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1-Page Summary of Merchants Of Doubt
Overview
The Sixth Extinction (2014) is a movie about how humans have caused the extinction of many species. Humans are responsible for deforestation, industrialization, and climate change. All these factors have led to an increase in biodiversity loss.
Smoking is not good for your health. Nuclear weapons are dangerous to society. There is scientific evidence that supports the claims of acid rain, climate change and ozone layer depletion.
These questions may seem silly to people today, but they were once serious issues in the mid-twentieth century. Most of us know that smoking is bad for our health and that nuclear weapons are dangerous to humanity, but these weren’t always obvious answers.
Merchants of Doubt is about a time period when new discoveries and scientific facts were being discovered, but there was also a lot of misinformation being spread by the government and big business.
In the 1960s and ’70s, when smoking was more socially acceptable, people didn’t think it was a bad idea. The US government also thought that climate change wasn’t a big deal. Former president Ronald Reagan didn’t want to get rid of nuclear weapons either.
Big Idea #1: The tobacco industry lied about the dangers of smoking.
Nowadays, everyone knows that smoking is bad for your health. However, it was not always known by the general public. It’s shocking to think that people didn’t know about this fact in the mid 20th century. But did tobacco companies themselves know about how their products were hurting people?
Yes, I agree.
In fact, the tobacco industry was aware of the dangers of smoking as early as 1953. They knew they had to do something about it when their business came under fire for being harmful to people’s health. To protect themselves from this criticism, four major tobacco companies – American Tobacco, Benson and Hedges, Philip Morris and US Tobacco – joined forces in defense of their industry.
Their strategy was to focus on the customer.
To hire a PR firm, Hill and Knowlton, to save tobacco’s deteriorating image. This decision was later used as evidence in court to prove that the tobacco industry knew about its product’s harmful effects and misled their customers.
The strategy was to cast doubt on the harmful effects of smoking. As research about its harmful effects emerged, they promoted the idea that it wasn’t true.
For instance, the tobacco industry in 1979 began giving money to top universities like Harvard. They committed $45 million over six years for one purpose: to prove that smoking wasn’t dangerous.
The tobacco industry was funding universities, but it also hired a respected scientist by the name of Frederick Seitz to distribute the money. The credibility that Seitz gave the tobacco industry made their efforts even more effective.
