Merchants of Doubt

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The Institute of Advanced Studies presents a free lecture Merchants of Doubt: How a handful of scientists obscured the truth on issues from tobacco smoke to global warming Naomi Oreskes, Professor of History and Science Studies, University of California, San Diego ‘Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway have demonstrated what many of us had 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 US Vice President Al Gore, author of An Inconvenient Truth In this lecture, Naomi Oreskes will discuss her book Merchants of Doubt (Bloomsbury 2010, co-authored by Erik M. Conway). In Merchants of Doubt, Oreskes and Conway roll back the rug on the 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. The book 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 Lecture Details warming is ‘not settled’ denied the truth of studies linking Date: Monday 22 November 2010 smoking to lung cancer, coal smoke to acid rain, and CFCs to the ozone hole. ‘Doubt is our product,’ wrote one tobacco Time: 6pm executive. These ‘experts’ supplied it. Venue: Social Sciences Lecture Theatre, UWA Naomi Oreskes’ lecture will contribute to the public discussions The nearest car park is P3 off Hackett Entrance 1. about climate change held by the Institute of Advanced Studies this year. The lecture is free and open to the public, no RSVP required. About Naomi Oreskes Merchants of Doubt will be available for sale from outside the lecture theatre before and after the event from 5.30pm. Naomi Oreskes is Professor of History and Science Studies at the University of California, San Diego. Institute of Advanced Studies Her research focuses on the historical The University of Western Australia development of scientific knowledge, M021, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley WA 6009 methods, and practices in the earth Tel +61 8 6488 1340 and environmental sciences, and on Email [email protected] understanding scientific consensus Web www.ias.uwa.edu.au and dissent. CRICOS Provider Code: 00126G.

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A Discussion Guide by Interfaith Power & Light
A discussion guide by Interfaith Power & Light A religious response to global warming Merchants of Doubt has been selected by Interfaith Power & Light as our top choice for summer movie viewing for people of faith who are concerned about the climate crisis. The 90-minute documentary exposes a concerted strategy to create doubt about the facts of climate change through the use of pundits-for-hire who present themselves as scientific authorities. Based on the book by Naomi Oreskes, the film interviews industry reps, global warming deniers, environmentalists, and climate scientists to create a riveting behind-the-scenes look at how the fossil fuel industry has been so successful in blocking government action on climate. In Merchants of Doubt, we learn how the climate denial movement has borrowed from the playbook used by the tobacco industry for year, and how climate denial is a risky game of deception with high stakes – preying on people’s fears and creating societal division and inaction on climate. “Doubt is our product,” states a 1969 memo from the tobacco giant Brown and Williamson, “since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ that exists in the mind of the general public.” As people of faith, we have a special responsibility to speak the truth, especially when manufactured confusion about climate change is endangering the very people we are most called to serve: the vulnerable and the voiceless, and the whole of Creation. Throughout the history of social change there have been brave people of faith standing up to powerful forces to tell the truth, point out moral wrongs, and create a better society.
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Paradoxes of Oreskes & Conway's “Merchants of Doubt”
Paradoxes of Oreskes & Conway’s “Merchants of Doubt” conspiracy theory In their 2010 book, “Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Climate Change”, Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway argue a remarkable conspiracy theory in which they claim that four physicists are singlehandedly responsible for the entire climate sceptic movement. Three of these physicists (Robert Jastrow, William Nierenberg and Frederick Seitz) had been dead for several years before Oreskes & Conway wrote the book, and the remaining one of them (S. Fred Singer) sadly passed away earlier this year (April 2020). If the Merchants of Doubt conspiracy theory were genuinely true then it would actually imply that the narrative on climate change which Oreskes and Conway promote is remarkably flimsy. After all, if the science behind their narrative was as genuinely compelling as they insist, then why was the research of one retired and three deceased physicists sufficient to undermine it? Admittedly, all four scientists were highly intelligent, well-respected and accomplished scientists who had individually made substantial contributions to scientific progress over the 20th century, including in the study of the Earth’s climate. For instance, Fred Singer was one of the architects of the 1957/1958 International Geophysical Year which led to an unprecedented improvement in the world’s weather and climate monitoring systems, including the first weather satellites, and Robert Jastrow founded the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies – a NASA institution with a particular focus on the Earth’s atmosphere and climate. However, if Oreskes and Conway’s narrative was as scientifically rigorous as they claim, how were these four scientists still easily able to provide compelling scientific critiques against it which (according to Oreskes and Conway) majorly altered public opinion? Moreover, the book is littered with numerous logical inconsistencies in their arguments which beggar belief.
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Merchants-Of-Doubt-Assignments.Pdf
Discussion Guide: https://urbauerlab.uga.edu/fyo/pdfs/merchants-of-doubt-discussion-guide.pdf Background reading: -Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_Master_Settlement_Agreement -New York Times review of “Merchants of Doubt” https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/06/movies/review-merchants-of-doubt- separating-science-from-spin.html? -Think Progress interview with Robert Kenner https://thinkprogress.org/professional-deceivers-people-who-can-convince-you-a- garbage-man-knows-more-science-than-a-nasa-phd-33a6fece3825/ 2017 Report on Climate Change: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/07/government-document-directly-contradicts- trump-on-climate-change-report-says.html https://insideclimatenews.org/news/09082017/climate-change-science-report- leaked-truth https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/07/climate/document-Draft-of- the-Climate-Science-Special-Report.html? https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/07/climate/climate-change-drastic-warming- trump.html? https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3920195/Final-Draft-of-the- Climate-Science-Special-Report.pdf A bit (a few sentences) of background, how this person/entity fit into the movie, and then how this person/entity contributed to (or battled against) a “war on science” Explain how/why each of the following people/entities constitute or contribute in some way to a “war on science” 1. The Oregon Petition () https://www.desmogblog.com/oregon-petition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_Petition https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Oregon_Petition http://www.snopes.com/30000-scientists-reject-climate-change/
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The Government's Manufacture of Doubt
University of Colorado Law School Colorado Law Scholarly Commons Articles Colorado Law Faculty Scholarship 2018 The Government's Manufacture of Doubt Helen Norton University of Colorado Law School Follow this and additional works at: https://scholar.law.colorado.edu/articles Part of the Constitutional Law Commons, First Amendment Commons, Law and Politics Commons, Legal History Commons, President/Executive Department Commons, and the Supreme Court of the United States Commons Citation Information Helen Norton, The Government's Manufacture of Doubt, 16 First Amend. L. Rev. 342 (2018), https://falrunc.files.wordpress.com/2018/03/falr-volume-16-symposium-issue3.pdf, available at https://scholar.law.colorado.edu/articles/1183/. Copyright Statement Copyright protected. Use of materials from this collection beyond the exceptions provided for in the Fair Use and Educational Use clauses of the U.S. Copyright Law may violate federal law. Permission to publish or reproduce is required. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Colorado Law Faculty Scholarship at Colorado Law Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Articles by an authorized administrator of Colorado Law Scholarly Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE GOVERNMENT’S MANUFACTURE OF DOUBT Helen Norton* “The manufacture of doubt” refers to a speaker’s strategic efforts to undermine factual assertions that threaten its self-interest. This strategy was perhaps most famously employed by the tobacco industry in its
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Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M
Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway The authors are significant historians of science. The general arc of the story they tell begins when the major tobacco companies banded together and hired a powerful PR company to help them deal with the rising possibility that the federal government was about the regulate tobacco and thus negatively affect their profits. They hired Hill and Knowlton; John Hill advised them to sell doubt about the scientific findings. They did so and found several eminent scientists willing to carry their banner. Fred Seitz was an atomic scientist who as a young man worked on the Manhattan Project and helped develop the atom bomb. Another eminent physicist eagerly helping was Edward Teller, often called “the father of the hydrogen bomb.” There were others. One issue that united them all was a Cold War fierce anti- communism which saw any move toward government regulation as a huge step toward the loss of capitalism and thus of personal freedom. The effort was wide and deep and long-lasting. Think tanks were funded, national committees formed, research funded. All of this effort was to promote doubt about the scientific evidence indicting smoking tobacco as addictive and carcinogenic. And it was successful. The tobacco industry knew, from its own research, about the dangers of smoking, and its representatives continued to lie and to sow doubt. The strategies and tactics that worked for so long were soon adopted by industries and political groups to cast doubt about scientific evidence for the dangers of acid rain, asbestos, the hole in the ozone layer, second hand smoke, and now global warming.
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Oreskes CV FEB 2020
Naomi Oreskes Professor of the History of Science Affiliated Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge MA [email protected] http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~hsdept/bios/oreskes.html Education B.Sc. (First Class Honours) 1981 Royal School of Mines, Imperial College Ph.D. 1990 Stanford University (Graduate Special Program: Geological Research and History of Science) EMPLOYMENT Current Professor of the History of Science, Affiliated Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Harvard University. Columnist, Scientific American magazine, “The Observatory” 2005-2013 Professor, Department of History & Program in Science Studies Adjunct Professor of Geosciences (from 2007), University of California, San Diego 2008-2011 Provost, Sixth College, University of California, San Diego 2003-2006 Director, Science Studies Program, University of California, San Diego 1998- 2005 Associate Professor, Department of History & Program in Science Studies, UCSD 1996-1998 Associate Professor, History and Philosophy of Science Gallatin School of Individualized Study, New York University 1991-1996 Assistant Professor of Earth Sciences and Adjunct Asst. Professor of History, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire 1990-1991 Visiting Asst. Professor of Earth Sciences and Visiting Asst. Professor of History Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire 1984-1989 Research Assistant, Geology Department, and Teaching Assistant, Depts. of Geology, Philosophy, and Applied Earth Sciences Stanford University 1981-1984 Geologist, Western Mining
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The Anticommunist Origins of Climate Denial | 1
The Anticommunist Origins of Climate Denial | 1 The other night, my wife and I saw Merchants of Doubt, Robert Kenner’s new film about the climate denial industry. I thought it was excellent. I was surprised by the high production values and the way in which it did not feel like a documentary, at least until the last 15-20 minutes or so. (Then it began to remind me of a Frontline segment.) Former Republican Congressmember Bob Inglis of South Carolina, a die-hard conservative who lost his seat when he began to advocate for grappling with climate change (as well as the DREAM Act), comes off as particularly thoughtful. For me, the most interesting part was the discussion of Fred Singer, a physicist who is a leading climate denial rock star, and the late Fred Seitz, another distinguished scientist who was also a climate denier. Why, the movie asks, do the handful of scientists who deny climate science do so? (and it really is no more than handful despite the denial industry’s attempt to show the contrary). Naomi Oreskes, upon whose book of the same name the movie is based, argues in the film that although they get a certain amount of money from fossil fuel interests, that does not really explain their position, and I agree with her. For Oreskes, it stems from Cold War ideology – an anti-communism that makes them hate, fear, and then deny the existence of any problem that would require government intervention. That is persuasive to me: Seitz began to fall out with the scientific community over his strong advocacy of the Vietnam War.
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To Know Or Better Not To: Agnotology and the Social Construction of Ignorance in Commercially Driven Research
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Roundtable Review of Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M
Full citation: Hamblin, Jacob D. (ed.), Roundtable Review of Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway. H-Environment Roundtable Reviews 1, no. 2 (July 2011) http://www.environmentandsociety.org/node/3631. Rights: Copyright © 2011 H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online H-Net permits the redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit, educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the author, web location, date of publication, H-Environment, and H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. H-Environment Roundtable Reviews Volume 1, No. 2 (2011) Roundtable Review Editor: www.h-net.org/~environ/roundtables JaCob Darwin Hamblin Publication date: July 20, 2011 Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming (New York: Bloomsbury, 2010). ISBN-13: 9781596916104. Hardcover. 368 pages. Stable URL: www.h-net.org/~environ/roundtables/env-roundtable-1-2.pdf Contents IntroduCtion by JaCob Darwin Hamblin, Oregon State University 2 Comments by Spencer R. Weart, Independent Scholar 5 Comments by Mark Carey, University of Oregon 10 Comments by Neil M. Maher, New Jersey Institute of Technology and Rutgers University, Newark 14 Comments by Ronald E. Doel, Florida State University 18 Authors’ Response by Erik M. Conway, Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Naomi Oreskes, University of California, San Diego 24 About the Contributors 31 Copyright © 2011 H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online H-Net permits the redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit, educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the author, web location, date of publication, H-Environment, and H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online.
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PHD THESIS SUMMARY: Learning from Ignorance: Agnotology's
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