Merchants of Doubt

by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M Conway, 2010

I couldn't read much into this, because it's too depressing, too infuriating. But some of the best parts of books are at the beginning, so here's some notes.

• ("They" usually means "Industry", below)
• When they said the IPCC-II had been "doctored", they were using as evidence revisions made in response to peer review. 
• Overall, the scientific debate (about smoking and health) wasn't among scientists; there was no debate among scientists. A debate was fabricated, between the industry and scientists, and then made to look to the public like the debate was between scientists. 
• The Tobacco Strategy they call it. 
• They find all the bad health effects of smoking, then find all the other things that also cause those same effects, and then amplify the association of those things, and so distract from arguments in court by other expert witnesses. (We also might call that simply Whataboutism)
• Their law firm advised, "scientific doubt must remain"
• (Note to self: when an industry is arguing against scientists that their product or service is not bad, just don't believe them, because they're lying, every time. CO2, PFAS, MCAS, you name it.)
• The pro-tobacco scientists were found testifying as expert witness in asbestos cases where they argued that asbestos, but not tobacco, caused lung cancer(!). 
• "Industry makes its case by cherry-picking data and focusing on unexplained or anomalous details ... the industry exploited this normal scientific honesty to spin unreasonable doubt." (Their questions weren't illegitimate but disingenuous)
• After the 1964 US Surgeon's General report Smoking and Health, where the health effects were conclusive, the Tobacco Industry Research Committee changed their name to the Council for Tobacco Research, and then went ape-shit crazy.
• They ingratiate themselves with "friendly witnesses" by dumping tons of money into research funding grants over decades. [ie expert witness]
• One of the earlier scientists they used misrepresented his data at UCLA Medical School and was forced to resign; 20 years later he's doing testimony for Big Tobacco. [and probably because he needs the money because he can't make a living as a real scientist because he can't help lying about shit]
• "Did they deserve equal time? The simple answer is no. While the idea for equal time for opposing opinions makes sense in a two-party political system, it does not work for science, because science is not about opinion. It is about evidence. It is about claims that can be, and have been, tested through scientific research - experiments, experience, and observation - research that is then subject to critical review by a jury of scientific peers. Claims that have not gone through that process - or have gone through it and failed - are not scientific, and do not deserve equal time in a scientific debate." (p32)
• (Further) "A scientific conclusion becomes established not when a clever person proposes it, or even a group of people begin to discuss it, but when the jury of peers - the community of researchers - reviews the evidence and concludes that it is sufficient to accept the claim." (p33)
• (And) "Doubt-mongering works because we think science is about facts - cold, hard, definite facts. If someone tells us things are uncertain, we think that means that the science is muddled. This is a mistake. There are always uncertainties in any live science, because science is a process of discovery." (p34)
• Their Line "The science is too uncertain to justify actions." (No it's not, because that's actually how science works, see below.)
• Good language in response to this, from the 1983 US Office of Science and Technology Policy, "The incomplete present scientific knowledge sometimes presents the kinds of certainty which scientists would prefer, but there are many indicators which, taken collectively, lead us to our finding that the phenomena of acid deposition ["acid rain"] are real and constitute a problem for which solutions should be sought." (p87)