A fancy way of a pessimist saying “I’m not a pessimist, I am just facing the facts” as expressed by Machiavelli 500 years ago: “…how we live is so far removed from how we ought to live, that he who abandons what is done for what ought to be done, will rather learn to bring about his own ruin than his preservation.”
When the fuss over possible health side effects from the use of mobile phones started, it instantly reminded me of something. Tobacco industry tactics! For every seed of doubt regarding possible negative side effects from the use of mobile phones, bulldozers of studies and committees instantly appeared to say the opposite. To a layman they seemed “scientific enough”. “Doctor” so and so talked, “certain scientists” were quoted, “reputable statistics” were thrown in for good measure.
It seems I was not the only one seeing a pattern. In their excellent recent book “Merchants of Doubt,” science historians Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway take apart many scientific issues and the way in which “think tanks” muddled the evidence in the media. (An excellent summary of how think tanks influence Green Politics here.) They start in 1953 with a case book analysis of how the tobacco industry did it. Then all sorts of other issues, from acid rain, global warming to the ozone hole, get analysed. Oreskes, a scientist herself, started seeing the pattern when her work as an oceanographer made the media portrayal of global warming seem completely inconsistent with her understanding of the ‘facts’.
You have two main tools and they are the same whether you are defending mobile phones or your reputation in the school playground: 1. Spread disinformation and 2. Stick to your story (especially those parts which seem to have appeal in the broader audience even when it is absolutely crystal clear that it complete nonsense. Confusing the public in this way is guaranteed to gain you ten or twenty years of whatever product or idea you want to sell. Like it did with the tobacco industry.
As a spin doctor I am fascinated by this topic. I also wish that there was a sequel looking at the media more carefully. For sure, journalists carry a huge part of the blame as they don’t do their homework properly. Much of the disinformation would be debunked instantly if they did even elementary double checking of the sources. If a thousand scientists say one thing and one think tank another, you had better triple check who is funding the think tank! Journalists often fall into the media trap of trying to simplify arguments and present them as straightforward oppositions. The topic also demands a second take to more carefully look at the differences between issues where the science was crystal clear, like the ozone, and others where it was not, like acid rain. (A triumph of the opposite kind as regulation was passed despite this!)
It is also interesting to follow up on the media assumptions regarding scientists (they are all socialists!) and the environmental movement (sandal wearing hippies) in a time when it has become a much more complex public issue. Portraying any view as “radical” usually pushes people to take the middle road. In pricing we call it the Goldilocks effect, in cognitive psychology it is the bias of aversion to extremes. If just one State decides to make mobile phone makers prominently feature SAR figures (radiation from mobile phones) they must be “extreme”. In a time of greater social responsibility and with companies and products having more and more to do with scientific discoveries, fully understanding the relative truths is of vital importance. Just like companies pulled away from Tiger Woods after the scandal, you really don’t want to be associated with what proves to be bad science propaganda. Yet even (or especially) big corporations are climbing on various cause bandwagons without fully understanding the risks.
There is a crucial difference: unlike illicit affairs or spats with prostitutes, bad (pseudo) science is in the public domain. There are well established rules to publication and pecking orders of status amongst them. For good reason. It is not that a lone scientist can’t be right some times, even when the entire planet says otherwise. But if that lone scientist is also the one who claimed that second hand smoking doesn’t do damage, CFCs don’t damage the ozone layer and that acid rain is good for certain crops…well you get the picture!
