The Cultural Production of Ignorance. (Doubt is our product)

[TalkingDog]

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hiltzik-20140307,0,1622098.column


The tobacco industry was a pioneer at this. Its goal was to erode public acceptance of the scientifically proven links between smoking and disease: In the words of an internal 1969 memo legal opponents extracted from Brown & Williamson's files, "Doubt is our product." Big Tobacco's method should not be to debunk the evidence, the memo's author wrote, but to establish a "controversy."

When this sort of manipulation of information is done for profit, or to confound the development of beneficial public policy, it becomes a threat to health and to democratic society. Big Tobacco's program has been carefully studied by the sugar industry, which has become a major target of public health advocates.

snip

Proctor came to the study of agnotology through his study of the Nazi scientific establishment and subsequently of the tobacco industry's defensive campaign.

Early in his career, he told me, he asked an advisor if Nazi science was an appropriate topic of research. "Of course," he was told. "Nonsense is nonsense, but the history of nonsense is scholarship." As part of his scholarship, Proctor says he "watches Fox News all the time."

[Laelth]

1. k&r for exposure. n/t

-Laelth

[silverweb]

2. k&r

This is important.

[bemildred]

3. Oh Hell yes.

I sometimes think 95% of what we think we know is bullshit. Except for politics where it's more like 99.9%.
Rec to the max.

[Bill USA]

4. important article.

recommended!!!