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troubling story of how a cadre of influential scientists have clouded public |
| understanding of scientific facts to advance a political and economic agenda. | |
The U.S. scientific community has long led the world in research on public health, environmental science, and other issues affecting the quality of life.
Our scientists have produced landmark studies on the dangers of DDT, tobacco
smoke, acid rain, and global warming. But at the same time, a small yet potent
subset of this community leads the world in vehement denial of these dangers.
In their new book, Merchants of Doubt, historians Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway
explain how a loose–knit group of high-level scientists, with extensive political connections,
ran effective campaigns to mislead the public and deny well-established scientific
knowledge over four decades. In seven compelling chapters addressing tobacco, acid rain,
the ozone hole, global warming, and DDT, Oreskes and Conway roll back the rug on this
dark corner of the American scientific community, showing how the ideology of free
market fundamentalism, aided by a too-compliant media, has skewed public understanding
of some of the most pressing issues of our era.
| “A well-documented, pulls-no-punches account of how science works and how political motives can hijack the process by which scientific information is disseminated to the public.”—Kirkus Reviews |
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