Merchants of Doubt

This book is the classic study that you must read if you’re going to understand how fossil fuel interests set out to create climate denial. Taking their playbook from the tobacco lobby, these interests hired unscrupulous researchers to do work that inspired doubt about climate science.

This book documents a core truth: climate change isn’t a tragedy; it’s a crime. This book will introduce you to the criminals and show you their MO. 

No list of books on this history of climate science would be complete without this one, even though the book is about far more than climate change. I think this should be required reading for anyone who wants to understand misinformation and media culture. In example after example, with meticulous research, the book shows what happens when science gets in the way of profit.

I found the book especially strong at exploring the underlying patterns in which industry groups work to undermine the credibility of scientific results, injecting enough doubt to forestall regulatory action. I particularly like the chapter on… show more.

This classic work of history and investigative reporting reads like a whodunit. It’s about the ill-willed contrarians who tried to convince the public that scientists don’t know what they do know: that our planet is warming as a result of human actions.

So, the book is not at all about scientists’ ignorance but instead about an illusion of uncertainty that has been deliberately fabricated.

I love this book because its exposé makes me indignant about a handful of rogue scientists who created an industry of science denial in the service of polluting industries and political ideology. They amplified their voices by setting up dozens of “astroturf think tanks” around the U.S. to reinforce their flawed arguments opposing regulation of companies contributing to the dangers of tobacco smoke, acid rain, ozone layer depletion, and climate change.

I see their playbook to sow doubts about well-established science at work today in all sorts of politically motivated science denial and the spread of viral misinformation. 

Whilst not specifically about tech, I find this book a crucial intervention in clearly laying out how narratives can be weaponized for catastrophic negative impact.

I also really like how it focuses on the scientists themselves, amongst many other people, and their role in being part of the project of doubt – in understanding and unpicking hype, it’s crucial to consider all the actors involved in bringing science and technology into fruition, and this book expertly does just that. 

The political “war” against science is nowhere more obvious than in the decades-old efforts to mislead the public and deny the well-established science about climate change.

This book is a story of obscuring the truth, creating doubt, and manipulating the policy process to slow efforts to address the problem, while energy producers are unimpeded on their way to the bank. It's an old but familiar story. Just like efforts to deny the linkage of smoking to lung cancer or coal smoke to acid rain, this is the response whenever scientific findings suggest things that corporate and political actors find threatening… show more.

When I was 8 years old, I plastered our house with anti-smoking stickers. It greatly annoyed my parents—but they quit smoking. Alas, a couple other close relatives did not, and both ended up dying from smoking-related diseases.

Part of the reason they did not quit was surely the decades-long campaign by tobacco companies to sow doubts about the dangers of smoking.

This book illuminates the strategies that the tobacco companies used to get a few scientists to spread these doubts, and I was amazed to see how the exact same strategies—and in some cases the very same scientists—have been used… show more.

A small group of politically motivated researchers weaponized science and successfully delayed government action on everything from the dangers of smoking to the threat of acid rain for decades. Does that sound like a conspiracy theory?

In this book, Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway reveal that it was quite real. Motivated by conservative and then neoliberal ideas about the perverse nature of government regulation, these researchers systematically attempted to sow doubt about the harms of an unhealthy environment time and time again.

They didn’t have to win the scientific argument, they realized; rather, they just needed to fabricate the… show more.

Raising doubt is a way of producing uncertainty or ignorance. 

There have been several books on how various industries and lobbying organizations have used the production of doubt about scientific research as a strategy for profit-making or advancing political interests. 

Merchants of Doubt is my favorite among them because it is very well written and thoroughly researched, covering the history of this kind of doubt-mongering from its genesis in the tobacco industry to its maturation and key roles in the climate-change wars.

The authors also highlight the involvement of some scientists in eroding the scientific consensus on issues such as… show more.

Terrifying and eye-opening, this tells the true story of machinations worthy of a John Grisham thriller. A small but powerful group is determined to deny science and subvert democracy by manufacturing a lucrative new product: doubt. As the authors meticulously document, this is done deliberately and cynically, by corrupting a handful of scientists, destroying the lives of incorruptible ones, and going heavy on lobbying and media spin. But unlike the thrillers, the ending on climate denial has still to be written; the ball is in our court.