NAOMI ORESKE’S MERCHANTS OF DOUBT

NAOMI ORESKE’S MERCHANTS OF DOUBT

We went to the second of Naomi Oreske’s Patten lectures at Indiana University.  She discussed her book Merchants of Doubt.  In the 1970s a coalition formed between two political economists, Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hajek and four physicists Robert Jastrow, Frederick Seitz,  William Nierenberg, and Frederick Singer.  The economists were Ayn Rand type libertarians who believed that government regulation led to government control led to socialism led to communism and loss of freedom. They favored laissez faire capitalism, a powerful military, and a fear of liberals, environmentalists, and critics of government (especially of the conservative government they favored). As Cold Warriors they joined and formed think tanks with the financial backing of millionaires and billionaires who shared their outlook.  One of these was the George Marshall Institute.  Its members included the four physicists, two of whom (Seitz and Singer) had been consultants to the tobacco industry.  The tobacco industry funded research which favored the tobacco industry’s position that tobacco had no bad health effects on the respiratory or circulatory systems or the induction of cancers. They came up with the strategy of casting doubt on the critics, especially in the medical field, who claimed tobacco was the major cause of these diseases in smokers or in persons exposed to second hand smoke exhaled at home or in the work place.  These four scientists used the same strategy and their institutes to deny that coal heavy in sulfur caused acid rain, that fluoridated hydrocarbons used as refrigerants and propellants were the cause of the ozone hole widening in Antarctica, and that human produced carbon dioxide was the cause of global warming leading to dramatic climate change.  They did so not because they were financially dependent on the industries causing the pollution but because of their ideology as cold warriors and libertarians favoring the interests of industry and the military.  

Even earlier the chemical industry used the strategy of casting doubt on the role of DDT in the disappearance of birds from widespread spraying of insecticides.  During the Vietnam war the same strategy of doubt was used to deny any ecological or health problems associated with the spraying of herbicides (Agent Orange, especially) to destroy crops sand to clear areas used by the Viet Cong.  Even earlier, my mentor, Hermann Muller, was assailed by those using radiation in the military, industry, or health for suggesting low doses of radiation were cumulative and that that society needed protection from avoidable exposure of radiation and excessive release of radiation.  Even earlier than that, if you read Henrik Ibsen’s play An Enemy of the People, you will see that Norwegian policy in the 1800s was against those who raised fears of contagious diseases from the slovenly habits and neglect that was tolerated during the infancy of the public health movement.   I would not be surprised it can be traced even further back to classic Greek drama where messengers with bad news were neither welcome nor tolerated (think of Oedipus or think of the way prophets were ignored in the Old Testament).  Wishful thinking goes with ideology of the left or right.   Those with power are not willing to give up their privileges when criticized by findings that bad outcomes can arise from the activities of the powerful. It is not just dictators but anyone who lives by wishful thinking that favors denial to regulation in the public interest. We may no longer kill the messengers, but we sure like to cast doubt, scorn, or denial on their concerns and warnings.