Science should be something we can rely on to educate ourselves on various subjects. We trust that scientists do extensive research and provide us with accurate results. Unfortunately, scientific truth can be obscured in the way it is presented, demonstrating only what a small group of particular scientists (or the politicians they work for) want us to believe. This small group has conspired over a span of four decades, sowing seeds of doubt in the minds of the public on every topic from tobacco use’s relationship to cancer to global warming.

The Tobacco Strategy was used to confuse the American people about the dangers of tobacco use. Scientists learned of the risks of smoking and its cancer-causing properties long before these facts were presented to the public. The health risks of smoking had been known to the tobacco industry and to science since the 1950s. In 1953, a lab test performed on mice by researchers at the Sloan-Kettering Institute showed conclusively that cigarette tar painted on their skin caused cancer. The media soon publicized the results of that lab test, leading the tobacco industry to frantically find a way to combat this negative publicity and sow the seeds of doubt about the science behind it. 

By the late 1950s, the tobacco industry began to fund research to find other links to cancer that were not tobacco related. They even sought out C.C. Little,  a geneticist who had been a supporter of eugenics. His belief was that cancer was a genetic weakness, therefore, smoking did not cause cancer. With the help of Dr. Little, the industry was able to enlist the help of other doctors and public health authorities to challenge the dangers of smoking. The tobacco industry invited the National Cancer Institute and American Heart Association to board meetings to make it appear they were concerned about public health.

The tobacco industry soon enlisted the help of renowned scientist Dr. Frederick Seitz. Not only was Seitz a solid-state physicist, but he also had worked on the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb. He embodied the credentials the industry was looking for to pedal doubt to the American people. The use of media and the Fairness Doctrine were instrumental in creating doubt. The Fairness Doctrine was a rule instated by the Federal Communications Commission to ensure the media equally covered both sides of controversial public issues. If the harms of tobacco were portrayed in the media, then according to the Fairness Doctrine, the “safety” of tobacco use should be portrayed as well. 

Seitz felt that the attacks on the tobacco industry were unfounded. Like Little, he believed disease to be linked to a genetic deficiency. Seitz recruited other scientists and medical experts who would corroborate his belief. These scientists emphasized that there is always room for doubt, and that no one can say with complete certainty that someone’s cancer resulted directly from smoking and not from other outside factors or a genetic predisposition.

Over the years, the tobacco industry would win many of the lawsuits brought against it. Despite the use of warning labels and medical advice, the American people still believed that the harmful effects of smoking were subject to scrutiny. It was not until 2006 that the tobacco industry was found guilty of fraud. US District Judge Gladys Kessler  found that the industry was fully aware of the health risks of smoking as early as the 1950s, but continued to deceive the public.

Frederick Seitz set his sights on anti-communist causes in the 1980s. He employed the help of several other scientists to roll back communism and its influence. They soon teamed up to defend Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative in 1983. The SDI was the proposed placement of missile defense in space. Reagan argued it would “stop” an atomic bomb from space if the Soviets were to launch a missile at the United States. Opponents believed the effectiveness of such a defense system would be extremely limited. To combat the opposition, the George C. Marshall Institute was created, and Frederick Seitz was named chairman of the board. In addition to the Institute, Seitz and his colleagues formed an alliance called “Team B,” in support of the SDI.

The SDI was extremely controversial within the scientific community and even among Reagan’s advisors. Some feared it would provoke the Soviets to attack before the system was in place. By 1986, 6,500 scientists signed a pledge to deny funds to build the missile defense system. Safety was also an issue, as the U.S. military would have to shoot missiles at its own nation to test accuracy and effectiveness. Critics of the initiative branded it as “Star Wars” to the American people due to its controversial and seemingly sci-fi concepts.

Robert Jastrow was a longtime associate of Seitz. He was the founder of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies and a proponent of the SDI. He was media savvy and convinced leaders of Congress that the Soviets already had missile defense systems like the SDI in place. He made alarming arguments that greatly exaggerated the Soviet capabilities. Ultimately, his strategy was effective. Congress approved spending more than $60 billion on SDI and its successor, the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization.

While Team B was actively trying to get funding for the SDI passed, other scientists were trying to educate and warn of a “nuclear winter.” Carl Sagan had recently come into the spotlight for his focus on such an outcome. He felt that the use of any sort of nuclear weapon would plunge the earth into a deep freeze. Seitz and his supporters disagreed with Sagan, for if he was correct, no one could win a nuclear war. 

With the help of his cousin, Russell Seitz, Frederick Seitz launched an attack on the idea of a nuclear winter. They turned the argument into a political one, claiming it was a leftist/liberal idea. Seitz and his colleagues were influential in the Reagan administration and proclaimed nuclear winter as a leftist environmental concern. Suddenly, science was becoming political. The right wing began to turn against science, as many in the scientific community were focusing on the environment. 

Acid rain became a major concern to scientists and environmentalists in the 1970s and 1980s, when they began to understand the cause and effects of the phenomenon. They learned that air pollution resulting from the burning of fossil fuels turns the rain acidic. The ecological effects of acid rain begin when it seeps into the soil and contaminates water supply. Once it affects the soil and water, it soon becomes harmful to trees and wildlife. Acid rain would ultimately affect food and water supply for humans if left unchecked. With this new information, scientists began seeking regulation and immediate action.

Opponents of pollution regulation soon came to the forefront. They argued that there was not enough scientific evidence to back the “concept” of acid rain. Mainly concerned with the economic impact of regulations, one group of scientists worked to discredit the information about acid rain’s effect on the environment. Two of the scientists opposing environmental regulation were Bill Neirenberg and Fred Singer. The latter was a prominent scientist in Reagan’s administration who also had actively opposed tobacco regulation. While Canada was already taking progressive action to address acid rain, the U.S. was hesitant to impose any restrictions on fossil fuel burning. Prior to the Reagan administration, the Republican party were supporters of environmental regulation and preservation. Now, they were pitted against science and environmental concerns as they focused on industry and capitalism. 

But economists soon had to address the environmental impacts of pollution. An article in the Wall Street Journal garnered much attention as it went into great detail describing the potential long-term effects of acid rain. Now the topic was garnering so much attention that Republicans could no longer ignore it. Despite the great potential cost of mitigating pollution’s harm, pretending there were no problems was not an effective strategy. Neirenberg and Singer were able to create enough doubt about the occurrence of acid rain that the Reagan administration never sought regulations. However, they inadvertently acknowledged it as an environmental concern when they pushed against regulation and outlined the billions of dollars it would take to combat the effects of acid rain. Such an expensive repair effort was needed only because the problem was real.

The ozone layer is an important part of the earth’s stratosphere. It absorbs most of the ultraviolet emissions from the sun, therefore protecting humans from potentially harmful effects such as respiratory illnesses and skin cancer-causing UV rays. In the 1970s the development of the “supersonic transport,” or SST, would lead to the realization that human activity was damaging the ozone layer. The production of CFCs, or chlorofluorocarbons, from SST emissions drew focus to the quality of the ozone layer. However, once research began, SSTs did not seem to be nearly as much of a threat to the ozone layer as aerosol spray cans. Scientists began their research by sending refrigerated flasks into the stratosphere to collect air samples. The results led to the discovery that the ozone layer was depleting. CFCs were the culprit, and they were mainly released from aerosol spray cans. 

After this discovery, the US Environmental Protection Agency sought regulation. The aerosol industry immediately took action to defend their products and formed the Aerosol Education Bureau and the Committee on Atmospheric Sciences. To shift blame away from manufacturers of aerosol products, the Committee on Atmospheric Science initiated a resistance campaign that tried everything from pro-industry press to blaming volcanoes. But The EPA had successfully appealed to the
US Food and Drug Administration, and regulations were on the way. But by the time the regulations were announced, the American people had already moved away from aerosol sprays and were seeking cheaper, safer alternatives. 

Although scientific studies showed that human activity directly caused ozone depletion, a counternarrative arose. Fred Singer stepped in again, this time to debate the veracity of ozone depletion, and its supposed causes. He insisted that the use of CFCs was not responsible for the hole.  He created distractions from the problem by claiming genetic predisposition, population shifts to the Sun Belt, and changes in lifestyle were the actual causes of skin cancer and respiratory illnesses caused by ozone depletion. Singer battled by saying the science on CFCs was incomplete and that replacing them would be dangerous and expensive. He also claimed that the scientific community was politically motivated to replace CFCs. The American public still generally viewed the left as environmentalist liberals who cared more about air quality than the economy. Conservatives argued that environmental regulation was a move toward socialism, or even worse, communism. 

The tobacco industry was aware of the risks of secondhand smoke before the general population found out. They even knew of the dangers before the scientific community did. In the 1970s, the tobacco industry went to certain lengths to minimize the damage from secondhand smoke by improving cigarette filters and even trying to make cigarette smoke less visible, even though it would still be as dangerous. Eventually scientific evidence emerged pointing to secondhand smoke as a danger equal to—or possibly greater than—smoking itself. People came to see secondhand smoke as a serious danger to bystanders who were unwillingly  exposed to it. Soon the FDA enacted regulations to limit smoking in public places, and the tobacco industry began to panic.

To combat these regulations, the industry turned to none other than Fred Singer. He had created something called the Science and Environment Policy Project to promote ‘sound science’ in environmental policy. In 1993 he was actively trying to defend the tobacco industry from “junk science.” With the help of other industry leaders, the term “junk science” referred to the Environmental Protection Agency and anything negative related to smoking and secondhand smoke. 

The regulations imposed on smoking and secondhand smoke soon became political. If the government told us when and where we could smoke, who knew what they would regulate next? In essence, smoking was freedom. Singer, along with Fred Seitz (the scientist previously involved in Reagan’s Star Wars initiative), now battled with the EPA over such regulations. Both Singer and Seitz viewed the regulations as a leftist strategy to force their ideologies on the American people. Even though they were part of the scientific community themselves, science was becoming a political enemy.

In the 1970s, the changing climate began to garner significant attention. Climate change was causing drought-related famine in Africa and Asia, and the world took notice. Skeptics argued that other factors such as migration had caused the climate to change. But the science was there. Through the increase of CO2, a greenhouse gas, the earth was warming up.

Congress began looking into climate change in the late 1970s and instructed the National Academy of Science to study the existing scientific evidence on climate change. Bill Neirenberg, the scientist previously involved in fighting regulation regarding acid rain, led the committee tasked with the job. With the help of natural scientists and economists, he published an assessment called Changing Climate: Report of the Carbon Dioxide Assessment Committee. The chapters written by scientists focused on anthropogenic climate change. However, the conclusion of the assessment sided with the economists who wrote chapters focusing on the uncertainty of the future and what the cost would be to address existent climate changes. Both acknowledged climate change was occurring, however, the economists sowed seeds of doubt as to the duration of the problem.

When the scientists’ reports presented Neirenberg with irrefutable changes such as sea-level rise, he suggested migration as the answer. Certain parts of the world would become uninhabitable, but the population could move away from these areas. Even with documented evidence, Neirenberg and his committee decided a “wait-and-see” approach was best. 

The White House adopted Neirenberg’s approach, even though the EPA had been working to produce its own reports. At this point, no one denied that climate change was a legitimate concern, but Neirenberg insisted that prevention would be much more expensive than just treating the problem. 

By 1988, the White House had to address the climate change issue head on. The research into global warming had continued. More and more evidence was accumulating and proving that something would need to be done to address CO2 admissions. The White House coined a catchy phrase, “Meeting the greenhouse effect with the White House effect,” and created panels and committees to attempt to rectify the situation. Unfortunately, the problem was much larger than they realized and therefore, much harder to remedy. By 1995, it was evident that the environment was changing due to human activity.  Today, most scientists are in agreement that the earth is warming up, and we are the cause. Beginning decades ago, Bill Neirenberg, Fred Singer, and Fred Seitz helped to generate the doubt that held us back on developing regulations to minimize additional damage to the environment.

Rachel Carson was an environmentalist and marine biologist. She worked to call attention to the negative impact that pesticides had on the environment. Her book, Silent Spring, was instrumental to the banning of DDT and other harmful pesticides. It also drew the ire of chemical companies as many of their products would suffer because of these bans. 

Enough research had been done to prove that DDT not only caused cancer, but also affected every level of the ecosystems necessary to support our food supply and clean water supply. The EPA banned DDT and other harmful pesticides in 1971. Suddenly, in 2007, a revolt was forming. The mosquito-borne illness malaria was affecting large populations in Africa. A posthumous attack on Rachel Carson was beginning.

The internet was rife with stories blaming Carson and equating her to Hitler for all the lives lost. Was the banning of DDT directly related to the deaths in Africa? Not at all. Other nations did not have the same ban in place as the U.S. and continued the use of DDT. Mosquitoes had adapted and built up a resistance to the chemical. But that is not what conservative, free market capitalists would have the public believe.

In the end, it all boiled down to regulation. Conservative groups continued to fight regulation on all fronts, and this was no exception. They believe that regulation hampers free market capitalism. Science was again the enemy because it led to regulation of certain chemicals and pollutants.

Disinformation is a major issue in everything from science to politics. Conflicting claims exist all around us, but everyone has a right to present evidence-based ideas and ideologies to others. So how do we decipher fact from fiction? Most of the public wants the comfort of reassurance. For example, when tobacco-use was under attack, smokers wanted to believe it would not affect their health. Over time, research proved otherwise.

A debate still being had in the country today is how much regulation the government should institute. Many view such regulations as a direct path to Socialism, and then potential Communism. Science is fact-based and not political by nature, so how does the use of science become so politicized? It evolved from the seeds of doubt sown over years and years of scientific debate by scientists such as Singer and Neirenberg.

The campaigns of doubt staged over the years on topics ranging from tobacco use to global warming were not scientific. The science was proven. The doubt was directly related to the role the government should play in addressing these issues. If global warming is affecting the American population, shouldn’t the government step in to address this issue? Unfortunately, we have taken a step back regarding climate change policies. President Trump backed out of the Paris Climate Accord, much to the distress of scientists and environmentalists. This decreased regulation on CO2 emissions, and the fossil fuel industry has reaped the benefits of his decision. Trump’s decision also helped reassert doubt in science and global warming in general. Science should not be something we doubt because of politics.