Merchants of doubt: how a handful of scientists obscured the truth on issues from tobacco smoke to global warming

TLDR

The U.S. scientific community has led research on public health and environmental issues, producing landmark studies on DDT, tobacco smoke, acid rain, and global warming, yet a small subset of scientists has repeatedly denied these dangers. The book investigates how a loose-knit group of high-level scientists and advisers, backed by politics and industry, ran campaigns to mislead the public and deny established science over four decades, revealing the influence of ideology, corporate interests, and compliant media. The authors trace the tactics of these scientists, detailing their political and industry connections, media manipulation, and ideological framing that enabled sustained denial campaigns.

Abstract

The U.S. scientific community has long led the world in research on such areas as public health, environmental science, and issues affecting quality of life. Our scientists have produced landmark studies on the dangers of DDT, tobacco smoke, acid rain, and global warming. But at the same time, a small yet potent subset of this community leads the world in vehement denial of these dangers. Merchants of tells the 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. Remarkably, the same individuals surface repeatedly - some of the same figures who have claimed that the science of global warming is not settled denied the truth of 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. Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, historians of science, roll back the rug on this dark corner of the American scientific community, showing how ideology and corporate interests, aided by a too-compliant media, have skewed public understanding of some of the most pressing issues of our era.