Ignore the documentary and take the time to read this painful book which was well-researched. You may not be able to get through Merchants easily, I often found myself putting it down for a two-day intervals due to the rage I felt.
Oreskes and Conway illustrate how a small group of conservative nuclear scientists and their allies have hijacked reality for the past 50 years. Yeah, 50 is how long these crooks and assholes have injured the planet. Obviously, the most famous issue they’ve steered in the wrong direction has been climate change but they’ve been hard at work long before this came to the forefront. They seeded doubt on smoking causing cancer, acid rain, the aftermath of nuclear war (nuclear winter) and the effectiveness of SDI (aka Star Wars). Quick confession, when I was younger, I favored SDI research. Did I think it would work flawlessly? No. I backed research into it because St. Reagan was itching to have an exchange with the Soviet Union and I wanted to die of old age. Had I known the sad state of affairs the Soviets were really in, I would’ve pushed more for my Plan B, let’s just set a good example by disarming first, just have enough to destroy the world twice, 15 was a tad much.
How did nuclear scientists who primary expertise was inventing a horrible end to mankind get pegged to argue for corporations on Biology, Ecology, Geography, Meteorology, Astronomy, Chemistry and Economics? Well, they were scientists, primarily Physicists so Astronomy and Meteorology touches overlaps their field plus this science is stronger in Math than the biological camp. Still, their past government/academic positions, a conservative mindset (translation, they shared the Right’s irrational fear of the Soviet Union) and corporate backing is what cinched them being trusted mouthpieces. The other element was their allies’ ability to play the “on the other hand” or false equivalence argument in the SCLM. The American Media is terrible at Science and these crooks knew it. As Eric Alterman once said, they knew how to work the refs, namely by framing Science into a political debate. The problem is, issues such as climate change, acid rain, SDI, etc.; don’t really belong in the two-camp narrative in which the opposition deserves equal time. John Oliver demonstrated this with Bill Nye. Yet this is what has happened for 50 years, giving the status quo defenders time to keep making a fortune while the world goes to shit. I guess Jack Welch, Ann Coulter and the board of Exxon have tickets to a new earth-like planet they’ve somehow hidden from NASA and ESA.
The SCLM is equally guilty. Their ignorance over how Science actually works gets exploited as a gotcha’ moment when what is really happening is peer review and error correction. A good example was proven by a former college friend, who has become a Right Wing Noise Repeater. He posted some story from the UK’s Daily Mail (already a dubious source) showing how a couple scientists at Duke put up their models claiming the forecast isn’t so bad and/or the IPCC is full of crap. Now Duke is a pretty famous university, their forte tends to be Medicine so their climate science isn’t as prestigious as say UC-Berkeley, MIT or Edinburgh. I read the article and rolled my eyes. It’s just their immediate findings which aren’t really done. Plus it needs to go through peer review like every thing else does. Or course, RWNR and his fellow Angry Whiteys in Iowa brought up the debunked cooling theory from the Seventies (even then, it was backed by minority), accusations of me watching MSNBC (I don’t have cable), I only read HuffPo (I rarely do, it’s an aggregate anyway), I love Al Gore (please) and it’s a Lefty conspiracy. I kept waiting for the comparison to Galileo’s persecution by the Catholic Church to pop up. What they won’t accept is that there’s an army of scientists (aka the 97%) countering their beliefs, never mind how these same scientists have socio-political/religious views across the spectrum, especially with the people residing in Asia. The so-called Merchants of Doubt have succeeded though for this RWNR is a college graduate, not in Science yet I recall he used to have decent reasoning capability. I’m the sure the hostility is mutual.
Scientists haven’t done themselves any favors neither. Few are very good at conveying what they know, do, discover, so on. Someone who can explain this in layman’s terms like Carl Sagan and Neil deGrasse Tyson is rare. Science is filled with arcane and technical language, it’s small wonder many have advanced degrees. Another great example is how the political types exploit the connotation to “theory.” In everyday language, theory really means hypothesis, a suspicion or a deduction awaiting proof. In Science, Theory is practically a Law but isn’t due to some gaps which keep it from 100% predictable. Evolution is often the one the doubters bring up. Now watch their heads explode when you mention Gravity falling under theoretical. Newton, Boyle and Kepler have Laws which never fail. Gravity has gaps we’re still trying to figure out when the scale gets microscopic and smaller. Watch A Bug’s Life, Pixar learned quickly with their initial research on how the Physics of adhesion were more powerful than Gravity with the insect world. The other problem is public perception. Science is a team-group effort. Hollywood purports the myths of Edison or Marie Curie pulling it off solo. Results aren’t instantaneous a la Star Trek neither.
What can we do? I’d say, read more and seek out real experts, another group Charles Pierce pointed out as being under attack. Remember, Science isn’t democratic nor is it always set in stone. Good Science is always refining itself to get closer to 100 percent like Newton’s Laws of Motion. There are times it can’t be 100 percent neither but I’ll more often go with Science over the Economists’ mantra, “It’s better to do nothing, than spend opportunity costs on what may be wrong.” Not exactly a wise strategy when dealing with a dinosaur-killing meteor heading toward our planet. Finally, always point out who’s backing the naysayer and their credentials. An Economist from the Cato Institute is hardly qualified to discuss Science any more than a fox on raising chickens.