Notes from the Naomi Oreskes ‘Merchants of Doubt’ interview

By Anna Haynes
19 September 2011

See Tamino’s post for the excellent (34 min) interview & a discussion thereof. Here are my notes from watching: Marshall Institute was originally founded (by 3) to defend SDI (star wars) The idea of demanding equal time – Seitz learned it from tobacco industry They came from cold war rocketry programs It’s not overt corruption; no $ from corporate supporters at all, originally. Initially a modest budget, just the 3 of them; tactics were writing letters to editors, also including threatening to sue, e.g. a public radio station for equal time; Their original $ came from foundations. Later that shifted… They believed what they were pushing. It’s a story of error, but not of corruption. They believed passionately that the Soviet Union was a serious threat. The pathology is what happens when the cold war ends, 5 yrs after GMI’s founding. So then they’re at a loss for what to do…but (the pathology of a life spent fighting) they couldn’t stop fighting. 1989 (the year Berlin wall comes down) their new enemy is environmentalism. Now it’s made explicitly (enviros=commies!) Ironically, the environmental movement in the u.s. was created by progressive republicans… pinchot, roosevelt, rockefeller – hardly a communist. Their projection of a certain sort of cold war anticommunist anxiety onto a group of people whose historical roots are actually not left wing at all. Environmentalism begins to be leftwing after Nixon because of the issue of regulation – it’s no longer land conservation/preservation, becomes regulating business activity – now the business community/hard right wing of the Republican party begins to align itself against environmentalism & against regulation. This is where they make the link to communism – saying slippery slope, just a matter of time… Tobacco – their (messaging) target is the public, but they use science to do it – attack the science (dishonest) since if people think the science is unsettled, they’ll think it’s premature to impose regulations. Doubtmongering – a very clever campaign. Tobacco PR told their scientists “don’t lie, you don’t have to” 16:22
Yet to be an agnostic in the face of 50 years of overwhelming scientific data…that should be suspicious to people, that should be fishy In 1990s fossil fuel industry starts to make common cause, funnel money into these institutes. Surprising how many things the tobacco industry funded that had nothing to do with tobacco. Many antireg. causes – e.g. for Calif’s prop. 13 […]

Notes from Oreskes “Merchants of Doubt” interview