Merchants of Doubt - a book review

Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes & Erik Conway

"How a handful of scientists obscured the truth on issues from tobacco smoke to global warming".  (276 pages with extensive source references.)

This is a very illuminating book, one of a few I've read this year that I consider to be important enough for everyone to read.  If you want some visuals, visit the Merchants of Doubt website.

The authors describe, in quite some detail, several examples where increasingly established scientific research was countered with phony "facts", misrepresentations and outright lies, all in the cause of creating doubt and establishing a debate where there really was none.

Starting with the tobacco/cancer issue, we see how individuals and certain organizations, often funded by the tobacco corporations, tried to deny the science and delay anything that might affect corporate profits.

The authors then move on to Ronald Reagan's SDI (Star Wars), acid rain from coal smoke, the fight over CFCs and the Ozone hole, the fight over secondhand smoke and the denial of global warming.  In all cases, the main impetus has been from corporate interests and in some cases the same individuals have been involved, right from the beginning.

The final story is about revisionist history and goes back nearly half a century.  In the 1960s, Rachel Carson published Silent Spring, one of the first books to point to environmental damage being caused by pesticides, in this case DDT.  The evidence eventually became clear and in the early 1970s, ,the USA (and several other countries, eventually) banned the use of DDT.  It's use in many tropical countries continued, however.  In some of those countries, DDT use was reduced or stopped because the malarial mosquitoes became resistant, mostly from overly-enthusiastic agricultural spraying.  Other strategies for dealing with the mosquitoes also gained acceptance.  What's been happening lately is an attack on Rachel Carson by some of the same forces involved in these other fights, making claims of millions of deaths and economic damage, all because DDT was banned.  Unfortunately, the facts tell a different story, but it's a similar situation: deny the science and sow the seeds of doubt.

As one tobacco executive wrote: "Doubt is our product" and a small group of hired "experts" supplied that doubt.