read like an intriguing suspense novel!..." Read more

"...This story will curl your hair. Or straighten if it's already curly. Read this book." Read more

"This is a well researched study that starts slowly but draws the reader in as the plot unfolds...." Read more

"...these problems, their account is well-grounded in reality and a captivating read." Read more

31 customers mention "Historical accuracy"19 positive12 negative

Customers have different views on the historical accuracy of the book. Some find it engaging and interesting, with a good historical inquiry into scientific controversies and political games played on significant social issues. Others find the subject matter disturbing, depressing, and tragic.

"...A source of satisfaction for the wealthy and politically conservative. A call to action for the majority of scientists and of political progressives...." Read more

"...This is somewhat a tragic story, because some of the main characters as young men were productive scientists dedicated to the task of ensuring the..." Read more

"This is an eye-opening, appalling book...." Read more

"...The combination of scientific information and historical storytelling made for an amazingly detailed and compelling case against the Merchants of..." Read more

7 customers mention "Suspenseful"4 positive3 negative

Customers have different views on the book. Some find it interesting and scary, like a suspense novel. Others feel it's an ill-considered polemic that makes them angry.

"...This was a riveting chapter. It read like an intriguing suspense novel!..." Read more

"...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." Read more

"...manner that is at once fascinating, enraging, enlightening, and frightening...." Read more

"Unfounded assertions, BS pseudoscience and hypocrisy...." Read more

Copied sideways.
1 out of 5 stars
Copied sideways.
The book is a photocopy and every page is sideways on my phone. When I turn my phone sideways, the orientation looks even worse. I bought the book in July, but just now got around to reading it. Can’t read it the way the orientation is. Very poor digital copy.
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Top reviews from the United States

  • Reviewed in the United States on June 8, 2013
    I came across this book after reading two books on the science of climate change. I, therefore, was familiar with the denial movement's efforts to quash the science in that case. Merchants of Doubt showed me just how this phenomenon was not just an issue with climate science but with many other facets of science. Oreskes and Conway summed it up nicely saying, "Doubt is crucial to science - in the version we call curiosity or healthy skepticism, it drives science forward - but it also makes science vulnerable to misrepresentation, because it is easy to take uncertainties out of context and create the impression that everything is unresolved." This is their culmination of five years of research.

    The authors begin, by explaining the doubt that was sowed by the tobacco industry. I think we are all familiar with the manner in which the industry tried to persuade the public that smoking and second hand smoke were not dangerous. This continued on with the Strategic Defense Initiative during the Regan administration where a coordinated attack was made on the concept of a nuclear winter as proposed by Carl Sagan and others. This marked a period where "the right-wing turn against science had begun." The attack on nuclear winter was a prelude to the fights that were to come. Continuing to the subject of acid rain, the authors noted a familiar pattern emerging, and that was that scientific facts were published in peer review scientific journals - where few non-scientists would see them - while all the claims that acid rain was not a problem pushed by the deniers ended up in the mainstream media for all to see.

    The next topic was the fight over the ozone hole. The authors explained in detail the counter narrative proposed by the ozone hole deniers despite all the scientific evidence to the contrary - that the ozone depletion was a natural variation "that was being cynically exploited by a corrupt, self-interested, and extremist scientific community to get more money for their research." Really? - no, of course not. This was to be the narrative to be used by the global warming deniers as well. During the 1980s, "an anti-environmentalism had taken root in a network of conservative and libertarian think tanks in Washington," such as the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Marshall Institute, and the Competitive Enterprise Institute. These institutes derived their support from businessmen, corporations, and conservative foundations. What the deniers were afraid of was anything that impeded the free markets and the capitalist system, or that caused the government to produce any kind of regulation that might affect business interests according to Fred Singer, a prominent individual in the denier movement.

    I particularly liked the section on global warming, having just read two books previously on this "seemingly" controversial subject. The authors show that there is, in fact, no controversy; the climate scientists are correct in their assessments - yes, really! It was the small number of key people, such as Seitz, Jastrow, Nierenberg, and Singer who engaged in a campaign of misinformation, and these people, along with others, can "have large, negative impacts, especially if they are organized, determined, and have access to power." These men had the power by virtue of positions as physicists during the cold war era. This movement has turned into a stealthy financed, powerful, conglomerate of various organizations bent on attacking the science in order to achieve various political and industry goals.

    And now we turn our attention to Rachel Carson and her book Silent Spring. This book was written in 1962. I have heard the harsh criticism - bordering on contempt - against her by various right-wing media outlets, and I wondered what in the world this woman did over fifty years ago, and why is this decades old debate being reopened. The authors brilliantly cleared up my questions. You might know that Carson brought attention to the indiscriminate use of pesticides in the environment. Eventually, about ten years later, a ban was implemented by Richard Nixon. This turned out to be an example of regulation done well, based on several national level science assessments that confirmed the dangers of the persistent chemical DDT. Well, as the authors point out, "free marketers realized that if you could convince people that an example of successful government regulation wasn't, in fact, successful - that it was actually a mistake - you could strengthen the argument against regulation in general." Also noted is that the environmental movement was shifting from an aesthetic environmentalism towards one more oriented in favor of legal regulation. Ah, now we know why this matter is in the news, and why the attack on Carson. Carson's input was fundamental to this reorientation. If Carson could be proved wrong, then perhaps this reorientation could be shown to be based on a fallacy, and the anti-regulatory powers that be could be vindicated. I don't want to leave out that the authors make a very compelling case showing why DDT failed and why it did not lead to "millions of deaths" as claimed by people such as Steve Milloy (founder of The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition for Philip Morris) and J. Gordon Edwards (entomologist at San Jose State University) - a phrase that is now repeated by right-wing media outlets. This was a riveting chapter. It read like an intriguing suspense novel!

    I found the next chapter on free speech and free markets to be just as riveting. Many of these deniers believe in something that has been called "free market fundamentalism." This basically says the free markets are the only way to run an economic system that will not ultimately destroy our freedoms. However, the authors note that this belief system is uncannily similar to its bête noir - Marxism. They say that like Marxism, laissez-faire economics claimed to be scientific, based upon immutable laws of nature, and also like Marxism, it has not stood the test of experience. If it were a scientific theory, it would have long ago been rejected." They conclude that this fundamentalism is just an article of faith. But it is this "faith" that has resulted in these "fundamentalists" coming to the unbelievable notion that environmentalism is the next great threat to freedom, that it is a slippery path to socialism, that environmentalists are closet socialists, that people in the United Nations are connected to the International Socialist Party and they are the ones in the UN environmental program. I read this and said to myself: Wow, really! It appears that the Cold War Warriors (Jastrow, Seitz, Nierenberg, and others) needed a new threat and found it in environmentalism. But as a more in depth analysis shows, it is all about government regulation; anything that promotes more regulation, even if necessary, is anathema to these people, and, I might add, to the businesses that fund them. The sad part is the nature of the attacks on scientists doing good science. Some have become reluctant to make strong claims or err on the side of conservatism because of fear of attack. It seems that intimidation works. I could go on, but you'll just have to read the book to get the full story.

    I highly recommend this book. It does an excellent job of clearing the fog of misinformation that seems so pervasive today. If you have any lingering doubts on any of these subjects or if you wonder what the truth of the matter is in each case, please read the book.
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  • Reviewed in the United States on July 22, 2010
    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.
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  • Lorenzo Ígneo Souza Prudente
    5.0 out of 5 stars Indispensável
    Reviewed in Brazil on March 27, 2024
    Indispensável para qualquer um que trabalhe, direta ou indiretamente, com ciência.
  • Amazon Kunde
    5.0 out of 5 stars Sehr gut
    Reviewed in Germany on October 31, 2024
    Sehr gut geschriebenes, strukturiertes und informatives Buch
  • Darshan Rathod
    5.0 out of 5 stars A must read
    Reviewed in India on September 2, 2023
    This book makes me angry. But we must be angry.

    We must know how we get influenced. That's what this book is about.
  • Ariane Perlain
    5.0 out of 5 stars Raccomando questo libro
    Reviewed in Italy on July 10, 2023
    Lo raccomanderei a chiunque vuole capire i motivi dei lobbies per alimentare il climato scetticismo. È un libro che ha profondamente cambiato la mia comprensione del mondo di oggi
  • Amazon Customer
    5.0 out of 5 stars books
    Reviewed in Spain on May 6, 2023
    me gusta mucho