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

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. Merchants of Doubt tells the 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. 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. Naomi Oreskes
and Erik M. Conway, 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.

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