These naysayers -- some of whom are paid by interest groups -- have helped undermine action on vital problems despite evidence of the need to respond, said Naomi Oreskes, a professor of history and science studies at the University of California at San Diego.
They sap convictions by endlessly questioning data, dismissing experimental innovation, stressing uncertainties and clamouring for more research, she said. Over the last half-century, they have helped weaken legislative action or brake political momentum on tobacco, acid rain, protection of the ozone layer and climate change.
"This strategy is so clever and effective," Oreskes said in an interview this week in Paris to promote a French translation of "Merchants of Doubt," a book she co-authored with California Institute of Technology historian Erik Conway.
"It takes something which is an essential part of science -- healthy skepticism, curiosity -- and turns it against itself and makes it corrosive."
Oreskes's book traces the starting point of professional science skeptics to when big tobacco companies were facing the first clear evidence that smoking caused cancer.
An internal memo, written by a Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp. executive in 1969, spelt out the goal of weakening this link with expert help.
"Doubt is our product, since it is the best means of competing with the 'body of fact' that exists in the minds of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy," according to the document, now placed in a US public archive.
Oreskes said a blatant example today was the sowing of doubt about global warming.
A "denial campaign" started to take root in the United States just before the Earth Summit of 1992 and amplified in the run-up to negotiations for the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, she said.
"They don't have to prove that they're right. They don't have to prove that there's no global warming," she said.
"They simply have to raise doubts and questions, because if they can raise doubts and questions, then they can say, 'Well, since the science is not settled,' they allege, 'therefore it would be premature to act on it.' And so they delay action and avoid the kind of actions they would like to avoid."
Okay if THAT does not seriously piss you off then I can't imagine what would.
I think most of us have probably already reached a conclusion similar to this on our own, simply by watching the attacks on evolution in the classrooms and climate change in politics.
Essentially these people are willing to damage our ability to trust facts, simply in the name of greed.
We have seen this happen right before our eyes when it comes to regulating our food, educating our children, and protecting our environment. All powerful people have to do is purchase their own scientists and important information is brought into doubt.
In today's America it appears that money IS truth. If you have enough of one, you are free to define the other.
Money IS the root of all evil.
ReplyDeleteThe LOVE of money is the root of all evil...
Delete... you can't say that gasoline is the root of all evil ~ just the LOVE of gasoline can lead to evil.
If Lou Sarah could successfully orchestrate a love letter campaign for her style of governing, then this doesn't surprise us in the least.
ReplyDeletePigs.
the big money behind the big lie machine is what has convinced americans that milk is good for them when you really look at the facts you see a very different picture
ReplyDelete"Doubt is our product ...." Says it all, doesn't it? Questioning is part of the scientific process, but the purpose of science is finding the truth, or at least a more inclusive and productive explanation of the phenomena. Doubt for the sake of a theory or hypothesis in which one is materially or emotionally invested is pernicious. Reminds me of the "Intelligent Design" people.
ReplyDeleteIt is so frustrating to me to try to tell others that YES, WE DO have climate change. Whenever I bring up ANY kind of facts, they throw some pseudo science in my face. Of course, they throw the cold winters in my face when I tell them about the hot summers, but they do not realize that both go hand-in-hand. I have all but given up on talking about that.
ReplyDeleteIn America Money has always been Truth, as far as I have studied its history (19th and 20th centuries).
ReplyDeleteAnd Truth, even recent truth, is sometimes so much distorted...
Like that mantra about America saving Europe from Nazism. The USA first participated in the war effort on European soil in 1943. At that time it was clear that the Russians were winning over Germany, and that it was only a matter of time before they would invade it.
Only when USSR were wiping out the nazis did America really run to the rescue - of capitalism.
Not to disminish the importance of the US participation in WWII ; I'm very very glad I was not born in the Eastern Block dominated by USSR, and I owe it to the brave Allied soldiers. But Americans didn't save Europe from nazism, millions of under-equiped and under-fed Russians soldiers did.
From what I've seen from these naysayers, is that for the most part none of them are actually qualified to speak against the vast majority of the actual qualified scientist that specialize in the field of atmospheric science. Fox usually uses a weatherman, not an actual atmospheric scientist, and is not qualified or even educated enough to produce the data and the proper analysis of the data to draw a valid conclusion. But then again, who else would sacrifice their scientific integrity and reputation to say what Fox wants them to say, even for money they're willing to spend for that person.
ReplyDeleteHow many times have we seen this tactic, with the caveat "I read it somewhere" by the current candidates in the GOP?
ReplyDeleteThis "Doubt as a product" non-reasoning is infiltrating every aspect of our society, where Corporations are people, and people are line items to be slashed.