Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming

The narrator describes Ben Santer, “one of the world’s most distinguished scientists” (1), as someone who is unassuming and moderate in every aspect—politics, lifestyle, etc. For the past twenty years, Santer has worked to “fingerprint” changes in the atmosphere in order to prove global climate change: “Natural climate variation leaves different patterns and traces than warming caused by greenhouse gases” (1), and Santer works to locate these discrepancies. Because the troposphere—the layer of atmosphere closest to earth—is warming while the stratosphere—the atmospheric layer further away from earth—is cooling, Santer has concluded that greenhouse gases are responsible for global climate change, not the Sun as other scientists have postulated. In fact, the troposphere is actually becoming larger as a result of this warming, an idea which confuses many people who are not scientists and affects many aspects of American life, including laws. Santer’s conclusion is not popular, and he has been attacked for his scientific conclusions.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was created in 1988 “in response to early warnings about global warming” (2). As early as 1965, scientists warned lawmakers and politicians about the human impact on climate. In 1995, Ben Santer authored a report issued by the IPCC which detailed the anthropocentric climate changes underway. Many dissenting scientists accused Santer of doctoring the documents to make his claim of anthropocentric climate change seem more valid, but this was not the case, as his article had been extensively peer reviewed to ensure its potential validity and his only changes had been made in response to the reviewers’ comments. The debate was made public in the Wall Street Journal, and the public was misled into believing that Santer falsified the document.

A few years later, Santer happened upon an article that discussed the controversy surrounding the causal linkage between tobacco use and cancer. He realized that two of the scientists on the sides of the tobacco companies, Frederick Seitz and Siegfried Fred Singer, had been among the people who attacked him for his IPCC report. They were conservative scientists who worked to ensure American military hegemony during the Cold War, and then later worked with tobacco companies to attempt to disprove the harmful effects of cigarette smoke. In particular, Singer, who was funded by the Tobacco Institute, worked to disprove the Surgeon General’s declaration concerning the hazards of secondhand smoke, stating that this conclusion “was distorted by a political agenda to expand government control over all aspects of our lives” (6). This represents the “Tobacco Strategy,” in which scientists were used by corporations to sow doubt concerning environmental and health concerns. People, including presidents and the media, listened to these scientists because of the work they did during the Cold War, failing to differentiate between a scientific debate and misinformation. Seitz, Singer, Nierenberg and Jastrow all used their power and influence “to present themselves as authorities, and they used their authority to try to discredit any science they didn’t like” (8). Many scientists’ careers were ruined as a result.