Science Communication: Merchants of Doubt

"lifts the curtain on a secretive group of highly charismatic, silver-tongued pundits-for-hire who present themselves as scientific authorities- yet have the contrary aim of spreading maximum confusion about well-studied public threats"

This past Thursday was the Sustainable Science Communication Conference held at UCSB. The conference started off with a showing of the film Merchants of Doubt, based off of the book of the same title by Erik M. Conway, a historian at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Cal Tech, and Naomi Oreskes, a historian of science now at Harvard University. In short, this was a fascinating film about a very different kind of science communication.

The film begins with the magician Jamy Ian Swiss, who talks about how audiences willfully and knowingly participate in being deceived by the magician and the stark contrast of the deception purported by these merchants of doubt. Indeed, although this film is meant to be satirical of the brutish yet manipulative tactics of these pundits-for-hire, it is also horrifying. The film makers interview several of these pundits who see nothing wrong with spreading doubt in order to stymy legislation that could cut profits for the company. What is even more astonishing is it is often the same people who are posing as these "third party experts" that are hired across several industries to surreptitiously advance their objectives. The film shows that this has happened with the health risks of tobacco and  fire retardants, and more recently pharmaceuticals, the food industry, and (most relevant to this conference) climate change. In fact the campaigns run for Big Tobacco were so successful, that the same strategies are being used in issues we face today.

That is, the main goal of these pundits-for-hire is to turn the focus away from the science and on the politics of regulation by casting doubt, by personally attacking the scientists, and by manipulating the perception the public. I found this movie to be entertaining but also elucidating on the nature of manipulation in communication. I hope you will consider watching the film, and also think twice about what you see on media.