Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Merchants of Doubt, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Science, Trust, and Public Policy
Capitalism and the Environment
Media Bias
Certainty, Doubt, and the Scientific Method
Summary
Analysis
In 1963, a group of U.S. Department of Agriculture scientists found highly acidic rain in New Hampshire’s remote Hubbard Brook woods. They were surprised and worried. Environmentalism was becoming a hot political issue at the time. For decades, both parties agreed on basic environmental policies, like preserving national parks. But in the 1960s and 1970s, policies like the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act started generating controversy, because they called for the government to regulate environmentally harmful economic activity.
Environmental pollution issues like acid rain were perfect targets for the merchants of doubt because they took all the key characteristics of the tobacco debate to the next level. First, environmental policy pits a few corporations’ private self-interest against society’s overall public interest. Secondly, it raises the question of how extensively the government should be able to regulate the economy. And finally, pollution issues like acid rain are difficult for people to understand intuitively or see with the naked eye, which means that how seriously they take them depends entirely on how much they trust scientists.
Themes
By the 1970s, scientists knew that nitrogen and sulfur emissions from burning oil and coal were causing acid rain in remote places like Hubbard Brook. In 1971, Swedish meteorologist Bert Bolin published the first comprehensive report on acid rain’s significant environmental dangers, and over the next few years, governments and scientists began studying it in much more depth. The evidence was clear: acid rain devastates fish populations, damages plants, corrodes buildings, and harms human health.
Acid rain’s effects are felt far from the places that cause it, which means that most of the people, animals, and ecosystems that it harms bear no responsibility for it. This makes it a useful model for thinking about the other environmental dangers that take center stage in the rest of the book. In all these cases, science illuminates the inherent conflict between corporate interests and the greater good.
Themes
In 1976, when Hubbard Brook researcher Gene Likens described the link between acid rain and mass fish die-offs in the American Chemical Society’s official magazine, it still wasn’t clear which human activities were causing it. Yet, within a few years, scientists learned to link acid rain back to specific sources through isotope studies and explain why it affects soils more than streams. By 1981, scientists had a complete and accurate model of it.
It took scientists many years to fully understand acid rain. But this is the case for all reliable scientific research, which always requires a massive, communal undertaking. Scientists must study every aspect of the problem in depth, then check one another’s work for accuracy and coherence. This fact underlines how radical and absurd the merchants of doubt are when they claim to disprove the whole scientific community’s consensus on their own.
Themes
Political Action and the U.S.-Canadian Rift. Oreskes and Conway explain how, in 1979, European countries agreed to collectively limit air pollution (especially sulfur). Shortly thereafter, the U.S. and Canada came to a similar agreement and began cooperating on a 10-year study on acid rain. After all, most acid rain in Canada actually came from pollution originating in the U.S.
These early agreements on acid rain pollution show how effective public policy can and should follow the scientific consensus. It also points to the way that science can unify people and governments across borders. Scientists everywhere work together on issues of shared concern, and they follow the same fundamental code of ethics. Thus, when their work becomes the basis for policy, they tend to promote international cooperation (especially on issues that literally cross borders, like acid rain).
Themes
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Skepticism in the Reagan White House. Oreskes and Conway explain how Reagan’s pro-business, small-government ideology derailed the 10-year acid rain study. The study found a clear link between human emissions and worsening acid rain. Yet, in its official summary of the study¸ the U.S. government falsely called this link uncertain. One reason for this difference is certainly that Canada’s economy relies largely on forestry and fish, while the U.S. produces far more pollution. But the main reason for this difference is actually that the Reagan administration pressured scientists to alter the summary.
Reagan shared many of the same principles as the merchants of doubt. Most importantly, he strongly believed in unregulated capitalism, and according to the authors, he was willing to accept nearly any cost to defend it—including imposing acid rain on ecosystems throughout the U.S. and Canada. If Edward Teller’s influence during the SDI controversy shows how scientists can distort politics, then Reagan's presidency shows how politics can distort science.
Themes
Getting a Third Opinion. Oreskes and Conway explain how, after the National Academy of Sciences reviewed the U.S.-Canada study and concluded that acid rain posed serious dangers, Reagan created his own independent panel to review these conclusions. As its chair, he chose William Nierenberg—the cofounder of the Marshall Institute, who had never studied acid rain but already served in several prominent positions under Reagan. Like Seitz and Jastrow, Nierenberg was a successful Cold War nuclear physicist who despised environmentalism and strongly supported the Vietnam War. He was opinionated and arrogant but also brilliant. For the panel, he selected men like the ozone researcher Sherwood Rowland, the fallout expert Lester Machta, and Gene Likens. At first, most of them agreed that acid rain was dangerous.
Just like Teller convinced the CIA to hire “Team B,” Reagan tried to supplement the official panel of independent scientific experts with his own panel of loyal conservatives. He and his administration weren’t interested in finding out the truth, but merely in finding experts who would tell them what they wanted to hear. Thus, he gave the merchants of doubt a prominent voice in the highest levels of his government. It's no surprise that Nierenberg’s background looks very similar to Seitz, Singer, Jastrow, and Teller’s: he also rose to prominence because of his conservative views and connections with the military.
Themes
The Nierenberg Acid Rain Peer Review Panel. Oreskes and Conway summarize this panel’s review of the joint U.S.-Canada study. The panel concluded that acid rain is a serious problem and the government should take steps to reduce emissions. But a separate appendix suggested that there wasn’t yet enough data to justify government action. The author of this appendix was Fred Singer—the only member of the panel appointed directly by the White House, rather than by Nierenberg.
While the panel’s assessment faithfully represented the existing research, Fred Singer’s appendix cleverly reinterpreted this science in order to reach a conclusion that fit the Reagan administration’s policy goals. Singer’s strategy was the same one used by tobacco companies and Fred Seitz during the nuclear winter debate. First, he denied the existing evidence about acid rain. Then, he used this denial as a basis for claiming that there wasn’t enough evidence on the subject. And finally, he assumed that, if there wasn’t enough evidence, acid rain must not be dangerous at all.
Themes
Another conservative, politically well-connected Cold War physicist, Fred Singer worked on major satellite programs (and frequently fought with other scientists) in the 1950s before moving to work primarily in policy. In the 1960s and early 70s, he was an environmentalist: he spoke out about the dangers of overconsumption and ecosystem collapse. But by 1978, he began questioning whether preserving clean air and water is a worthwhile economic decision, and three years later, he was publicly calling for total deregulation of the U.S. oil industry.
Singer’s switch from environmentalist to free market crusader is crucial, because it speaks to the underlying ideology that has motivated the merchants of doubt to undermine science. According to the authors, Singer simply decided that the environment is less valuable than economics—specifically, preserving major corporations’ profit margins and, even more importantly, their right to pollute. Oreskes and Conway will later call this way of thinking “free market fundamentalism.”
Themes
In 1982, the White House appointed Singer to Nierenberg’s panel, choosing him over candidates with far more relevant research experience. On the panel, he repeated the same argument he had made in a letter to Nierenberg earlier that year: the problem of acid rain was too complex to justify emissions reduction laws.
Oreskes and Conway heavily suggest that the White House appointed Singer to the panel because it knew that he would use invented doubts as a justification to defend polluters. In other words, the administration seems to have deliberately courted the merchants of doubt and promoted their tactics in an effort to undermine needed regulations.
Themes
In June of 1983, the Nierenberg panel published a five-page interim report explaining that sulfur dioxide emissions were acidifying lakes, killing fish, and harming forests. But the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy struck out two paragraphs noting how these effects could cascade throughout the food chain and take decades to reverse. It also reordered paragraphs in the report, so that it would start by emphasizing the limits of existing research, rather than acid rain’s clear dangers and the need to stop it. In a related document, it added a new introduction by Fred Singer, who claimed that acid rain is not “life-threatening” and too costly to fix. Contrary to the panel’s conclusions, he proposed only limited, cost-effective emissions reductions.
The White House modified the Nierenberg report in order to undermine it—and ensure that the conclusive existing research on acid rain would not lead to new regulations. Of course, in the process, it willfully misrepresented this research. Singer’s perspective perfectly fit with the administration’s: both viewed environmental problems exclusively in terms of economic costs and benefits. In turn, both assumed that the economic costs of acid rain would be limited and predictable. Ironically, then, they claimed with relative certainty that acid rain would only cause minor damage, even as they argued that more research was needed to truly understand the phenomenon.
Themes
In fact, during the panel’s discussions, Fred Singer repeated unproven claims from the energy industry and accused other scientists of exaggerating acid rain’s effects. He gave the eight other panelists documents explaining the Reagan administration’s policy objective: promoting the free market and finding technological solutions to environmental problems. Throughout the process, he insisted that resources like lakes shouldn’t be considered at all in government policy because scientists can’t prove that they have inherent monetary value. In a public rebuttal to the panel’s interim report, Singer wrongly insisted that there still wasn’t enough evidence on acid rain (which, he said, may even be beneficial).
Singer’s behavior during the panel discussions shows that he was working to promote a specific ideology, when he was really supposed to be evaluating the existing research on acid rain from a disinterested scientific perspective. Instead of updating his ideas to fit the evidence, he discarded evidence that didn’t fit with his ideas. For instance, he blindly assumed that innovation in the market would resolve acid rain, even though all the available evidence suggested that the problem would be nearly impossible to reverse once it advanced beyond a particular stage.
Themes
Singer was also tasked with writing the report’s chapter about the costs and benefits of reducing acid rain. But he concluded that ecological damage has no measurable cost, so the benefits of stopping acid rain are zero. The rest of the panel refused to accept this conclusion and published Singer’s chapter as a separate appendix instead. Singer concluded that since analyzing the costs and benefits of emissions reduction is too difficult, the government should leave it to the free market by allowing companies to trade pollution rights and find the cheapest emissions reduction strategies on their own. Of course, this view reflected the administration’s official stance.
Singer’s argument that acid rain imposes zero costs on society shows why it’s so dangerous to approach environmental issues purely through the realm of economics. If policymakers can simply ignore anything that they can’t put a monetary value on, then even human life and well-being are largely irrelevant unless they produce profit. Singer’s cap-and-trade proposal assumes that companies will figure out the most economically efficient level of pollution, but he never asks what level of pollution is best for the environment. Ironically, the economically efficient level of pollution depends on what price the government puts on pollution—which, in turn, depends on how seriously policymakers take environmental damage. This all makes it even more clear that Singer’s goal wasn’t to make a coherent, honest argument about how to deal with the acid rain problem, but rather to say anything it took to undermine potential new regulations.
Themes
Based on the panel report, a congressional panel rejected acid rain legislation by a 10-9 vote. Business publications celebrated the decision and falsely claimed that scientists had barely studied acid rain.
The alliance between the merchants of doubt and the administration succeeded. It allowed acid rain to continue, and Fred Singer’s distortions spread much farther in the public record than the real, conclusive research on it.
Themes
Manipulating Peer Review. Oreskes and Conway explore why, even though Congress and the White House received the Nierenberg panel report in April 1984, it wasn’t released to the public until August. Two congressmen accused the Reagan administration of suppressing the report, but the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy replied that it wasn’t even finished until July. In fact, between April and July, the Office was editing the report’s executive summary to significantly weaken its conclusions. It never informed most of the panelists, who raised an outcry when they learned what had happened. Nierenberg publicly claimed not to know about the changes, but panelists’ testimony and documentation suggests that he actually made these changes, at the behest of the president’s chief science advisor.
Legitimate science is peer-reviewed: researchers check each other’s work, then make whatever improvements are needed to ensure that it’s accurate and reliable. But the Reagan administration did the opposite: it secretly modified the Nierenberg report in order to replace its scientific conclusions with ideological ones. In fact, the evidence suggests that the administration may have put Nierenberg in charge of the panel for this very purpose. Nierenberg wasn’t as blatantly ideological or hostile to mainstream science as Singer, but he shared the same underlying faith in the free market and was just as willing to put politics before science when asked.
Themes
For the rest of Reagan’s term, his administration refused all action to stop acid rain, and his science advisors kept claiming not to know what causes it. As with tobacco, the science actually was settled, but a few doubt-makers convinced the public otherwise. While honest scientists like Gene Likens continued publishing conclusive research about acid rain in academic journals, the popular business media kept claiming that the science was unsettled. It enthusiastically cited dissenting scientists like soil researcher Edward Krug, who repeated the widely debunked claim that natural processes were causing soil acidification, and Laurence Kulp, a Columbia geochemist who believed in using science to prove Christian principles.
With acid rain, as with the SDI, doubt-mongering became the Reagan administration’s official position. Oreskes and Conway point out how journalists unwittingly amplified the administration’s lies by primarily covering the political debate over acid rain, rather than the scientific evidence about it. And when they did cover the scientific debate, newspapers spoke to the sources with the most powerful backing—who were generally paid to undermine legitimate scientific research. Ultimately, newspapers simply have a far greater impact on public life and policy than academic journals. Thus, in science-based policy, lies often travel much further than facts.
Themes
In 1990, the George H.W. Bush administration finally started regulating sulfur dioxide emissions through a “cap and trade” program. In 2003, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) concluded that this program had cost $8-9 billion, but saved $101-119 billion, over the previous decade. Contrary to the energy industry’s warnings, “protecting the environment didn’t produce economic devastation.”
While the merchants of doubt significantly delayed policy action on acid rain—and ensured several more years of environmental destruction—they weren’t able to stop regulation completely. The EPA’s assessment shows that Fred Singer and his allies were wrong from the start: stopping acid rain wasn’t actually costlier than letting it continue. Oreskes and Conway suggest that Singer’s primary worry may not have truly been the overall economic costs of regulation, but rather the specific costs to the few polluting companies who would have to modify their practices under new regulations.
Themes
Yet this market-based program didn’t go far enough. In 1999, Gene Likens and his colleagues found that acidification was still worsening at the Hubbard Brook forest, which was shrinking fast. And as of 2007, the George C. Marshall Institute is still calling acid rain a “largely hypothetical” threat that requires more research. Research by technology historians Margaret Taylor and David Hounshell suggests that strict regulation would control pollution far better than cap-and-trade, as it would give companies a true economic incentive to innovate in the field. But instead, “doubt-mongering” delayed the regulation process for years, and the scientists who did it began branching out into other fields.
It seems that no amount of research will ever make the merchants of doubt see acid rain as a real threat: no matter how much conclusive evidence comes out about it, the Institute continues to insist that it’s not enough. Meanwhile, Likens’s research points to Oreskes and Conway’s broader conclusion about environmental policy: regulation cannot succeed if it’s limited to market-friendly solutions. Finally, Taylor and Hounshell’s work suggests that these seemingly market-friendly solutions are actually harmful to markets in the long run. In other words, avoiding regulation really just means putting the short-term self-interest of a few polluting companies above the long-term self-interest of society as a whole—including the broader economy.
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