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Why This Book Matters:
Merchants of Doubt is a gut-wrenching and mind-opening narrative on how some of the most well-known scientists have distorted the public’s opinion on crucial environmental, nuclear, and smoking issues, all for the benefit of corporate and industrial entities.
The Big Takeaways:
- The Tobacco industry employed PR firms and scientists to counter studies against smoking.
- If Top tobacco firms in the US hired well-known scientist and PR firms to distort dirty secrets of their product
- The Tobacco firms tried to cast doubts on the harms of passive smoking.
- By the 1980s, evidence emerged about the harmful effects of passive smoking as well. Tobacco firms in the US this time went one step ahead; they questioned the science itself.
- The threat of a Nuclear war was prolonged with the help of scientists who helped squash peace initiatives.
- When President Nixon tried to implement the Détente policy during the Cold War, a handful of scientists intentionally jeopardized the initiative by feeding public hysteria of a Soviet threat.
- The global scientific community is still battling the global warming deniers in their community.
- The corporate sector and their employed scientists were actively denying the existence of global warming.
- A well-crafted political stunt tried to devalue harms of DDT, an insecticide, and cast doubt on environmental regulations
- When an honest scientist presented the dangers of DDT, she was vilified for spreading baseless paranoia, while chemical makers cast doubts on environmental regulations.
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