“Merchants of doubt” is Oreskes and Conway’s titular term for scientists who use their political influence to undermine scientific consensus about environmental and public health issues like climate change, pollution, and the dangers of secondhand smoke.
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Merchants of Doubt Term Timeline in Merchants of Doubt
The timeline below shows where the term Merchants of Doubt appears in Merchants of Doubt. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 6
...agreed to fight global warming. Doubling Down on Denial. Oreskes and Conway explain how the merchants of doubt stepped up their campaign in response. They began attacking the climate modeler Benjamin Santer, who...
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Conclusion
...the mainstream media still treated it as legitimate, and it’s still circulating today. Finally, the merchants of doubt publish their work in sources like the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, which sounds...
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...and the Cold War Legacy. Anti-communism was absolutely central to 20th-century American politics. The main merchants of doubt (Seitz, Singer, Nierenberg, and Jastrow) built careers around using science to fight communism during the...
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In other words, the merchants of doubt believe in “free market fundamentalism”—they think that society will only be free if the economy...
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