The tricks propagandists use to beat science
A model of the way opinions spread reveals how propagandists use the scientific process against itself to secretly influence policy makers.
Back in the 1950s, health professionals became concerned that smoking was causing cancer. Then, in 1952, the popular magazine Reader’s Digestpublished “Cancer by the Carton,” an article about the increasing body of evidence that proved it. The article caused widespread shock and media coverage. Today the health dangers of smoking are clear and unambiguous.
And yet smoking bans have been slow to come into force, most having appeared some 40 years or more after the Reader’s Digest article.
The reason for this sluggishness is easy to see in hindsight and described in detail by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway in their 2010 book Merchants of Doubt. Here the authors explain how the tobacco industry hired a public relations firm to manufacture controversy surrounding the evidence and cast doubt on its veracity.
Together, tobacco companies and the PR firm created and funded an organization called the Tobacco Industry Research Committee to produce results and opinions that contradicted the view that smoking kills. This led to a false sense of uncertainty and delayed policy changes that would otherwise have restricted sales.
The approach was hugely successful for the tobacco industry at the time. In the same book, Oreskes and Conway show how a similar approach has influenced the climate change debate. Again, the scientific consensus is clear and unambiguous but the public debate has been deliberately muddied to create a sense of uncertainty. Indeed, Oreskes and Conway say that some of the same people who dreamt up the tobacco strategy also worked on undermining the climate change debate.
That raises an important question: How easy is it for malicious actors to distort the public perception of science?
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