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"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
"Brilliantly reported andwritten with brutal clarity."-Huffington Post
Now a powerful documentary from the acclaimed director of Food Inc., Merchants of Doubt was one of the most talked-about climate change books of recent years, for reasons easy to understand: It tells the controversial 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.
- Sales Rank: #14270 in Books
- Brand: Brand: Bloomsbury Press
- Published on: 2011-05-31
- Released on: 2011-05-24
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.26" h x 1.01" w x 5.53" l, .73 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 368 pages
Features
- Used Book in Good Condition
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Oreskes and Conway tell an important story about the misuse of science to mislead the public on matters ranging from the risks of smoking to the reality of global warming. The people the authors accuse in this carefully documented book are themselves scientists—mostly physicists, former cold warriors who now serve a conservative agenda, and vested interests like the tobacco industry. The authors name these scientists—all with powerful connections in government and the media—including Robert Jastrow, Frederick Seitz, and S. Fred Singer. Seven compelling chapters detail seven issues (acid rain, the dangers of smoking and secondhand smoke, the ozone hole, global warming, the Strategic Defense Initiative, and the banning of DDT) in which this group aimed to sow seeds of public doubt on matters of settled science. They did so by casting aspersions on the science and the scientists who produce it. Oreskes, a professor of history and science studies at UC–San Diego, and science writer Conway also emphasize how journalists and Internet bloggers uncritically repeat these charges. This book deserves serious attention for the lessons it provides about the misuse of science for political and commercial ends. (June)
Copyright � Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
“Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway have demonstrated what many of us have long suspected: that the ‘debate' over the climate crisis--and many other environmental issues--was manufactured by the same people who brought you ‘safe' cigarettes. Anyone concerned about the state of democracy in America should read this book.” ―Former Vice President Al Gore, author of An Inconvenient Truth
“As the science of global warming has grown more certain over the last two decades, the attack on that science has grown more shrill; this volume helps explain that paradox, and not only for climate change. A fascinating account of a very thorny problem.” ―Bill McKibben, author of Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet
“Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway have written an important and timely book. 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 Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change
“There can be no science without doubt: brute dogma leaves no room for inquiry. But over the last half century, a tiny minority of scientists have wielded doubt as a political weapon to halt what they did not want said: that tobacco kills or that the climate is warming because of what we humans are doing. ‘Doubt is our product' read a tobacco memo--and indeed, millions of dollars have gone into creating the impression of scientific controversy where there has not been one. This book about the politics of doubt by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway explores the long, connected, and intentional obfuscation of science by manufactured controversy. It is clear, scientifically responsible, and historically compelling--it is an essential and passionate book about our times.” ―Peter Galison, Joseph Pellegrino University Professor, Harvard University, author of Einstein's Clocks, Poincar�'s Maps
“With the carefulness of historians and the skills of master storytellers, Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway lay out the sordid history of tobacco industry protectionists, who framed the debate as scientifically ‘unproven,' gaining decades of market share for those merchants of death--who knew all along the risks of their products. Merchants of Doubt shows that some of the very same individuals were part of the plans to frame the climate change debate as unproven, using the same tried and true tactics of misrepresentation of facts, non-representative scientists, and industry-friendly legislators. Again, tried and true public re-framing of reality worked. But now all this chicanery is exposed for the deception it has been in Oreskes and Conway's powerful and timely work.” ―Stephen H. Schneider, Professor, Stanford University, author of Science as a Contact Sport: Inside the Battle to Save Earth's Climate
“A well-documented, pulls-no-punches account of how science works and how political motives can hijack the process by which scientific information is disseminated to the public.” ―Kirkus Reviews
“Sweeping and comprehensive… Oreskes and Conway do an excellent job of bringing to life a complex and important environmental battle… [a] darkly fascinating history… Merchants of Doubt is an important book. How important? 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.org
“Oreskes and Conway tell an important story…This book deserves serious attention for the lessons it provides about the misuse of science for political and commercial ends.” ―Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway smoke out the Merchants of Doubt.” ―Vanity Fair
“In their impeccably researched genealogy of denialism Merchants of Doubt, Conway and Oreskes show that a key group of figures in global warming denial earned their spurs in tobacco-industry-funded attempts to discredit the links between smoking and cancer. ” ―New Humanist
“Brilliantly reported and written with brutal clarity… 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 … Oreskes and Conway do a great public service.” ―Huffington Post
“In their fascinating and important study, Merchants of Doubt, Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway offer convincing evidence for a surprising and disturbing thesis. Opposition to scientifically well-supported claims about the dangers of cigarette smoking, the difficulties of the Strategic Defense Initiative ("Star Wars"), the effects of acid rain, the existence of the ozone hole, the problems caused by secondhand smoke, and--ultimately--the existence of anthropogenic climate change was used in ‘the service of political goals and commercial interests' to obstruct the transmission to the American public of important information … Because it is so thorough in disclosing how major policy decisions have been delayed or distorted, Merchants of Doubt deserves a wide readership. It is tempting to require that all those engaged in the business of conveying scientific information to the general public should read it.” ―Science
“Merchants of Doubt, by the science historian Naomi Oreskes and the writer Erik Conway, investigates a sort of reverse conspiracy theory: ecoterrorists and socialists are not the ones foisting dubious science upon us; rather it is deniers who are running their own well-funded and organized long-term hoax. Several previous works have ably illuminated similar themes, but this one hits bone…[Merchants of Doubt] provide[s] both the historical perspective and the current political insights needed to get a grip on what is happening now.” ―OnEarth
“All in all, Oreskes and Conway paint an unflattering picture of why some scientists continue to stand against the overwhelming scientific consensus on issues at the center of public discussion.” ―USA Today
“Ever wonder how the terms liberty and freedom got all tangled up in fake science, how industry friendly think-tanks got their start, or what motivates scientists to sell out beyond the obvious? Merchants of Doubt expertly follows the historical twists and turns to answer all those questions and more in exquisite detail translated into entertaining narratives easily digested by readers from all backgrounds… This book should be a staple for any scientist and progressive, especially those whose work intersects public policy. Merchants of Doubt will not only leave you better equipped to combat the propaganda now packaged and fed to an unsuspecting public as legitimate science on a daily basis, it is a meticulously researched and wonderfully written.” ―Daily Kos
“The disturbing tale of how some scientists sell their souls to advance political and economic agendas.” ―Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
“Powerful.” ―Economist
“After enduring decades of inexplicably persistent news reports casting doubt on the fact that cigarettes cause lung cancer, pollution harms the planet, and nuclear weapons are extremely dangerous, one might be forgiven for wondering if the same mob of misguided mercenaries might be behind them all. As it turns out--according to the evidence assembled in Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming--they are.” ―Chronicle of Higher Education
“A devastating portrayal of organized scientific disinformation campaigns that makes clear just how gullible the press, scientific community and the public have been (and to a large extent, continue to be).” ―Capital Weather Gang/WashingtonPost.com
“Well-researched and lucidly written.” ―Washington Times
“Excellent.” ―America Magazine
“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. The good news is, honest science wins in the end. The bad news: The earth is heating up while this artificially heated debate rages, though Merchants of Doubt, if widely read, should help douse the media flames.” ―Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Merchants of Doubt might be one of the most important books of the year. Exhaustively researched and documented, it explains how over the past several decades mercenary scientists have partnered with tobacco companies and chemical corporations to help them convince the public that their products are safe – even when solid science proves otherwise…Merchants of Doubt is a hefty read, well-researched and comprehensive…I hope it sells, because what it has to say needs to be heard.” ―Christian Science Monitor
“Ever wonder how the terms liberty and freedom got all tangled up in fake science, how industry friendly think-tanks got their start, or what motivates scientists to sell out beyond the obvious? Merchants of Doubt expertly follows the historical twists and turns to answer all those questions and more in exquisite detail translated into entertaining narratives easily digested by readers from all backgrounds…This book should be a staple for any scientist and progressive, especially those whose work intersects public policy. Merchants of Doubt will not only leave you better equipped to combat the propaganda now packaged and fed to an unsuspecting public as legitimate science on a daily basis, it is a meticulously researched and wonderfully written.” ―Austin Science Policy Examiner
“No mere summary or review could hope to do more than scratch the surface of the information contained in this book…Merchants of Doubt [is] so compelling that it cannot be dismissed with a mere "talk to the hand." The facts cannot be denied any longer – no free markets can address clearly market failures like acid rain and global warming, and ignoring reality only works for so long before reality finally does something that simply cannot be ignored.” ―Scholars and Rogues
“Oreskes and Conway--through a combination of thorough scholarly research and adept story telling--unravel deep common links to past environmental and public health controversies among those now most often identified as climate "skeptics," "contrarians," "deniers," "doubters" … and more. What makes their new book from Bloomsbury Press particularly worthwhile at a time of no shortage of new and intriguing climate change books? It's their combination of thorough research with writing reminiscent of the best investigative journalism (remember that?)… essential reading for anyone seriously wanting to understand the tawdry background of climate science politicization as it was targeted, in particular, at some of the individual scientists and scientific undertakings most respected by the established science academy.” ―Yale Forum on Climate Change
“The eye-opener of the year.” ―Head Butler
“Fascinating…Merchants is an impressive and disturbing piece of scholarship that does a good job of answering the questions [the authors] pose. It should be read by every editor and every member of Congress, and by climate scientists as well.” ―Climate Progress
“Historians a thousand years from now may wonder what went wrong: How, after scholars had so thoroughly nailed down the reality of anthropogenic climate change, did so many Americans get fooled into thinking it was all a left-wing hoax? Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway give us some very good--if disturbing--answers in their fascinating, detailed and artfully written new book, Merchants of Doubt…There is much in this book to outrage anyone who cares about the future of the planet, human health, or scientific integrity.” ―American Scientist
“If you really needed any more reasons to dislike the campaign against dealing with climate change, this book will supply it.” ―Daily Kos
“Eye-opening…Merchants of Doubt is alarming, yet important.” ―American Biology Teacher
“Investigates a sort of reverse conspiracy theory: ecoterrorists and socialists are not the ones foisting dubious science upon us; rather it is deniers who are running their own well-funded and organized long-term hoax. Several previous works have ably illuminated similar themes, but this one hits bone.” ―SustainableBusiness.com
“Oreskes and Conway outline how science is supposed to work and how some critical evidence has been drowned out of the U.S. public discourse. An important study about science and the media that informed citizens need to read.” ―Library Journal
“The authors explain in exhaustively-researched detail how renowned scientists abandon science, how environmentalism has become equated with communism, and how the Cold War has come to be connected with climate denial…A must read.” ―Earth Gauge
About the Author
Naomi Oreskes is a professor of history and science studies at the University of California, San Diego. Her essay "Beyond the Ivory Tower" was a milestone in the fight against global warming denial.
Erik M. Conway is the resident historian at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology. Merchants of Doubt is their first book together.
Most helpful customer reviews
449 of 502 people found the following review helpful.
Brilliant, devastating, disturbing --- at least as important as Bill McKibben's 'Eaarth'
By Jesse Kornbluth
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.
147 of 169 people found the following review helpful.
Excellent
By R. Albin
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.
103 of 123 people found the following review helpful.
An Outstanding History of a Critically Important Subject
By Roger D. Launius
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.
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