I decided to read Merchants of Doubt initially because it pertained to my ongoing fascination with public relations and my desire to write a fake PR textbook and build WorldGlobalPR.com (a fake PR site).  Last year, during the oil spill and my fascination with BP and their PR spin, I kept hearing about BP’s attempts to bribe scientists and give grants to certain professors to NOT make their gulf research public for 3 years. This pissed me off, and apparently it’s not that uncommon.

Merchants of Doubt focuses on the struggle between protecting the free market and the environment. Some folks put the free market ahead of everything. Some assume that the technology of tomorrow will fix the problems we create today, others just think that regulation of any markets will ultimately lead to a larger sacrifice of freedoms. Whatever their intentions, their job/mission is to create doubt for largely accepted scientific truths.

The book examines the opponents to issues like acid rain, tobacco smoke, the depletion of the ozone layer, Carl Sagan’s warning of a nuclear war creating a nuclear winter, pesticides (namely DDT) and global warming.

The tactics for this bullshit are pretty well known. Corporations create front groups and lobbying firms that then fund “research committees” that often have very patriotic and trustworthy sounding names (ie. The American Enterprise Institute funded by conservative think tanks and the fossil fuels industry). These groups donate money to “scientists” to participate in their “research” and put their names on faulty science. These lobbying firms and front groups put these “scientific” arguments into press releases and they send them out to the media. I hate using quotes like that, but it’s actually appropriate.

The big problem here is that the scientific process, which requires peer review before being published, is thrown out the window. A scientific paper outlining the reality of global warming largely accepted by climate scientists is put on a level playing field as a press release written for a specific purpose by a scientist hired by a lobbying firm.

One argument that stuck with me, and that I’ve been pondering for awhile is the idea of “fair and balanced” media. The fact is, especially in the case of science, not all arguments deserve the same amount of credibility or time. The public relations industry manipulates and neuters our media outlets into reporting absolute fucking nonsense in the name of objectivity. A political party can choose their position on something, tell everybody what to say to the media, and their views are entertained because if they were written off as absolute fucking nonsense by the anchors, the network would be deemed biased. They muddle fact, and they create the necessary doubt to halt progress.

This wouldn’t be that hard to avoid if members of the media considered or even cared about their sources. This doesn’t just go for climate change, this applies to every issue facing Americans today, the war, the financial crisis, health care, agriculture, etc., etc. When a news outlet contacts a source or invites them on their program, they should be damn sure where that person is coming from and whether or not he has been paid by the people/institutions with financial interest in the matter at hand. If he does, his argument is invalid. That is objectivity. Having some discretion about who you talk to and their motivations isn’t being biased, it’s being careful.

This book didn’t tell me anything that I didn’t already understand or believe to be true, but it showed how it actually works in practice. The spin that infects our media comes from somewhere. It’s not a mistake, it’s not even misinformed people (all the time). It’s an institutional effort to stymie progress and maintain the status quo.