Merchants of Doubt

Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming

Author	Naomi Oreskes, Erik M. Conway
Subject	Scientists—Professional Ethics Science news—Moral and ethical aspects
Publisher	Bloomsbury Press
Publication date	2010
Pages	355 pp.
ISBN	978-1-59691-610-4
OCLC	461631066
Dewey Decimal	174.95
LC Class	Q147 .O74 2010

Merchants of Doubt is a 2010 book by the American science historians Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway. It identifies parallels between the climate change debate and earlier controversies over tobacco smoking, acid rain and the hole in the ozone layer. Oreskes and Conway wrote that spreading doubt and confusion was the basic strategy of those opposing action in each case. In particular, Fred Seitz, Fred Singer, and a few other contrarian scientists joined forces with conservative think tanks and private corporations to challenge the scientific consensus on many contemporary issues.

The Marshall Institute has been critical of the book, but most other reviewers received it favorably. One reviewer said that Merchants of Doubt is exhaustively researched and documented, and may be one of the most important books of 2010. Another reviewer saw the book as his choice for best science book of the year.

Themes

Oreskes (University of California, San Diego) and Conway (NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory) trace the ways in which a handful of politically conservative scientists, with strong ties to particular industries, have "played a disproportionate role in debates about controversial questions". These scientists have challenged the scientific consensus about the dangers of cigarette smoking, the effects of acid rain, the existence of the ozone hole, and the existence of anthropogenic climate change. This has resulted in "deliberate obfuscation" of the issues which has had an influence on public opinion and policy-making. Oreskes and Conway reach the conclusion that:

There are many reasons why the United States has failed to act on global warming, but at least one is the confusion raised by Bill Nierenberg, Fred Seitz, and Fred Singer.

All physicists, Singer was a rocket scientist, whereas Nierenberg and Seitz worked on the atomic bomb. One reviewer of the book states that some "climate sceptics are recycled critics of controls on tobacco and acid rain". As Oreskes and Conway state: "small numbers of people can have large, negative impacts, especially if they are organised, determined and have access to power".

Seitz and Singer

Seitz and Singer had served in high levels of science administration, and had contact with admirals, generals, and even presidents. They also had considerable media experience, so they could obtain press coverage for their views. The book says, "They used their scientific credentials to present themselves as authorities, and they used their authority to discredit any science they didn't like".

Seitz and Singer were seen to be contrarians in the tobacco debate. Seitz directed a program for the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company that funded research defending tobacco. Singer co-wrote a report debunking the risks of second-hand smoke, funded by the Tobacco Institute, which attacked the science behind the finding that there were health risks from passive smoking and argued that it was "part of a political agenda to expand government control over peoples lives".

Seitz and Singer helped to form institutions such as the Heritage Foundation, Competitive Enterprise Institute and Marshall Institute in the United States. Funded by corporations and conservative foundations, these organizations have opposed many forms of state intervention or regulation of U.S. citizens. In each case the tactics are similar: "discredit the science, disseminate false information, spread confusion, and promote doubt".

The book says that over the course of more than 20 years, Singer, Seitz, (and a few other contrarian scientists) did almost no original scientific research on the issues which they debated. They had once been prominent researchers, but by the time they turned to the topics covered in Merchants of Doubt, they were mostly attacking the reputation and work of others. On every issue they were on the wrong side of the scientific consensus.

Free market fundamentalism

The book states that Seitz, Singer, Nierenberg and Robert Jastrow were all fiercely anti-communist and they viewed government regulation as a step towards socialism and communism. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, they looked for another great threat to free market capitalism and found it in environmentalism. They feared that an over-reaction to environmental problems would lead to heavy-handed government intervention in the marketplace and intrusion into people's lives. However, the strategy of denying the truth about environmental problems does not make them go away. In fact, the longer the delay the worse these problems get, and the more likely it is that governments will need to take the draconian measures that conservatives most fear. The book says that Seitz, Singer, Nierenberg and Jastrow denied the scientific evidence, contributed to a strategy of delay, and thereby helped to bring about the situation they most dreaded.

Reception

In December 2010, in an article for American Thinker, Fred Singer states that Merchants of Doubt attacks several well-known senior physicists, including the late Fred Seitz, a former president of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the American Physical Society, and Rockefeller University. Singer goes on to say:

No matter what the environmental issue -- ozone depletion, acid rain, pesticides, etc. -- any and all scientific opposition based on objective facts is blamed on an imagined involvement with tobacco companies. None of this is true, of course. Oreskes and Conway claim to be academic historians, yet they have consistently ignored factual information, have not bothered to consult primary sources, have never interviewed any of the scientists they try to smear, and generally have operated in a completely unprofessional way.

The ultimate aim of these attacks, at least in my case, has been to discredit my work and publications on global warming. I am a nonsmoker, find SHS to be an irritant and unpleasant, have certainly not been paid by Philip Morris and the tobacco lobby, and have never joined any of their front organizations. And I serve on the advisory board of an anti-smoking organization. My father, who was a heavy smoker, died of emphysema while relatively young. I personally believe that SHS, in addition to being objectionable, cannot possibly be healthy.

William O’Keefe and Jeff Kueter from the Marshall Institute provide a critique of Merchants of Doubt and wonder why such a book was written:

Although cloaked in the appearance of scholarly work, the book constitutes an effort to discredit and undermine the reputations of three deceased scientists who contributed greatly to our nation. These men were accomplished scientists, leaders of universities and major research organizations, advisers to government, and the founders of the George C. Marshall Institute. This book questions their integrity, impugns their character, and questions their judgment on the basis of little more than faulty logic and preconceived opinion.

Philip Kitcher in Science says that Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway are "two outstanding historians". He also calls Merchants of Doubt a "fascinating and important study". Kitcher says that the apparently harsh claims against Nierenberg, Seitz, and Singer are "justified through a powerful dissection of the ways in which prominent climate scientists, such as Roger Revelle and Ben Santer, were exploited or viciously attacked in the press".

In The Christian Science Monitor, Will Buchanan says that Merchants of Doubt is exhaustively researched and documented, and may be one of the most important books of 2010. Oreskes and Conway are seen to demonstrate that the doubt merchants are not "objective scientists" as the term is popularly understood. Instead, they are "science-speaking mercenaries" hired by corporations to crunch numbers to prove that the corporations’ products are safe and useful. Buchanan says they are salesmen, not scientists.

Bud Ward published a review of the book in The Yale Forum on Climate and the Media. He wrote that Oreskes and Conway use a combination of thorough scholarly research combined with writing reminiscent of the best investigative journalism, to "unravel deep common links to past environmental and public health controversies". In terms of climate science, the authors' leave "little doubt about their disdain for what they regard as the misuse and abuse of science by a small cabal of scientists they see as largely lacking in requisite climate science expertise".

Phil England writes in The Ecologist that the strength of the book is the rigour of the research and the detailed focus on key incidents. He points out, however, that the climate change chapter is a only 50 pages long, and recommends several other books for readers who want to get a broader picture of this aspect: James Hoggan’s Climate Cover-Up, George Monbiot’s Heat and Ross Gelbspan’s The Heat is On and Boiling Point. England also points out that there is little coverage about the millions of dollars Exxon Mobil has put into funding a plethora of groups actively involved in promoting climate change denial and doubt.

A review in The Economist calls this a powerful book which articulates the politics involved and the degree to which scientists have sometimes manufactured and exaggerated environmental uncertainties. But the authors fail to fully explain how environmental action has still often proved possible despite countervailing factors.

Robert N. Proctor writes in American Scientist that Merchants of Doubt is a detailed and artfully written book. He says the book covers the "history of manufactured ignorance" and refers to some other books in this genre: David Michaels’s Doubt is their Product (2008), Chris Mooney’s The Republican War on Science (2009), David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz’s Deceit and Denial (2002), and his own book Cancer Wars (1995).

Robin McKie in The Guardian states that Oreskes and Conway deserve considerable praise for this outstanding book and for exposing the influence of a small group of cold war ideologues. Their tactic of spreading doubt has confused the public, first in the U.S. and then the U.K., about a series of key scientific issues such as global warming, even though scientists have actually become more certain about their research results. McKie points out that Merchants of Doubt includes detailed notes on all sources used, is clearly and cleanly outlined, carefully paced, and is "my runaway contender for best science book of the year".

Authors

Naomi Oreskes is Professor of History and Science Studies at the University of California, San Diego. Her work came to public attention in 2004 with the publication of “The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change,” in Science, which argued that there was no significant disagreement in the scientific community about the reality of global warming from human causes. Erik M. Conway is the historian at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

See also

• Fear, uncertainty and doubt
• Health effects of tobacco
• List of books about the politics of science
• List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming
• Politics of global warming (United States)
• Scientific opinion on climate change
• Tobacco politics