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Merchants of doubt : how a handful of scientists obscured the truth on issues from tobacco smoke to global warming / Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway.

By: Contributor(s): Material type: TextTextPublisher: London : Bloomsbury, 2012Copyright date: ©2010Description: 355 pages ; 25 cmContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 1596916109 (alk. paper)
  • 9781408824832 (alk. paper)
Other title:
  • How a handful of scientists obscured the truth on issues from tobacco smoke to global warming
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 174.95 22
LOC classification:
  • Q147 .O74 2010
Contents:
Doubt is our product -- Strategic defense, phony facts and the creation of the George C. Marshall Institute -- Sowing the seeds of doubt: acid rain -- Constructing a counter-narrative: the fight over the ozone hole -- What's bad science? Who decides? The fight over second-hand smoke -- The denial of global warming -- Denial rides again: the revisionist attack on Rachel Carson -- Of free markets and free speech -- A new view of science.
Awards:
  • History of Science Society, Watson Davis and Helen Miles Davis Prize Winner, 2011.
Summary: This book has been praised- and attacked- around the world, for reasons easy to understand. This book tells, with 'brutal clarity', the disquieting 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 that link smoking to lung cancer, coal smoke to acid rain, and CFCs to the ozone hole. It is the troubling story of how a cadre of influential scientists have clouded public understanding of scientific facts to advance a political and economic agenda. The U.S. scientific community has long led the world in research on such areas as public health, environmental science, and issues affecting quality of life. Our scientists have produced landmark studies on the dangers of DDT, tobacco smoke, acid rain, and global warming. But at the same time, a small yet potent subset of this community leads the world in vehement denial of these dangers. Remarkably, the same individuals surface repeatedly, some of the same figures who have claimed that the science of global warming is "not settled" denied the truth of 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. The authors, both historians of science, roll back the rug on this 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. -- from Back Cover
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Includes bibliographical references (pages 279-343) and index.

Doubt is our product -- Strategic defense, phony facts and the creation of the George C. Marshall Institute -- Sowing the seeds of doubt: acid rain -- Constructing a counter-narrative: the fight over the ozone hole -- What's bad science? Who decides? The fight over second-hand smoke -- The denial of global warming -- Denial rides again: the revisionist attack on Rachel Carson -- Of free markets and free speech -- A new view of science.

This book has been praised- and attacked- around the world, for reasons easy to understand. This book tells, with 'brutal clarity', the disquieting 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 that link smoking to lung cancer, coal smoke to acid rain, and CFCs to the ozone hole. It is the troubling story of how a cadre of influential scientists have clouded public understanding of scientific facts to advance a political and economic agenda. The U.S. scientific community has long led the world in research on such areas as public health, environmental science, and issues affecting quality of life. Our scientists have produced landmark studies on the dangers of DDT, tobacco smoke, acid rain, and global warming. But at the same time, a small yet potent subset of this community leads the world in vehement denial of these dangers. Remarkably, the same individuals surface repeatedly, some of the same figures who have claimed that the science of global warming is "not settled" denied the truth of 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. The authors, both historians of science, roll back the rug on this 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. -- from Back Cover

History of Science Society, Watson Davis and Helen Miles Davis Prize Winner, 2011.

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