This week’s guest is Naomi Oreskes, co-author with historian Eric Conway of the new book Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming.

Through extensive archival research, Oreskes and Conway have managed to connect the dots between a large number of seemingly separate anti-science campaigns that have unfolded over the years. It all began with Big Tobacco, and the famous internal memo declaring, “Doubt is our Product.”

Then came the attacks on the science of acid rain and ozone depletion, and the flimsy defenses of Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars” program. And the same strategies have continued up to the present, with the battle over climate change.

Throughout this saga, several key scientific actors appear repeatedly—leaping across issues, fighting against the facts again and again. Now, Oreskes and Conway have given us a new and unprecedented glimpse behind the anti-science curtain.

Naomi Oreskes (Ph.D., Stanford, 1990) is Professor of History and Science Studies at the University of California, San Diego. Her research focuses on the historical development of scientific knowledge, methods, and practices in the earth and environmental sciences, and on understanding scientific consensus and dissent. She is the author of numerous noted books and papers, including a 2004 essay in Science entitled “The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change,” which was widely cited, debated, and referenced in Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth.”

http://www.pointofinquiry.org/naomi_oreskes_merchants_of_doubt/

Last couple of his podcasts Chris hasn’t been taking questions in advance. I’m sorry that seems to have gone by the wayside.

Doug,
I have been in the middle of a complex move—from Cambridge, MA, to Washington, D.C. via Cambridge, UK—and I booked a few shows without getting the chance to solicit comments from the forums. I regret that but it is not a chance in policy—just a matter of exigency. Things will return to normal once I’m settled in DC in mid June. Sound good?

chris

This book is reviewed along with some other climate-related books in Science—see

http://www.centerforinquiry.net/forums/viewthread/7864/

Re: Merchants of Doubt Kitcher says:

Because it is so thorough in disclosing how major policy decisions have been delayed or distorted, Merchants of Doubt deserves a wide readership.  It is tempting to require that all those engaged in the business of conveying scientific information to the general public should read it.  And that science journalists should abandon the obfuscating practice of presenting alternatives with inferior justification as if they were on a par with the scientific consensus.

And I recommended it as a good candidate for Chris Mooney….

CMooney - 04 June 2010 03:16 PM

Doug,
I have been in the middle of a complex move—from Cambridge, MA, to Washington, D.C. via Cambridge, UK—and I booked a few shows without getting the chance to solicit comments from the forums. I regret that but it is not a chance in policy—just a matter of exigency. Things will return to normal once I’m settled in DC in mid June. Sound good?

Sounds good to me!

Hope the move goes well, and thanks.

A fine interview and episode.

But distressing, of course.

Awesome Naomi Oreskes!
Good job getting her Chris!!
Guess the interview is out - I just got back from a river trip so haven’t had a chance to listen yet but surely will.  But, I have been a fan of PhD. Oreskes’ work since hearing her lecture on video ;-( at Birch Aquarium as part of their “Perspectives on Ocean Science Lectures”

If you haven’t heard it and are interested in the subject you owe it to yourself to check it out:

The American Denial of Global Warming

“Perspectives on Ocean Science Lectures”
First Aired: 12/17/2007
UCTV - 58 minutes

She really has done some great work and its not all climate politic related either check out her WIKI profile

I’ll be seeing her at a book signing here in the bay area. I can’t wait!

asanta - 06 June 2010 02:50 AM

I’ll be seeing her at a book signing here in the bay area. I can’t wait!

Cool.

Perhaps do me a favor, and tell her she’s got a great fan in Colorado and that many appreciate the wonderful insightful work she has been doing.  She has made a difference. 

Excellent interview.  Chris keeps the conversation going, and does a nice unobtrusive job of filling in various details.  (as opposed to someone like Charlie Rose’s tendency to become over baring due to his need to prove how smart he is at the expense of the interviewee’s narrative.)  Chris’ questions are crisp and following a smooth trajectory.  Ph.D. Oreskes once again does a wonderful of explaining herself.

I think many valuable things where brought up that are worth reviewing, thus I hope you folks don’t mind if I share my rough notes of many of the highlights of this informative interview.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

7:00 Naomi explains why she doesn’t like the term “manufacturing doubt” since doubt is actually an integral part of science…

7:50 Strategy for delaying legislative action & legislation

9:10 Chris: “How do we know historically that these tactics are without precedent…?”
Defending claim that 1953 ushered in an entirely new era in attacking science:

10:10 Interesting phenomena fighting the evidence though you appreciate it is correct.

13:00 The balance between what we know & what we don’t know.
 
Getting to the point were we can say that “This knowledge is secure, this knowledge is robust,
It is based on tremendous amounts of evidence that add up to a consistent picture and that it is rational and appropriate to move forward and take action on the basis of that knowledge.”

14:15 Strategy of undermining people’s small errors

15:00 The challenge is to tell a coherent story and present the evidence.

15:20 George Marshall Institute . . . and strategic defense system (unsaid the military industrial complex)

18:00 Acid Rain, Ozone depletion     19:00 the dress rehearsal

20:30 Keyworth & Reagan White House. . .  manipulating final drafts of reports

21:45 Attacks on Rachel Carlson & DDT

23:00 False on too many levels

24:30 “We do know that DDT was very harmful and we do know that it was not a magic bullet to cure malaria that its advocates are claiming.”

24:45 “The whole story is false from top to bottom.”
25:00 Why would they do that???

25:45 “It’s not about corporate profits, its about a deep seated political ideology”

26:00 There’s no free lunch.
global warming is the bill for our great prosperity.
everything has a price.

27:00 ...  great story, scientists as society’s waiters.

29:50 Reviewing the attacks on Ben Santer
The detection and attribution science. . . IPPC

34:00 Corporate news media ignoring scientists who are trying to defend themselves.

35:00 Creating an unlevel playing field
Mega coverage of the accusation, minimal coverage of the exoneration

35:50 FAILURE OF AMERICA’S FOURTH ESTATE, the f’n traitors. . . my words!
“Media acting as gatekeeper”. . . their words. 

36:15 We The Sad (disappointed) People. . .

36:30 The lesson being scientists cannot rely on journalists anymore and must find new avenues for presenting their knowledge.

The sad truth being if scientist don’t defend their own findings ~ who will?

37:00 SILENCE TO FALSE CHARGES IS THE SAME AS ACQUIESCENCE !

37:15 Scientists need to figure out alternative venues to defend their work!

38:00 Appreciating a different view of science - considering the concept of “certainty.”

39:10 Grappling with the dichotomy
“either their is absolute truth on the one hand or their is absolute collapse into relativism on the other hand. . . “

It was so thought provoking that I had to listen to it twice, and then force my son to listen to it. It will be the next book on my list of ‘must reads’. It should be criminal what is being done to Rachel Carson’s work.

Really great interview. Chris thanks very much for taking the CFI podcasts on in addition to everything else you have on your plate.

Jackson - 07 June 2010 04:25 AM

Really great interview. Chris thanks very much for taking the CFI podcasts on in addition to everything else you have on your plate.

ditto  

I am not impressed with this non-scientist writer’s explanations of complex scientific problems.

That she could come up with THAT TITLE for her essay is, to me, opposed to everything I know about scientific publication.

She could NEVER publish in a scientific journal.

Curiously, she reminds me of Paul Ehrlich who made similar speeches re “The Population Bomb” and why his predictions were correct.

They were not. Anything but.

Both seem to project personal angst and paranoid delusions. Is that what PhD means??

Analytic - 08 June 2010 06:50 AM

I am not impressed with this non-scientist writer’s explanations of complex scientific problems.

Right… and pray tell what are your qualifications!

Naomi Oreskes (Ph.D., Stanford, 1990) is Professor of History and Science Studies at the University of California, San Diego. Her research focuses on the historical development of scientific knowledge, methods, and practices in the earth and environmental sciences, and on understanding scientific consensus and dissent.

She has held grants from the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Philosophical Society, and is listed in Who’s Who in America and Who’s Who in Science and Engineering.

Oreskes is the author of
The Rejection of Continental Drift: Theory and Method in American Earth Science (Oxford University Press, 1999), “Verification, validation, and confirmation of numerical models in the earth sciences” (Science 263: 641-646, 1994),
and “Objectivity or Heroism: On the Invisibility of Women in Science” (Osiris 11: 87-133, 1996),

and editor of Plate Tectonics: An Insider’s History of the Modern Theory of the Earth (with Homer Le Grand, Westview Press, 2001), which was cited by Library Journal as one of the best science and technology books of 2002, and by Choice as an outstanding academic title of 2003.
She is currently completing “Science on a Mission: American Oceanography in the Cold War and Beyond,” to be published by the University of Chicago Press in 2007.

Oreskes’s most recent work deals with the science of climate change. Her 2004 essay “The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change” (Science 306: 1686), led to Op-Ed pieces in the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Los Angeles Times, and has been widely cited in the mass media, including National Public Radio (Fresh Air), The New Yorker, USA Today, Parade, as well as in the Royal Society’s publication, “A guide to facts and fictions about climate change,” and, most recently, in Al Gore’s movie, “An Inconvenient Truth.”

Department of History, 0104
University of California, San Diego
La Jolla, California 92093-0104

Analytic - 08 June 2010 06:50 AM

Both seem to project personal angst and paranoid delusions. Is that what PhD means??

Since she thoroughly documents how she came to her conclusions it appears there may be more delusions in your eyes than in her work.

Analytic - 08 June 2010 06:50 AM

Both seem to project personal angst and paranoid delusions. Is that what PhD means??

You tell me, you claim to have one! We have her credentials, as far as we can tell from your posts, yours may well have come out of a cereal box.