Merchants of Doubt: Why It's So Easy For the Science Deniers

I’m just finishing 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. Though I found the book to drag at times, getting bogged down in details, these two authors make a significant case against the climate change denying industry. Starting with the tobacco industry in the 1950s, they catalogue a history of industry hired scientists, and very often the same scientists again and again, obfuscating the truth about scientific findings that hurt the bottom line of their industry sponsors, whether that industry is selling cigarettes or oil.

            I’ve watched the global warming denying phenomenon for about as long as anyone. And what no one can deny is the amount of success that the science deniers have had in bringing doubt into many people’s minds over issues in which the science is greatly indicative or settled. The science deniers have a lot of things working in their favor and have helped them to forestall smoking restrictions or the development of a climate policy in this country.

            First of all, science is hard to understand. Most folks are unable to determine if a scientific study or experiment is rigorous or poorly designed or executed. People aren’t to be blamed for this, but it is very easy to exploit. The average guy or gal doesn’t have the time to double check the cherry picked figures cited by the Heritage Foundation. And using the catchphrase of almost every scientist “more research needs to be done,” gives the deniers an aura of knowingness as they help politicians and policymakers to coddle the industries that finance their campaigns and kick the environmental can down the road for a while.

            In the past 30 years or so there has also developed a suspicion of all expertise. People without credentials and experience are valued as more authentic than those who have paid their dues through schooling or work. These “authentic” individuals’ gut level reactions and thinking are thought to be uncluttered by theory, book learning, or university level high falutiness. In the eyes of many, Barack Obama’s education at Columbia University and Harvard Law School made him less authentic, and therefore less trustworthy, than Sarah Palin, who as a student hopscotched from college to college before earning a degree in journalism. (OK, George W. Bush is a Harvard Business School graduate. But he never acts like a man with a Harvard background, so he at least seems more authentic to a lot of folks.)

Perhaps it is a particularly American characteristic to favor the cracker barrel philosopher over the intellectual. After all, in the halls of the Capitol Congress chose to install a statue of Will Rogers and not one of Emerson. As scientists are men and women who almost uniformly have advanced degrees, they fit into this society of experts: intellectuals and elites who say they know better than you. Americans don’t like them.

            Going back to recent decades, Americans no longer had to worry about cholera, malaria, and typhoid thanks to science. And the researcher Jonas Salk conquered polio. But just as we could now rest assured that our drinking water was safe and our children would not be crippled by an insidious virus, the atom bomb scared the collective bejesus out of us. Though we are no longer gripped by the existential fear that The Bomb created, cloning, genetic engineering, and other scientific finagling leave many of us unsettled and suspicious of science.

            Oreskes and Conway devote a chapter to the current attacks on Rachel Carson and her book Silent Spring. It may very well have been this suspicion of science—the invention and use of DDT and other synthetic pesticides, which were the main targets of Carson’s critique—that helped Silent Spring gain ground with the American Public and our political leaders when it did. Ironically, it is now the deniers to exploit this suspicion to attack Carson, her work, and the banning on DDT.

            With Merchants of Doubt Oreskes and Conway make a persuasive argument. Their book may help end this charade of creating public doubt over settled science. I was just hoping in this blog to add to the context in which this important book may help in our understanding of science and our efforts to curb global warming.